Feb 28: Under the weather

I have read my Montaigne today, but I am not feeling up to writing about him, except to note that the translation is from the 1500s. To quote the Introductory Note, it's "in a style so full of the flavor of the age that we still read Montaigne in the version which Shakespeare knew." Not really, but we do read him in this version when we don't want to pay someone to translate it into our English.

Having had to read this style and spelling a lot in my college days, I can take it, but it's still tough to read:

...as even now I did in Plutarke, reading his discourse of the power of imagination, wherein in regard of those wise men, I acknowledge my selfe so weake and so poore, so dull and grose-headed, as I am forced both to pittie and disdaine my selfe, yet am I pleased with this, that my opinions have often the grace to jump with theirs, and that I follow them a loofe-off

I kind of feel like a loofe-off myself. (I do like "hony" for "honey," though; I find it charming, somehow.)

The essay is "On the Education of Children," and more than that I will not say. Montaigne's super discursive style -- the first two pages are about quoting the classics without attribution -- does not lend itself to the achy.