circumstances of the period: the imperfect state of education, the
comparative scarcity of books, and the limited opportunities of
intellectual intercourse. Montaigne freely borrowed of others, and he
has found men willing to borrow of him as freely. We need not wonder at
the reputation which he with seeming facility achieved. He was, without
being aware of it, the leader of a new school in letters and morals. His
book was different from all others which were at that date in the world.
It diverted the ancient currents of thought into new channels. It told
its readers, with unexampled frankness, what its writer's opinion was
about men and things, and threw what must have been a strange kind of new
light on many matters but darkly understood. Above all, the essayist
uncased himself, and made his intellectual and physical organism public
property. He took the world into his confidence on all subjects. His
essays were a sort of literary anatomy, where we get a diagnosis of the
writer's mind, made by himself at different levels and under a large
variety of operating influences.

Of all egotists, Montaigne, if not the greatest, was the most
fascinating, because, perhaps, he was the least affected and most
truthful. What he did, and what he had professed to do, was to dissect
his mind, and show us, as best he could, how it was made, and what
relation it bore to external objects. He investigated his mental
structure as a schoolboy pulls his watch to pieces, to examine the
mechanism of the works; and the result, accompanied by illustrations
abounding with originality and force, he delivered to his fellow-men in a
book.

Eloquence, rhetorical effect, poetry, were alike remote from his design.
He did not write from necessity, scarcely perhaps for fame. But he
desired to leave France, nay, and the world, something to be remembered