The Complete Essays Read online

  THE COMPLETE ESSAYS

  ‘Dr Screech’s principal achievement has been to render Montaigne into contemporary English without quaintness, but also without sacrifice of that flavour of the sixteenth century which is implicit in Montaigne’s thinking… We want the essence of the man in a form accessible to modern readers, and that is what the translator has so gracefully given us’ – Robertson Davies

  ‘An absolute treat… [Screech] is the master of Montaigne. He’s already written extremely eloquently about Michel Montaigne as a melancholy man. There’s a kind of liveliness, a vernacular about the translation here that works very well’ – Roy Porter on Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio Four

  ‘Of its [the translation’s] limpidity and charm there can be no question’ – Simon Raven in the Guardian

  ‘This thinking tome, edited by a fine scholar, is utterly readable as fine scholars should be. It is more easily picked up than put down, and should be on the bedside table of every homme moyen sensuel, or lady for that matter’ – Anthony Blond in the Evening Standard

  ‘Most of all, mention should be made of the other greatly original feature of this translation, the commentary… [which] constitutes a fascinating sixteenth-century honnête homme’s library. For this reason the French reader will turn to the translation of M. A. Screech, who takes his place among those who, crossing cultural boundaries, enable each country to rediscover its writers in a new light’ – Jean-Robert Armogathe in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance

  ‘Anglophones of the next century will be deeply in [Dr Screech’s] debt’ – Gore Vidal in The Times Literary Supplement

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND EDITOR

  MICHEL EYQUEM, Seigneur de Montaigne, was born in 1533, the son and heir of Pierre, Seigneur de Montaigne (two previous children dying soon after birth). He was brought up to speak Latin as his mother tongue and always retained a Latin turn of mind; though he knew Greek, he preferred to use translations. After studying law he eventually became counsellor to the Parlement of Bordeaux. He married in 1565. In 1569 he published his French version of the Natural Theology of Raymond Sebond; his Apology is only partly a defence of Sebond and sets sceptical limits to human reasoning about God, man and nature. He retired in 1571 to his lands at Montaigne, devoting himself to reading and reflection and composing his Essays (first version, 1580). He loathed the fanaticism and cruelties of the religious wars of the period, but sided with Catholic orthodoxy and legitimate monarchy. He was twice elected Mayor of Bordeaux (1581 and 1583), a post held for four years. He died at Montaigne in 1592 while preparing the final, and richest, edition of his Essays.

  M. A. SCREECH is an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (Fellow and Chaplain, 2001–3), a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of University College London, and a corresponding member of the Institut de France. He long served on the committee of the Warburg Institute as the Fielden Professor of French Language and Literature in London, until his election to All Souls. He is a Renaissance scholar of international renown. He has edited and translated both the complete edition and a selection of the Essays for Penguin Classics and, in a separate volume, Montaigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond. His other books include Erasmus: Ecstacy and the Praise of Folly (Penguin, 1988), Rabelais, Montaigne and Melancholy (Penguin, 1991) and, most recently, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (Allen Lane, 1998). All are acknowledged to be classics studies in their fields. He worked with Anne Screech on Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament. Michael Screech was promoted Chevalier dans l’Ordre du Mérite in 1982 and Chevalier dans la Légion d’Honneur in 1992. He was ordained, in Oxford, a deacon in 1994 and a priest in 1995.

  MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

  The Complete Essays

  Translated and edited with an

  Introduction and Notes by M. A. SCREECH

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Book II, Chapter 12 previously appeared as An Apology for Raymond Sebond,

  published in Penguin Books 1987

  The Complete Essays first published by Allen Lane The Penguin Press 1991

  Reprinted with corrections and a new Chronology 2003

  20

  This translation and editorial material copyright © M. A. Screech 1987, 1991, 2003

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the translator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  9780141915937

  In Memory of

  PHILIP EVELEIGH

  Wit, poet, scholar

  killed during the Allied

  landings in Italy

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Note on the Text

  The Annotations

  Note on the Translation

  Explanation of the Symbols

  [Summary of the Symbols repeated on p. 1284]

