Montaigne: Selected Essays
The Chales Cotton, W. Hazlitt Translation, Rev. and Ed. with Introduction by Blanchard Bates
New York: The Modern Library (Random House). 1580. 1588. 1595 (1949)
Why read it? Montaigne's thoughts on life provoke our thoughts on life.
Beyond the definition of the essay as written on a single subject, there are two types of essays. The first type of essay is planned, with a beginning, middle and end, like the essays of Francis Bacon and Joseph Addison, and the essays written by students in modern American schools based on the model of the "five-paragraph essay."
The second type of essay, less imitated, is like those of Montaigne. These essays give the impression of not being planned, of moving as the mind muses, from idea to idea. As the editor of these selected essays of Montaigne, Blanchard Bates, describes them: "Often a sentence rambles on, idea suggesting idea, and clause added to clause, and then suddenly returns to the original thought. He wanted the style of the essays to convey an impression of the movement of the writer's thought." And, "With its meanderings and its abrupt sallies, the essay transmits some impression of Montaigne's musing as he rides along."
Some of Montaigne's topics included death, plagiarism, teaching and learning, conversation, friendship, the culture of cannibals vs. European culture, solitude, parenthood, books and reading, virtue, cruelty, lying, physicians, marriage, sex, debate, authority, opinion, laws, magnanimity, leadership, personality, busyness, anger, quarrels, language, age and fools.
Montaigne's thoughts on physicians and the practice of medicine struck me as particularly contemporary.
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