“There are some men so stupid that they go a mile out of their way to chase after a fine word, or who do not fit words to things, but seek irrelevant things which their words may fit [Quintilian]. And as another says, There are some who are led by the charm of some attractive word to write something they had not intended [Seneca]. I much more readily twist a good saying to sew it on me than I twist the thread of my thought to go and fetch it. … The speech I love is a simple, natural speech, the same on paper as in the mouth; a speech succulent and sinewy, brief and compressed, not so much dainty and well-combed as vehement and brusque: The speech that strikes the mind will have most taste; [Epitaph of Lucan] rather difficult than boring, remote from affectation, irregular, disconnected and bold; each bit making a body in itself; not pedantic, not monkish, not lawyer-like, bur rather soldierly.”

I.26 “Of the education of children” (p.154)

[Against the lyric essay? Some Montaigne passages are quite artful, so maybe this is not quite how he always wrote.]