Robert Molesworth's copy.- Montaigne (Michel de) The Essayes Or Morall, Politike and Millitarie Discourses, 3 parts in 1, first edition in English, translated by John Florio, with commendatory verses by Samuel Daniel and errata f. (¶1&2), errata slip to B1r correcting 'towns' to 'vyle', 2Q4 blank, 17th century ink marginalia and underlining, lacking final 2 errata ff., ¶1 misbound after A6, 3H6 to end (11ff.) with some small worming within text and ?supplied from another copy, repairs, mostly marginal, but title with some loss of text verso at head and affecting side-note on A2&3, par1 small chip at head with loss of part of 1 letter, trimmed closely at head, affecting the occasional headline, water-stained, more severely (including some damp-staining) to sigs 3H-3K, with loss of a few letters on most of these ff. repaired, occasional spotting, lightly browned throughout, contemporary panelled calf, sympathetically rebacked and restored, [Pforzheimer 378; STC 18041; cf. PMM 95 (first edition in French)], small folio (265 x 170mm.), By Val. Sims for Edward Blount dwelling in Paules churchyard, 1603.

*** An important association copy of the first edition in English of Les Essais, which is considered one of the classics of Elizabethan translation. Robert Molesworth, 1st Viscount Molesworth (1656-1725), Anglo-Irish politician, Ambassador to Denmark and writer, who is considered to have been a pioneer in the field of political science with his An Account of Denmark, as it was in the Year 1692 (1694). Martyn P. Thompson in his 'A Note on "Reason" and "History" in Late Seventeenth Century Political Thought' postulates that when Molesworth writes in his preface that 'Want of Liberty is a Disease in any Society or Body Politick, like want of Health in a particular Person; and as the best way to understand the nature of any Distemper aright, is to consider it in several Patients, since the same Disease may proceed from different causes, so the disorders in Society are best perceived by observing the Nature and Effects of them in our several Neighbours' he offers 'a prescription for a sort of comparative politics which has an interestingly modern sound' (Political Theory Vol. 4, No. 4. (1976), p.495). ('Robt. Molesworth, 1684', inscription to title and ?his marginalia).