In reading the present volumes, the image of the orator instinctively starts up before the imagination, as he appears in the desk, flooding the lecture-room with his tones, and evoking tears or laughter from an audience whose sympathies he has mastered. Every note in his glorious voice, from its sweet, low, distinct undertone, to the high, shrill, piercing scream of its impassioned utterance, rings through the brain the moment the listener becomes a reader. The volumes have a sure, appreciating and extensive public, even if their circulation be confined to lecture audiences; but they are certain of a wider influence.
It is natural to inquire how often a book which has pleased us much has been the object of admiration to those who preceded us in our journey through life—a road on which a book is a “friend which never changes.” We could not help having this feeling, as we looked at a very recent edition of Montaigne’s Essays, (Philad’a. J. W. Moore, 1849,) and began to rummage up our recollections and invoke the aid of our Lowndes and Quérard—supposing that we might do a small service to the inquirer into such matters, by showing him how often the public taste of other countries had called for editions of our favorite classic—for such he is, in French as well as English.
We give the editions in the order of dates, beginning with the French—
Montaigne (_Mich._ de) Ses Essais, Livres, 1 & 2. _Bordeaux, Millanges._ 1580, in 8vo. The _original_ edition, which is, however, incomplete.
The same work, with the addition of a _third_ book, and many additions (600) to the two first. _Paris, Langelier_, 1588, in 4to.
An edition at _Brussels, Foppens_, 1659, 3 vols. 12mo. and one at _Paris_, the same year, in 3 vols. 12mo.
The French admit, that of the earlier editions, that of Touson, which appeared in London in 1724, with the remarks of P. Coste, in three volumes 4to., is the finest. A supplement to it was published in 1740.
Editions appeared at Paris in 1725, (3 vols. 4to.) at the Hague in 1727, (12mo.) in London in 1739, and 1745, reprints of Coste’s edition. There were editions in Paris in 1754, and in Lyons in 1781, and subsequent editions in Paris in 1783, 1793, and 1801 and 1802—since which, editions have followed, in that city, in rapid succession, and more than twenty, with the “Notes of all the Commentators,” are to be had for the asking.