The fame of Montaigne was great in his own time, and has never suffered eclipse. Nor is it possible that it ever should, since, in addition to personal qualities of an amusing and attractive kind, he was the thorough type of a certain stamp of intellect. He was as complete a Gascon as his countryman Monluc, and may even be said to have carried the peculiar quality of his race to a yet higher pitch. Monluc was resolved that all the world should know him for the astute and intrepid soldier he was. Montaigne did not condescend to justify himself by his deeds. He asked the world to be interested in him, not as a soldier, nor indeed as anything, except just a thinking man. And the world has never denied that the man and his thoughts were worth knowing. [SN: _His_ Essays.] The subject of his _Essays_ is always substantially Michel of Montaigne, his health, his reading, his views of men, things, and opinions, his habits of mind and body. In matter, in form, and in intellectual scope he is all the world apart from Brantôme, and yet he is not wholly unlike the old disappointed courtier of the Valois, discoursing _Des Hommes_ and _Des Femmes_. Both talk out all that was in them, with a certain affectation of carelessness, but in reality with thought, and no small toil over the manner of saying. During his later years Montaigne employed himself much in covering the margins of a copy of the so-called fifth edition of his _Essays_ with corrections and additions. The book still exists in the library at Bordeaux. After his death his widow intrusted his friend, Pierre de Brach, with the task of editing a revised edition. Brach, who had the help of Montaigne’s adopted daughter, Mdlle. de Gournay, produced what was for long the accepted text in the edition of 1595. But though Pierre de Brach and Mdlle. de Gournay worked with care, they omitted a good deal, and misunderstood something. Successive editors in this century have laboured to correct their errors of omission and commission, but the text of Montaigne has never yet been fixed to the satisfaction of exacting critics. [SN: _The scepticism of Montaigne._]