The French philosopher, writer Michel de Montaigne is nowhere to be found in the Chinese high school curriculum and western philosophy is not exactly my idea of reading for pleasure. As a result, I knew absolutely nothing about the Montaigne until 6 months earlier, when a professor advised me to read John Florio's 1603 English translation of Montaigne's "essais" to understand better Shakespeare. We know not much about Shakespeare's body of knowledge, nor his study, but some lines in his late play The Tempest - verbatim of certain passages in Florio's translation of Montaigne - confirms that the bard had read his Montaigne and he relied on Florio's version. (Was Shakespeare's French even more atrocious than his Latin? That's a story for another day.)
That was how and why I started to read Montaigne. As a text of philosophical reflections, his "Essais" is (comparatively) an easy read in modern English translation, but Florio's language is a bit archaic. I only managed to complete reading six or seven entries before I listened to the BBC "In Our Time" podcast episode on Montaigne.
As is usual with the episodes on literary figures, the Montaigne episode begins with an introduction of his life. His upbringing and education was certainly very unorthodoxical and was shaped by his parents' expectations of him becoming a government officer with an erudite classical education. The podcast mentioned that he was sent to live with a lower-class family and was taught Latin as his mother tongue. (He was fluent in Latin before the age of six and French was a language that he acquired later. He was also taught Greek in very non-traditional ways like through game and he mastered Greek. ) The podcast emphasised that he used his language skills to become a successful diplomat and jury later in life (Latin was the diplomatic language between many European countries back then.) But I also wonder whether this luxury of extradionary Latin and Greek imbued him with a special perspective of classical culture and literature. Most of his contemporaries were taught and beaten in classes and was asked to recite certain ancient passages in most rigid ways. In contrast to them, Montaigne actually enjoyed these languages from the start. He recalled his earlier years with a fond tone, saying something along the line that he felt quite free and happy back then. I wonder whether this was one of the reasons that Montaigne seemed so relaxed in his writings. He's just comfortable with what he need to say and he said/wrote it in plain language.