SOURCE: Epstein, Joseph. “Reading Montaigne.” Commentary 95, no. 3 (March 1993): 34-41.

In this essay, Epstein discusses the remarkable staying power of Montaigne's Essays, which he contends are as relevant today as they were in Montaigne's own time.

Michel de Montaigne put the capital I, the first person, into literature, and while he was at it also invented the essay. When he took up the writing of his Essays, in 1572, Montaigne was the first man to write freely about himself, and not for another two centuries, until Jean Jacques Rousseau, would anyone do so with such unabashed candor again. Chiding Tacitus for undue modesty, Montaigne remarked that “not to dare to talk roundly of yourself betrays a defect of thought.” This, clearly, was not Montaigne's defect. “I not only dare to talk about myself but to talk of nothing else but myself.” That is not quite true; he talks about a...