Perhaps he even began with the intention of composing a commonplace book: a collection of thematically arranged quotations and stories, of a kind popular among gentlemen of the day. If so, it did not take him long to move beyond this, possibly under the influence of the one writer he liked more than Seneca: Plutarch. Plutarch had made his name in the first century A.D. with lively potted biographies of historical figures, and also wrote short pieces called Moralia, which were translated into French in the year Montaigne began writing16 his Essays. These gathered together thoughts and anecdotes
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