Note 75 — Chapter VII · "CONTRE-UN."[74]
Daniel De Leon translation
La Boétie is to-day known mainly through the friendship that united him to Montaigne, and which inspired the latter to write one of his most charming passages.
La Boétie was born in Sarlat, November 1, 1530; he died in Germignat, near Bordeaux, August 18, 1563. He left several works, all of which are to-day almost unknown. Unquestionably the most curious of his productions is the one mentioned by Montaigne in these terms:
"My power of handling not being such that I dare to offer as a fine piece richly painted and set off according to art, I have therefore thought best to borrow one of Estienne of La Boetie, and such a one as will honor and adorn all the rest of my work: namely, a discourse that he called Voluntary Servitude, which others have since further baptized the Contre-Un, a piece written in his younger years, by way of essay, in honor of liberty against tyranny, and which has since been in the hands of several men of great learning and judgment, not without singular and merited commendation, for it is finely written and as full as anything can possibly be."—Montaigne, Essays, Book I, chap. 27.