“Nothing may be spoken so absurdly but that it is spoken by some of the philosophers. And therefore do I suffer my humors or caprices more freely to pass in publike. For as much as though they are borne with, and of me, and without any patterne; well I wot, they will be found to have relation to some ancient humour, and some shall be found, that will both know and tell whence, and of whom I have borrowed them. My customes are naturall; when I contrived them, I called not for the help of any discipline: And weake and faint as they were, when I have had a desire to expresse them, and to make them appeare to the world a little more comely and decent, I have somewhat endevoured to aide them with discourse, and assist them with examples. I have wondred at my selfe, that by mere chance I have met with them, agreeing and sutable to so many ancient examples and Philosophicall discourses. What regiment my life was of, I never knew nor learned but after it was much worne and spent. A new figure: An unpremeditated Philosopher and a casuall.” It is this unostentatious, unpremeditated, casual and chatty quality of Montaigne’s writing that reveals the genuineness of his education. A present-day critic would lead us to believe that he kept a note book and patiently copied out of his classics the passages which he might use as illustrations. In a characteristic bit of humor at his own expense, Montaigne seems to justify this idea that he was a mere compiler of other men’s thoughts. “We labor and toyle and plod to fill the memorie and leave both understanding and conscience empty. Even as birds flutter and skip from field to field to peck up corn or any grain and without tasting the same carrie it in their bills therewith to feed their little ones: so doe our pedants glean and pick learning from books and never lodge it further than their lips only to disgorge and cast it to the wind. It is strange how filthy sottishness takes hold of mine example. Is not that which I do in the greatest part of this composition all one and self same thing? I am forever here and there picking and culling from this and that book the sentences that please me, not to keepe them (for I have no store house to reserve them in) but to transport them into this: where to say truth, they are no more mine than in their first place.” But it is obvious that these essays were not the product of a mind which worked in such a sophomoric manner as this. Montaigne’s mind is saturated with “ancient humor.” There is no pretense or conscious effort to appear erudite. While many other Renaissance scholars were writing in Latin and affecting a Ciceronian style, Montaigne wrote in French. He is, I believe, the creator of the essay as a form of literary expression, a style which is more free and informal than the conventional forms of his day.