1693 ENGLISH Essays of Montaigne France Renaissance Philosophy Humanism Cotton

1693 ENGLISH Essays of Montaigne France Renaissance Philosophy Humanism Cotton

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

First published in 1580, the Essays of Michel de Montaigne were a collection of essays and writings on a variety of topics and content. Montaigne was rather decisive in his rhetoric and used various Ancient Greek, Latin, and Italian texts as examples and references, such as Lucretius and Plutarch quotations. Montaigne himself stated that the goal of his essays was to describe man with ‘utter frankness and honesty.’ According to the scholar Paul Oskar Kristeller,

“the writers of the period were keenly aware of the miseries and ills of our earthly existence”.

Montaigne sought to break man down into his basic features, which, at the time, was extreme volatility. He wrote on marriage being an absolute necessity for raising children, but he also quoted, in the ‘Essays,’ that “Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out.”

These first and second volumes from the 1693 English edition were translated by Charles Cotton and includes essays such as:

• ‘On Drunkenness’
• ‘Of Recompenses of Honor’
• ‘The Arms of the Parthians’
• ‘All Things Have Their Season’
• ‘Of Anger’
• ‘Of Education of children’
• ‘Of Quick or Slow Speech’
• ‘Resemblance of Children to Their Fathers’

Item number: #21735

Price: $599

MONTAIGNE, Michel de

Essays of Michael seigneur de Montaigne. In three books with marginal notes and quotations

London: T. Basset, 1693.

Details:

• Collation: Complete with all pages
  • I – [16], 555, [5]
    • Includes engraved portrait frontispiece
  • II – [6], 722
• Provenance: Handwritten – Isabella Pitt, 1740
• Language: English
• Binding: Leather; tight and secure
• Size: ~7.25in X 5in (18.5cm x 12.5cm)

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21735