Volume 5, Number 7 · November 11, 1965
The Originality of Montaigne
By D.P. Walker
Montaigne: A Biography
by Donald M. Frame
Harcourt, Brace & World, 408 pp., $10.00
Complete Essays of Montaigne
translated by Donald M. Frame
Stanford, 883 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Everyone interested in Montaigne will welcome the appearance of a detailed, reliable, and up-to-date biography of him. Up till now we have still had to go back to Bonnefon's Lives of 1893 and 1898, and laboriously supplement them with later books and articles. Professor Frame's biography is written in a clear, unpretentious but expressive style, and, in so far as he is simply narrating the course of Montaigne's life, his work is admirable. It is particularly valuable to have a full and lucid account of all that is now known about Montaigne's period of office as Mayor of Bordeaux and about his important role as a politique negotiator between Henry III and Henry of Navarre. This information corrects the picture Montaigne gives of himself as an egocentric escapist. But here comes the difficulty. Montaigne's Essais are primarily autobiographical; his explicit aim, which he certainly achieved, was to give a self-portrait. In consequence a full biography of Montaigne must inevitably also include a study of his writings (although it would be useful for scholars to have a collection of all the information about him from sources other than the Essais). This is perhaps all to the good; the customary separation of l'homme from l'oeuvre is artificial even where it is possible. But, granting that one should not separate the man from the thinker and writer, I find Professor Frame's treatment of the Essais not wholly satisfactory, mainly because he does not put Montaigne's ideas in an historical context. For his life, the necessary historical background, political, social, and economic, is given succinctly and adequately; but this is not true of the intellectual background.
Review, 1666 words
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