In 1580 Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) presented a literary project to the public the type of wich had never before been introduced- a collection of Essays with himself as subject. Never before had a writer attempted a literary self-portrait, and in so doing Montaigne named and defined a new literary form, the essay. Brush's critical study of Essays examines the complex process of writing a self-portrait and showing the ways in which it is an entirely differnt enterprise from writing an autobiography. The author discusses how Montaigne revealed his mind in motion, and the most remarkable...

It is traditional in the literature on Pierre Bayle to make some refer- ene e to iVlontaigne as one of the masters of skepticism in whose tracks he follows, albeit hardly so eloselyas Charron had. Time and again critics feel the need to mention Montaigne and Bayle in the same context, sometimes to contrast their brands of Pyrrhonism, more often to explain similarities in their ideas and methods, which have frequent- ly been regarded as important steps in the gradual evolution of un- Christian, even anti-Christian, thought. Their names were already associated during Bayle's life, for example,...