As history has repeatedly suggested, nothing is more effective for demolishing traditional legal protections than the combined claims that a crime is uniquely dangerous, and that those behind it have exceptional powers of resistance.

Every so often, I have to remind myself that I am in, if my late, twenties when it comes to my reading career. I have Proust, Gilgamesh, at least ten works of Woolf, and two of the Four Great Chinese Classics under my belt, with a third of the last waiting for me in the wings of 2020. I have not, however, yet encountered Sterene, Seneca, or Montaigne himself, names that have long been familiar but have also been passed over in recent years due to an accumulation of less than favorable encounters with the mass white boy lit fixation that plagues the definition of "being well read." Coming to this on the tail end of December 2019's focus on neglected (by me at any rate) 21st century works on my shelf reminded me of all this and more, so it's rather fortunate that I'm letting a few of the bigger names (largely ones I've previously read and approved of) back in my diet next year, as at the ripe old age of nearly 30, I've gained enough self-confidence through a course of far flung reading across time and space to go back to the purported canon and see what I can get. In university, I took classes on experimental women's lit and postcolonial short stories alongside those on 'Canterbury Tales' and 'Paradise Lost,' and these days, I feel I can trust myself to ferret out the more worthy members of the commonly esteemed literary conclave and incorporate their worthiest sayings into my own holism: after reading this, Montaigne is high on that list, especially with my newly acquired knowledge of, and choice of sides in, the drama surrounding the editions of his work.

Montaigne was also impressed by the way the city's courtesans lived in dignity and luxury, openly maintained by noblemen and respected by all.

Despite the lack of mention in this particular tome, my most remembered experience with Montaingity would have to be [b:Epitaph of a Small Winner|909746|Epitaph of a Small Winner|Machado de Assis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1311991278l/909746._SY75_.jpg|605176] by [a:Machado de Assis|22458|Machado de Assis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494210909p2/22458.jpg]: irreverent, through provoking, and, ultimately, the most nonsensical sense and sensible nonsense I have ever encountered. After reading this, if de Assis hadn't somehow gotten his hands on a Portuguese translation of the 'Essays', I'll eat my hat, as Bakewell made such a strong argument for that work's influence spanning both countries and centuries that it'd be absurd if Zweig had made it to Brazil before his beloved author did. Montainge's equivocation proves conducive to his continued survival, and yet he forbid torture when he could, looked favorably on sex workers, and found most, if not all, excuses for violence not just ineffective, but inhumane. His wisdom was born out of the strenuous labor and suppression of hundreds, if not thousands, of others through hierarchies of class, gender, nation, and religion, but what he left behind is something that, as Bakewell says, suggests itself well to self-reflexive humanitarian concerns and a focus on raising up, if largely on the basis of shrewd self-absorption. Still, much like his friend Boétie's strikingly revolutionary text, Montaigne's words can be easily adapted as any variety of bedrocks for any variety of persons at a variety of ages. I don't expect to act any differently when I finally read him for myself: my only goal is to confirm that he is indeed worth reading.

The cultivation of potatoes was under way, although their vaguely testicular shape still made people think they were good only as an aphrodisiac.

This book gave me a glimpse of what I've been missing out on due to my having followed a nearly white boy-less reading path for the past several years, and I have to say, I do appreciate most of the context. Still, I delighted whenever the more important Woolf was mentioned, as well as whenever this text gave me a woman writer who I considered worth pursuing (I've added works by both [a:Marie de Gournay|16795452|Marie de Gournay|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png] and [a:Veronica Franco|73247|Veronica Franco|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1245511394p2/73247.jpg] as a result). That's the measure I take of most things these days: I follow the beaten trail of the best and brightest, knowing that the trail is often trampled on the backs of fellow worthies by the weight of anyone who only received a higher education through the fortunate coincidences of their innately inherited, rather than developed, characteristics and nothing more. So, I will read the Montaigne and the Seneca and the Sterne, but for every one of them, I aspire to a bare minimum of five of their respective contemporaries who most history books say did not exist. Montaigne valued his flexible point of view; I aspire to make my own all the more accurate and acute.

There they are, then, in Montaigne's library. The cat is attracted by the scratching of his pen; she dabs an experimental paw at the moving quill. He looks at her, perhaps momentarily irritated by the interruption. Then he smiles, tilts the pen, and draws the feather-end across the paper for her to chase. She pounces. The pads of her paws smudge the ink on the last few words; some sheets of paper slide to the floor. The two of them can be left there, suspended in the midst of their lives with the Essays not yet fully written, while we go and get on with ours—with the Essays not fully read.