'I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain'In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and thinking. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays' inspired by ideas he found in the books of his library and his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women generally. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature, and an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, which continue to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.With its extensive introduction and notes, M. A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times.

The Complete Essays

1. Horace, Satires, I, iv, 73–5; then Persius, Satires, V, 19–21.

2. Until [C]: It is to be hidden in some corner of a library and as a pastime for anyone who has a private interest in knowing me; for a neighbour…

3. [A] until [C]: beloved ancestors and to disdain them. A dagger, a suit of armour, a sword which served them, I preserve, out of love for them, as well as I can, from the injuries of time. However…Quotation from St Augustine, City of God, I, xiii.

4. [A] until [C]: convenient. I had to cast this portrait in print to free myself from the bother of making several manuscript copies. In return for this convenience which I have borrowed from the public I hope to do it the service of providing wrapping-paper…Then, Martial, Epigrams, XIII, i; Catullus, XCIV, 8.

5. Cf. Joachim Du Bellay’s reasons for writing personal poetry (Regrets, 4, 14, etc.). Then, Clément Marot, Epistre de Fripelipes against Sagon, punning on his name Sagon (sagouin, lout).

6. Pindar, in Plutarch, Life of Marius; Plato, Republic, VI, 489e ff.

7. Presbyter Salvianus of Massilia, De gubernatione Dei, I, i, xiv (a work printed in Paris in 1580).

9. Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée), Histoire generale des Indes, II, xxviii. (These new-found ‘Indies’ are the Americas.)

10. Androclidas criticizing Lysander, in Plutarch’s Life of Lysander.

11. Cf. II, 33, ‘The tale of Spurina’, and also the insulting by Christians of the Emperor Julian in II, 19, ‘On freedom of conscience’.

The Complete Essays

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