  Appendices

  Chronology

  To the Reader

  BOOK I

  1. We reach the same end by discrepant means

  2. On sadness

  3. Our emotions get carried away beyond us

  4. How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones

  5. Whether the governor of a besieged fortress should go out and parley

  6. The hour of parleying is dangerous

  7. That our deeds are judged by the intention

  8. On idleness

  9. On liars

  10. On a ready or hesitant delivery

  11. On prognostications

  12. On constancy

  13. Ceremonial at the meeting of kings

  14. That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them

  15. One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without a good reason

  16. On punishing cowardice

  17. The doings of certain ambassadors

  18. On fear

  19. That we should not be deemed happy till after our death

  20. To philosophize is to learn how to die

  21. On the power of the imagination

  22. One man’s profit is another man’s loss

  23. On habit: and on never easily changing a traditional law

  24. Same design: differing outcomes

  25. On schoolmasters’ learning

  26. On educating children

  27. That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities

  28. On affectionate relationships

  29. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boëtie

&n
bsp; 30. On moderation

  31. On the Cannibals

  32. Judgements on God’s ordinances must be embarked upon with prudence

  33. On fleeing from pleasures at the cost of one’s life

  34. Fortune is often found in Reason’s train

  35. Something lacking in our civil administrations

  36. On the custom of wearing clothing

  37. On Cato the Younger

  38. How we weep and laugh at the same thing

  39. On solitude

  40. Reflections upon Cicero

  41. On not sharing one’s fame

  42. On the inequality there is between us

  43. On sumptuary laws

  44. On sleep

  45. On the Battle of Dreux

  46. On names

  47. On the uncertainty of our judgement

  48. On war-horses

  49. On ancient customs

  50. On Democritus and Heraclitus

  51. On the vanity of words

  52. On the frugality of the Ancients

  53. On one of Caesar’s sayings

  54. On vain cunning devices

  55. On smells

  56. On prayer

  57. On the length of life

  BOOK II

  1. On the inconstancy of our actions

  2. On drunkenness

  3. A custom of the Isle of Cea

  4. ‘Work can wait till tomorrow’

  5. On conscience

  6. On practice

  7. On rewards for honour

  8. On the affection of fathers for their children

  9. On the armour of the Parthians

  10. On books

  11. On cruelty

  12. An apology for Raymond Sebond

  13. On judging someone else’s death

  14. How our mind tangles itself up

  15. That difficulty increases desire

  16. On glory

  17. On presumption

  18. On giving the lie

  19. On freedom of conscience

  20. We can savour nothing pure

  21. Against indolence

  22. On riding ‘in post’

  23. On bad means to a good end

  24. On the greatness of Rome

  25. On not pretending to be ill

  26. On thumbs

  27. On cowardice, the mother of cruelty

  28. There is a season for everything

  29. On virtue

  30. On a monster-child

  31. On anger

  32. In defence of Seneca and Plutarch

  33. The tale of Spurina

  34. Observations on Julius Caesar’s methods of waging war

  35. On three good wives

  36. On the most excellent of men

  37. On the resemblance of children to their fathers

  BOOK III

  1. On the useful and the honourable

  2. On repenting

  3. On three kinds of social intercourse

  4. On diversion

  5. On some lines of Virgil

  6. On coaches

  7. On high rank as a disadvantage

  8. On the art of conversation

  9. On vanity

  10. On restraining your will

  11. On the lame

  12. On physiognomy

  13. On experience

  Index

  Introduction

  Montaigne is one of the great sages of that modern world which in a sense began with the Renaissance. He is a bridge linking the thought of pagan antiquity and of Christian antiquity with our own. Colourful, practical and direct, and never intentionally obscure, he sets before us his modestly named Essays, his ‘attempts’ at sounding himself and the nature and duties of Man so as to discover a sane and humane manner of living. He enjoys a place apart among French Renaissance authors. Men and women of all sorts are fascinated by what they find in him. Many read him for his wisdom and humanity, for which he may be quoted in a newspaper as readily as in a history of philosophy. He writes about himself, but is no egocentric and is never a bore. He treats the deepest subjects in the least pompous of manners and in a style often marked by dry humour. His writings are vibrant with challenge; they are free from jargon and unnecessary technicalities. In the seventeenth century, Pascal, the great Jansenist author of the Pensées (‘Thoughts’ which owe much to Montaigne), was converted partly by reading him and was soon discussing the Essays at Port-Royal with his director, LeMaistre de Sacy (who had his reservations). Pascal gained, it is said, thirty years by reading Montaigne, thirty years of study and reflection.1 Others, too, have felt the same. For Montaigne gives his readers the fruits of his own reading and of his own reflections upon it, all measured against his personal experience during a period of intellectual ferment and of religious and political disarray. Montaigne never let himself be limited by his office or station. As husband, father, counsellor, mayor, he kept a critical corner of himself to himself, from which he could judge in freedom and seek to be at peace with himself. He does not crush his reader under the authority of the great philosophers: he tries out their opinions and sees whether they work for him or for others. For he knew that opinions are not certainties, and that most human ‘certainties’ are in fact opinions.

