6 FEBRUARY 1926, Page 21

Mr. Milford publishes the first modern translation of Mon- taigne's

essays by Mr. George B. Ives—the last was by Charles Cotton 275 years ago—in an excellently printed edition (Oxford University Press, £5 5s. Od.) with introduction by Miss Grace Norton. It would be impossible to do more than mention here these scholarly and deeply interesting volumes. Shakespeare was influenced by Montaigne ; modern writers might well be. " We are in my opinion," says Montaigne in his essay on pedants, " learned only through immediate knowledge, not through that of the past, as little as through that of the future." * * * *