Reviews

Selected essays of Michel de Montaigne by William Hazlitt, Charles Cotton, Michel de Montaigne

manzanita__flowers's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

2.0

bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition

I have to say that Monsieur Montaigne doesn't do a whole lot for me. It may be the translation, but he comes across as rather pompous, full of himself, and long-winded. I think the most irritating thing is that he spends one whole essay ("Of the Education of Children") telling us how tutors/teachers shouldn't just teach children to regurgitate facts or spout the learned words of the great men who come before them, but should be taught to reason and understand what the great men's words meant and embrace and make the thoughts their own. Then...Montaigne spends the rest of the book (and even this essay) dropping quotations from Homer and Horace and Dante and (you name the great classic thinker) here, there, and yon like a non sequitur looking for a connection. About one out of every five or six he'll incorporate properly into his discussion (properly according to his stated "rules"), not exactly practicing what he preaches. So, apparently, when it comes to quotations it is do as I say and not as I do.

I will admit that his theory on educating children does strike home a bit when you think of America's modern tendency to "teach to the test." As Montaigne says (oooh, I'm throwing in a quote!) "They slap them into our memory with all their feathers on, like oracles in which the letters and syllables are the substance of the matter. To know by heart is not to know; it is to retain what we have given our memory to keep....Sad competence, a purely bookish competence!" But, overall, Montaigne's philosophies as presented were a slog to work my way through and they did not provoke a thoughtful engagement as I expected.

I will refrain from giving a rating. Given the overall response on Goodreads and the references to Montaigne that I have seen repeatedly in my academic life, I'm sure I'm missing something.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

hammo's review against another edition

5.0

We can say, Cicero says thus; these were the manners of Plato; these are the very words of Aristotle: but what do we say ourselves? What do we judge? A parrot would say as much as that.

There is a vast difference betwixt the case of one who follows the forms and laws of his country, and of another who will undertake to regulate and change them; of whom the first pleads simplicity, obedience, and example for his excuse, who, whatever he shall do, it cannot be imputed to malice; ‘tis at the worst but misfortune:

“Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis monumentis
testata consignataque antiquitas?”

[“For who is there that antiquity, attested and confirmed by the
fairest monuments, cannot move?”—Cicero, De Divin., i. 40.]
besides what Isocrates says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation than excess: the other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever shall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging, and should look well about him, and make it his business to discern clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he is about to introduce.

This so vulgar consideration is that which settled me in my station, and kept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth under the rein, so as not to burden my shoulders with so great a weight, as to render myself responsible for a science of that importance, and in this to dare, what in my better and more mature judgment, I durst not do in the most easy and indifferent things I had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity of judging is of no consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust to go about to subject public and established customs and institutions, to the weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (for private reason has but a private jurisdiction)

We only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void. Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at the tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad. And here I cannot but smile to think how I have paid myself in showing the foppery of this kind of learning, who myself am so manifest an example; for, do I not the same thing throughout almost this whole composition?

gretusky's review against another edition

slow-paced

0.25

pearseanderson's review against another edition

3.0

I get why he's good. I get that he's a grandad of essaywriting. He has interesting points. I just hate the style of writing, it's dry and old and bad. I really don't have much to say. We only read about a third of this for AP Lang. All his examples seem to be of old white rich men. I would've liked some variety.

dfolivieri's review against another edition

4.0

What's my favorite thing in the world? Getting to know the oddities and wonders of other people's minds (and my own). What is Montaigne doing? Exploring his own mind with the help of a large selection of Classical texts and plenty of anecdotes. It's a match made in heaven. Love this guy to death. He is hella sexist though.

itsspfw's review against another edition

5.0

⭒ 4.5 ⭒
A masterpiece, a masterwork, and a luxurious outlet for a thirty soul!
Wow! Just wow!
Montaigne’s beautiful usage of words and his power of delivery to one’s mind and soul is an astute talent.
This book is a resemblance of an endless ocean without a shore. It will stick with me forever, I may reread a lot of essays throughout my whole life.

serendipitymarg's review against another edition

5.0

I have not read Montaigne in years but i fell in love with his mind as a romantic first year student studying philosophy and literature. i loved the idea that thought breeds thought...

sunnycurt's review against another edition

3.0

Not as glorious as the reviews indicated. Would have preferred a more driving story, especially as it had all the components for an old-style page-turning tour de force.