Michael de montaigne biography of donald

Here's a book that satisfies, in these curiously twilit hours, our need for a book in harmony with a summer's evening. The life and books of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, a 16th-century Frenchman whose ancestral chateau is visited every summer by many who love his ''Essays,'' were so intertwined that his biography is really a study of his writings.

Donald Frame, who has translated the complete ''Essays'' and Montaigne's ''Travel Journal'' (also from North Point), knows his subject so well that this biography presents, for the English reader's purposes, the Montaigne one can take to heart.

One of the two most important events in Montaigne's early life was the first time his tutor, a German doctor chosen by his father, spoke with him in Latin (a game which the household, including mother and father, joined in until he was 6 ).