'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. As in Chapter 33, most details derive from Suetonius’ Caesar, incorporating Renaissance footnotes, commentaries and further details from Caesar’s own writings, mainly from the Gallic Wars.

2. Lucan, Pharsalia, V, 289–90.

3. Lucan, V, 405; Virgil, Aeneid, XII, 684–9.

4. Lucan, IV, 151–4; then Horace, Odes, IV, xiv, 25–8.

5. ’80: More-than-human confidence, beyond the natural order, in their fortunes…A significant excision in the light of the end of III, 13, ‘On experience’. (Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts des anciens Roys, 208 D.) 6. Plutarch, Life of Lucullus.

7. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, II, ii; then Nicolas Chalcocondylas, De la décadence de l’Empire Grec, III, xi (for Bajazet), and Jacques Lavardin, Histoire de Scanderbeg (1576), 444 r°.

8. Cited as a proverbial saying by Aristotle, Laws, III, 689 D.

9. An example of fairness to enemies, Gaspard de Coligny (Chastillon) being a Protestant leader; those ‘under the old regime’ are the French Roman Catholics.

The Complete Essays

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