  Traces of Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Cicero, St Augustine or his own contemporaries can be found in every page he wrote, but they are skilfully interwoven into his own discourse, being renewed and humanized in the process. And he hardly ever names them when making such borrowings. That was because he was delighted to know that critics would be condemning an idea of Plato, Aristotle or Seneca, say, when they thought they were attacking merely an opinion of his own unimportant self.

  After his beloved father died (18 June 1568), he succeeded to the title and the estates at Montaigne, in south-west France. (Provisions were made for his mother.) He was thirty-five, and three years married. Soon (1570) he was able to sell his charge as counsellor in the Parlement of Bordeaux (a legal office). His plan was, like cultured gentlemen in Ancient Roman times, to devote himself to learned leisure. He marked the event with a Latin inscription in his château – he had a taste for inscriptions, covering the beams and walls of his library with some sixty sayings in Greek and Latin, many of which figure in the Essays. His rejoicing at leaving negotium (business) for otium (leisure) was tempered by grief at the death of his friend, Etienne de la Boëtie (1563). (His children all died young, too, except a daughter, Léonor, who was deeply loved but could not, for a nobleman, replace a son and heir.)

  Montaigne’s project of calm study soon went wrong. He fell into an unbalanced melancholy; his spirit galloped off like a runaway horse; his mind, left fallow, produced weeds not grass. The terms he uses are clear: his complexion was unbalanced by an increase of melancholy ‘humour’. His natural ‘complexion’ – the mix of his ‘humours’ – was a stable blend of the melancholic and the sanguine. So that sudden access of melancholy humour (brought on by grief and isolation) was a serious matter, for such an increase in that humour was indeed inimical to his complexion, tipping it towards chagrin, a depression touched by madness. Such chagrin induced rêveries, a term which then, and long afterwards, meant not amiable poetic musings but ravings. (The Rêveries of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, are his ‘ravings’, not his ‘day-dreams’.) So at the outset otium brought Montaigne not happy leisure and wisdom but instability. Writing the Essays was, at one period, a successful attempt to exorcize that demon. To shame himself, he tells us, he decided to write down his thoughts and his rhapsodies. That was the beginning of his Essays.2 But he was not a professional scholar: he had no ‘subject’ to write about. He was not a statesman or a general. He soon decided to write about himself, the only subject he might know better than anyone else. This was a revolutionary decision, made easier, no doubt, by his bout of melancholy, for that humour encouraged an increased self-awareness. No one in Classical Antiquity had done anything like it. In the history of the known world only a handf
ul of authors had ever broken the taboo against writing primarily about oneself, as an ordinary man. St Augustine had written about himself, but as a penitent in the Confessions; during the Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano wrote On his Life and On his Books, and Joachim Du Bellay lamented his Roman ‘exile’ in his poetic Regrets. But those works bear no resemblance to what the Essays were to become for Montaigne – ‘tentative attempts’ to ‘assay’ the value of himself, his nature, his habits and of his own opinions and those of others – a hunt for truth, personality and a knowledge of humanity through an exploration of his own reactions to his reading, his travels, his public and his private experience in peace and in Civil War, in health and in sickness. The Essays are not a diary but are of ‘one substance’ with their author: ‘I am myself the matter of my book.’ In the case of a questioning and questing mind like his this study became not a book on a ‘subject’ but Assays of Michel de Montaigne – ‘assays’ of himself by himself.

  These essays were first divided into two books (a third followed later). Each book contains many chapters and each chapter contains many ‘assays’. He himself never referred to his chapters as essays; his chapters were convenient groupings of several assays – primarily ‘assays’ of a man called Michel de Montaigne. He soon discovered that very short chapters did not allow him enough scope for all the assays he wanted to make. He let his chapters grow longer. In the process he discovered the joys of digression and freedom from an imposed order. And he found he could tackle deeper subjects more exhaustively.

  Montaigne’s method of writing makes it sometimes puzzling for the reader to follow the linkings of his thought. His chapters are not arranged in order of their composition. Within each chapter sentences and phrases written at widely different times were printed without any hint of dating. Moreover each chapter, no matter how long, was presented as one continuous slab of text. That was quite usual then, but for us it leads to a kind of intellectual indigestion. Modern editors introduce paragraphs as well as quotation marks, italics and a now more usual punctuation. That has been done here too. It makes it easier to pick up Montaigne and to put him down. That is a great advantage for what is one of Europe’s great bedside books. But Montaigne warned us that we should be prepared to give him an hour or so at a stretch when necessary. Even that is easier when there are paragraphs, as well as some indication of what was written when.