And the essayist William Hazlitt managed to squeeze Montaigne, as well as Rabelais, into a piece called ‘On Old English Writers and Speakers’. He justified their inclusion thus: ‘But these we consider as in a great measure English, or as what the old French character inclined to, before it was corrupted by courts and academies of criticism.’ If they liked the Essays’ style, English readers were even more charmed by its content. Montaigne’s preference for details over abstractions appealed to them; so did his distrust of scholars, his preference for moderation and comfort, and his desire for
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