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Book review: ‘The Essays: a selection’ by Michel de Montaigne

Forget novels. Forget poetry. Forget crossword puzzles. To me, the most enjoyable and important literary form is the personal essay. And nobody did more to establish the personal essay as a literary form than French minor nobleman Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592). Which makes it so astonishing I lived to a month shy of 60 before I read any of his essays. Better late than never, I suppose.

This selection of essays, superbly translated by the late M.A. Screech (who would go on to become Bishop of Oxford), is a terrifically fun read. Yes, as you might expect from stuff that slightly predates Shakespeare, the text is challenging in places, but what comes through is a self-penned portrait of an erudite and thoughtful human being with a distinct and likeable personality.

The essays are on all manner of topics, from advice on educating children to cutting cannibals some slack; from taking after your parents to the different types of social intercourse. Pleasingly, Montaigne frequently wanders off topic. For example, his essay entitled On the Lame only gets to the subject of people with walking disabilities in the last couple of paragraphs—and only then to discuss their supposedly legendary sexual abilities. En route to this, in the same essay, Montaigne discusses France’s recent migration to the Gregorian Calendar (he is not a fan); how he sometimes exaggerates or embellishes to prove a point; and how, despite his scepticism of claims that certain local people are witches, he feels compelled to believe witches actually exists because the Bible says they do.

I can’t possibly cover all the essays in this collection in a brief review, so here are a few bullet-point quotes I noted down while reading the book:

On not constantly worrying about death: “I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”
On using the ideas of others, but developing them into your own: “Bees ransack flowers here and flowers there: but then they make their own honey, which is entirely theirs and no longer thyme or marjoram.”
On only engaging with worthy opponents, and keeping your arguments brief: “The boy will be taught not to get into a discussion or a quarrel except when he finds a sparring-partner worth wrestling with—and even then not to employ all the holds which might help him but merely those which help him most. Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and for brevity.”
On why some people find it difficult to express their thoughts: “I sometimes hear people who apologize for not being able to say what they mean, maintaining that their heads are so full of fine things that they cannot deliver them for want of eloquence. That is moonshine. Do you know what I think? It is a matter of shadowy notions coming to them from unformed concepts which they are unable to untangle and to clarify in their minds: consequently they cannot deliver them externally. They themselves do not know what they mean.”
On torture: “Torture is a dangerous innovation; it would appear that it is an assay not of truth but of a man’s endurance. The man who can endure it hides the truth: so does he who cannot. For why should pain make me confess what is true rather than force me to say what is not true? And on the contrary if a man who has not done what he is accused of is able to support such torment, why should a man who has done it be unable to support it, when so beautiful a reward of life itself is offered him?”
On illness putting him off sex: “My own gallstones monstrously unlecher me!”
On being something of an introvert: “this awkward complexion of mine renders me fastidious about mixing with people: I need to handpick my companions; at it also renders me awkward for ordinary activities.”
On the Conquistadors’ treatment of the recently discovered New World: “we whipped it and subjected it by our teaching, but not from any superior worth of ours or our natural energy; we neither seduced it by our justice and goodness nor subjugated it by our greatness of soul.”
On scepticism: “I am of Saint Augustine’s opinion, that in matters difficult to verify and perilous to believe, it is better to incline to doubt than certainty.”
On not getting above yourself: “Kings and philosophers shit: and so do ladies.”
Also on not getting above yourself: “upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, on our arse.”
On continence: “My bowels and I never fail to keep our rendezvous, which is (unless some urgent business or illness disturbs us) when I jump out of bed.”
On becoming harder of hearing: “I am similarly unwilling to admit that I am on the point of becoming hard of hearing, and you will find that when I am half-deaf I shall be blaming it on the voices of those who are speaking to me.”