Essais dans le goût de ceux de Montagne, composés, en 1736, par l'Auteur des Considérations sur le Gouvernement de France.

First edition limited to only 250 copies, which were not offered for sale but given to the author's close circle. This former minister under Louis XV composed these essays in 1736, and his son, the Marquis de Paulmy, had them published nearly fifty years later.

Contemporary half brown calf, grained paper boards, spine with five raised bands decorated with five compartments featuring double gilt fillets, red morocco lettering piece, red speckled edges.

Lower headcap missing, some surface rubbing to boards, corners worn, small wormhole at foot of spine, book interior in fine condition.

Light foxing, author's name annotated in brown ink on title page.

The name of the author's intellectual master, Michel de Montaigne, is spelled here, as in the first edition of the Essais, without the 'i'—originally silent before 'gn'; but after all, isn't 'Montagne' one of the highest peaks of French literature?

"I love Montaigne, and I read him with pleasure—not because I always share his views, but because he gives me cause to reflect and to adopt an opinion either similar to or contrary to his own. Madame de Sévigné used to say that when she read the Essays, she imagined herself strolling with him through his garden, conversing together. I feel the same way, and I find that Montaigne often seems to throw out certain propositions in order to spark a little debate that enlivens the conversation and makes it more spirited and engaging: this is surely an excellent method for holding one's reader's attention. I wish to try to follow it, to write a book just as rambling, just as filled with hazarded propositions, problematic ideas, even paradoxes, as this author's. I want to write about whatever comes under my pen or enters my thoughts; to leap from branch to branch, to exhaust no subject, and to return at different times to the same topics. I want my book to be readable in fits and starts [...]"

(our own translation), pp. 1 and 2 of "Essais dans le goût de ceux de Montagne"

Precious first edition of a work which, according to Pierre Glaudes and Jean-François Louette, belongs "to the legacy of Montaigne" and represents "one symptom, among others, of the gradual establishment, in the collective consciousness, of the familiar essay as a French genre, in reference to the Bordeaux writer." (our own translation)