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1 8 MONTAIGNE
in 1595, three years after the author's death,
by his niece, Mile, de Gournay, is sufficient
and adequate.
Though five editions of the " Essais " were
printed during their author's life 1580 and
1582 at Bordeaux, 1584 (probably) and 1587
at Paris, 1588 at Bordeaux to critics in
search of dramatic spiritual changes a com-
parative study will afford but meagre sport.
To be sure, the editions of '84 and '87 were
nothing more than what we should now call
reprints ; but the edition of 1588, of which
" L'Exemplaire de Bordeaux " is a copy,
represents so thorough an overhauling and so
generous an enlarging of the old book that
some have been tempted to reckon it a new one.
Yet, though it garners the fruit of eight fertile
it reveals no
years of travel and public service,
startling change in the outlook, nor in what is
more important, the insight, of its author.
We need feel no surprise. Had Montaigne
been the sort of man whose views and sentiments
are profoundly affected by travel or
office, he would not have been the object of
that cult of which the three volumes before us
are the latest, and perhaps the most significant,
monument. That is a peculiar man whose
crossings and dottings and deletions are
judged worthy of photographic record by the
authorities of a great industrial city.