I just now picked up Montaigne’s Essays and read one of them at random. It was a response to something that Montaigne himself had read in a translation of Plutarch’s Lives. Montaigne was agreeing with Plutarch on a certain topic, but imagining a scenario that would’ve qualified or complicated what Plutarch had said. The topic had to do with whether it is virtue or folly for a statesman to ‘put off’ work when such work arrives, or makes itself known, while he, the statesman, is in a social setting that requires his attention, or politesse.