{"product_id":"2940012916150","title":"COMPLETE ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE","description":"CONTENTS OF VOLUME 1.\u003cbr\u003e     Preface\u003cbr\u003e     The Life of Montaigne\u003cbr\u003e     The Letters of Montaigne\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePREFACE.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe present publication is intended to supply a recognised deficiency in\u003cbr\u003eour literature--a library edition of the Essays of Montaigne.  This great\u003cbr\u003eFrench writer deserves to be regarded as a classic, not only in the land\u003cbr\u003eof his birth, but in all countries and in all literatures.  His Essays,\u003cbr\u003ewhich are at once the most celebrated and the most permanent of his\u003cbr\u003eproductions, form a magazine out of which such minds as those of Bacon\u003cbr\u003eand Shakespeare did not disdain to help themselves; and, indeed, as\u003cbr\u003eHallam observes, the Frenchman's literary importance largely results from\u003cbr\u003ethe share which his mind had in influencing other minds, coeval and\u003cbr\u003esubsequent.  But, at the same time, estimating the value and rank of the\u003cbr\u003eessayist, we are not to leave out of the account the drawbacks and the\u003cbr\u003ecircumstances of the period: the imperfect state of education, the\u003cbr\u003ecomparative scarcity of books, and the limited opportunities of\u003cbr\u003eintellectual intercourse.  Montaigne freely borrowed of others, and he\u003cbr\u003ehas found men willing to borrow of him as freely.  We need not wonder at\u003cbr\u003ethe reputation which he with seeming facility achieved.  He was, without\u003cbr\u003ebeing aware of it, the leader of a new school in letters and morals.  His\u003cbr\u003ebook was different from all others which were at that date in the world.\u003cbr\u003eIt diverted the ancient currents of thought into new channels.  It told\u003cbr\u003eits readers, with unexampled frankness, what its writer's opinion was\u003cbr\u003eabout men and things, and threw what must have been a strange kind of new\u003cbr\u003elight on many matters but darkly understood.  Above all, the essayist\u003cbr\u003euncased himself, and made his intellectual and physical organism public\u003cbr\u003eproperty.  He took the world into his confidence on all subjects.  His\u003cbr\u003eessays were a sort of literary anatomy, where we get a diagnosis of the\u003cbr\u003ewriter's mind, made by himself at different levels and under a large\u003cbr\u003evariety of operating influences.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf all egotists, Montaigne, if not the greatest, was the most\u003cbr\u003efascinating, because, perhaps, he was the least affected and most\u003cbr\u003etruthful.  What he did, and what he had professed to do, was to dissect\u003cbr\u003ehis mind, and show us, as best he could, how it was made, and what\u003cbr\u003erelation it bore to external objects.  He investigated his mental\u003cbr\u003estructure as a schoolboy pulls his watch to pieces, to examine the\u003cbr\u003emechanism of the works; and the result, accompanied by illustrations\u003cbr\u003eabounding with originality and force, he delivered to his fellow-men in a\u003cbr\u003ebook.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEloquence, rhetorical effect, poetry, were alike remote from his design.\u003cbr\u003eHe did not write from necessity, scarcely perhaps for fame.  But he\u003cbr\u003edesired to leave France, nay, and the world, something to be remembered\u003cbr\u003eby, something which should tell what kind of a man he was--what he felt,\u003cbr\u003ethought, suffered--and he succeeded immeasurably, I apprehend, beyond his\u003cbr\u003eexpectations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was reasonable enough that Montaigne should expect for his work a\u003cbr\u003ecertain share of celebrity in Gascony, and even, as time went on,\u003cbr\u003ethroughout France; but it is scarcely probable that he foresaw how his\u003cbr\u003erenown was to become world-wide; how he was to occupy an almost unique\u003cbr\u003eposition as a man of letters and a moralist; how the Essays would be\u003cbr\u003eread, in all the principal languages of Europe, by millions of\u003cbr\u003eintelligent human beings, who never heard of Perigord or the League, and\u003cbr\u003ewho are in doubt, if they are questioned, whether the author lived in the\u003cbr\u003esixteenth or the eighteenth century.  This is true fame.  A man of genius\u003cbr\u003ebelongs to no period and no country.  He speaks the language of nature,\u003cbr\u003ewhich is always everywhere the same.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe text of these volumes is taken from the first edition of Cotton's\u003cbr\u003eversion, printed in 3 vols.  8vo, 1685-6, and republished in 1693, 1700,\u003cbr\u003e1711, 1738, and 1743, in the same number of volumes and the same size.\u003cbr\u003eIn the earliest impression the errors of the press are corrected merely\u003cbr\u003eas far as page 240 of the first volume, and all the editions follow one\u003cbr\u003eanother.  That of 1685-6 was the only one which the translator lived to\u003cbr\u003esee.  He died in 1687, leaving behind him an interesting and little-known\u003cbr\u003ecollection of poems, which appeared posthumously, 8vo, 1689.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was considered imperative to correct Cotton's translation by a careful\u003cbr\u003ecollation with the 'variorum' edition of the original, Paris, 1854,\u003cbr\u003e4 vols.  8vo or 12mo, and parallel passages from Florin's earlier\u003cbr\u003eundertaking have occasionally been inserted at the foot of the page.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47160804507888,"sku":"2940012916150","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012916150_p0.jpg?v=1763574285","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012916150","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}