The seventeenth-century waterman-poet John Taylor had read More's Utopia, Plato's Republic, Montaigne, and Cervantes in translation, but he never mastered a foreign language and he relentlessly satirised latinate prose:
I ne'er used Accidence so much as now,
Nor all these Latin words here interlaced
I do not know if they with sense are placed,
I in the book did find them".'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Taylor Print: Book
'I am alone in the house, and so I allowed myself, at dinner, the first light reading I have indulged in since my return in the shape of some Montaigne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'As Montaigne says, talking of something quite different:"Pour se laisser tomber a plomb, et de si haut, il faut que se soit entre les bras d'une affection solide, vigoureuse et fortunee."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, c. 1-10 October 1795, 'I have got an old translation of Montaignes essays & hugely delighted am I with this honest egotism! buy Cottles poems for the mans sake — I love him so well that I would have you love whatever comes from him — read nothing but the monody — omne ignotum pro magnifico — & you will think him a first rate poet. it is a most masterly composition.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
