Marie de Gournay first contributed to the annotation of Montaigne by tracing the sources of his verse and other quotations, providing translations of them, and getting a friend to supply headings in the margins.
From that day to this, scholars have added to them. The major source has long been the fourth volume of the Strowski edition, the work of Pierre Villey. It is a masterpiece of patient scholarship and makes recourse to earlier editions largely unnecessary. Most notes of most subsequent editions derive from it rather than from even the fuller nineteenth-century editions subsumed into it. This translation is no exception, though I have made quite a few changes and added my own. Montaigne knew some of his authors very well indeed, but many of his exempla and philosophical sayings were widely known from compendia such as Erasmus’ Adages and Apophthegmata. His judgements on women and marriage are sometimes paralleled in a widely read legal work on the subject, the De legibus connubialibus of Rabelais’ friend Andreas Tiraquellus. Similarly some of his classical and scriptural quotations and philosophical arguments in religious contexts are to be found in such treatises as the De Anima of Melanchthon or in the theological books of clergymen of his own Church writing in his own day. I have taken care to point out some of these possible sources, since Montaigne’s ideas are better understood when placed in such contexts.
References to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca are given more fully than usual. Although Montaigne read Plato in Latin, references are given to the Greek text since most readers will not have access to Ficino’s Latin translation. References to Aristotle too are always given to the Greek: that will enable them to be more easily traced in such bilingual editions as the Loeb Classics. For Plutarch’s Moralia detailed references are given to the first edition of Amyot’s translation (Les Oeuvres morales et meslées, Paris, 1572); for Plutarch’s Lives however only general references are given under their English titles (many may like to read them in North’s Plutarch).
For historical writers of Montaigne’s own time only brief references are given. All of them derive from Pierre Villey’s studies in which the reader will find much relevant detail: Les Livres d’histoire modernes utilisés par Montaigne, Paris, 1908, and Les sources et l’évolution des Essais de Montaigne, Paris, 1908 (second edition 1933). Those books are monuments of scholarship and have not been superseded.
The classical quotations (which from the outset vary slightly from edition to edition of the Essays) are normally given as they appear in the Villey/Saulnier edition: most readers discover that the quickest way to find a passage in another edition or translation is to hunt quickly through the chapter looking for the nearest quotation. Once found in the Villey/Saulnier edition a passage can be followed up in the Leake Concordance and traced to other standard editions.
My studies of Montaigne have been greatly helped by the kindness of the Librarian of University College London, the Reverend Frederick Friend, who has authorized several volumes to be made available to me on a very long loan. I am most grateful to him and to University College London.