Montaigne was writing in the 1580s, at the twilight of a French humanism that had had its heydey in the 1520s and 30s, during the early reign of François I.

Now, though, France is embroiled in civil war, and no one knows what’s what.

Part of Montaigne’s melancholic response to the enthusiasm for learning enjoyed by his predecessors was a deep skepticism of the superiority of fancy erudition over plain peasant folk wisdom, like that of his globetrotting servant.

His appreciation that his servant isn’t so “curious” – that is, painstaking and fastidious – as to nicely “gloss” his stories comes from a contempt of the scholarly practice of always adding commentaries to texts, rather than letting them speak for themselves.

Like many in the French upper class, Montaigne might be looking to the lower classes to find a more “authentic” Frenchness, one that hasn’t been polluted by (Italian-influenced) court culture. The proverbial solidity and rustic simplicity of French people, especially as opposed to sophisticated but silly Italian people, was often expressed in the sixteenth century by the pun on “franc,” with connotations of both honesty and Frenchness itself.

Interesting that Montaigne’s example of the mixture of pleasure and pain in “nature” is from painting, which – even as it represents nature – most people would call “culture.”

Very classy of Montaigne not to mention his friend’s misfortunes. It might have been classier not to mention that he’s not mentioning them, but…

Montaigne is also fond of discussing husbandry (“mesnage”) – though he mostly talks about how bad at it he is.

You can probably guess what camp Montaigne, chillin in his chateau with his books, placed himself in.

But we should remember that Montaigne had a busy and very public political career before he decided to devote himself to “the elevated and exquisite opinions of philosophy” – and he even took breaks from his study to do negotiate peace between nearby warring Catholics and Protestants…though he probably would have preferred not to.

Montaigne cautions those of us that are too virtuous that we have to tone it down when we enter politics, where pragmatism might force us to compromise our lofty ideals.

This echoes St. Paul’s statement that, on earth, we “see through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12), denied the full light and clarity we will enjoy in heaven.

Again, this could well apply to Montaigne’s Essais, which are basically his random thoughts expertly woven together with quotations. Montaigne, of course, denied that he was a mere commonplacer: in “Of Physiogamy,” he insists that his Essais are not just collections of flowers (like, say, an anthology).

You might say he’s doing that right now, as he writes his Essais, of which he declared, “myself am the matter of my book” (“To the Reader”).

Part of why a palate might prefer old wine is that it turns into vinegar, which was as common a condiment in sixteenth-century France as salt is today, and was thought to have restorative health benefits

Ovid’s Tristia was written while the poet was in exile from Rome, which is what gave these elegiac letters their melancholic flair