Of Vanity is the ninth chapter of Book III of the Essays. Book III is itself a new addition. Montaigne invites his attempt to run on a little further, calling this its third continuation. Then he states a rule for himself.

He adds. He does not correct.

He explains why. Once a man has pledged his work to the public, Montaigne thinks he no longer has the right to dispose of it at will. If he can say something better, let him say it somewhere else. He should not spoil the thing he has already sold.

The declaration fits the new book the reader is holding. He says he adds, and here is the addition. Adding is expressly allowed.

In the same paragraph

The rule was printed in 1588. In the Bordeaux Copy, the same paragraph also carries his later pen marks.

The sentence about the work already sold originally included us: the work he has sold us. Montaigne crossed out nous.

The change is small and exact. The thing sold remains in the sentence; we, its purchasers, have stepped out. There is no need to turn through many chapters before a different kind of action appears. The pen is already at work inside this paragraph.

Different uses of the pen

Writing in this copy did not only mean filling blank spaces. The previous essay looked at a marginal sentence that was added and then cancelled. The next will turn to another passage in Of Vanity where Montaigne rewrote a sentence already in print.

But these interventions should not all be treated alike. A changed punctuation mark, a withdrawn judgment, and a new passage of explanation are different actions. The question is not how much ink has reached the paper. It is what the pen has done.

What counts as correcting?

It is worth slowing down here.

Montaigne's reason for leaving the old work alone concerns something already handed over to others. If he can do better, he should do it elsewhere. This is more than a remark about faulty wording. It concerns what an author may still do with work that has left his hands.

Counting punctuation changes as breaches of contract may therefore miss the point, however accurately one counts them. Nor can a newly added paragraph automatically be evidence against his rule. He has said that additions are permitted.

The tension lies in deleting or replacing words already in print. Even then, a question remains: does what he means by correcting have precisely the same boundaries as the category into which we now place these actions? The page does not spare us that question.

Three things to keep apart

First, there is the historical statement. Montaigne wrote that he added but did not correct, and he published it. Nothing he later did can make that event unhappen.

Second, there is his later relationship to the statement. A sentence not crossed out is a sentence still in the book. That alone does not tell us that he continued to endorse it, every day, with the same meaning and force.

Third, there are his actions. Additions, deletions, and replacements have left distinguishable marks. Where we can identify an action, we should describe it. We should not quietly add an account of what he thought that action amounted to.

Compress these three matters into one, and a ready-made self-contradictory author appears. A more careful account is less conclusive. The rule is there. So are the alterations. Seeing both does not, by itself, reconcile them or close the case.

The plan on the wall

Something like this is familiar at home.

A daily schedule or a training plan goes up on the wall. The instructions are perfectly clear. Six months later, no one follows them, but the sheet is still there.

Sometimes taking it down would feel like admitting defeat, while following it is beyond reach. So it stays, and its owner walks past it several times a day. Sometimes it has simply been forgotten. A visitor who sees only the paper cannot tell those situations apart.

This is not an explanation of Montaigne. It is a reminder that the same thing can remain in place in more than one way.

The account stays open

He did set down a rule. He also left alterations in ink. Both lie in the same copy, neither hiding the other.

That is enough to make us pause. It is not enough to let us settle the account on his behalf.