Volume 55, Number 2 · February 14, 2008
The Genius of Montaigne
By Charles Rosen
Les Essais
by Michel de Montaigne, edited by Jean Balsamo, Michel Magnien, andCatherine Magnin Simon
Paris: Pléiade/Gallimard, 1,975 pp., e79.00
Montaigne remarked that when someone dwelt on the language, the style, of his Essays, 'I would prefer that he shut up.'[1] It was, above all, the objective content of which he was proud, more material and denser, he says, than in other writers. But, as he observes at once, his meaning is not always straightforward. To his essay 'Considerations on Cicero,' published in 1580, he added the following passage many years later:
Review, 5406 words
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