Montaigne, and philosophers like him, sometimes place too much emphasis on self-knowledge. I lack the quotation because I've been reading the Apology for Raymond Sebond without, as I usually do, underlining favorite bits. (If I were to do that, the nearly the whole chapter would get marked up.) There's a specific passage in which he questions the value of knowing anything when, as is the case with most of us, we barely know ourselves. I'd contend that there's a pleasure in reveling in certain kinds of arcana, even if the risk is deviating into pedantry and self-obliviousness. Best of all, for sheer entertainment value, is knowledge about the natural world. Here's a soliloquy from Redmond O'Hanlon's Trawler that furnishes an example:

"...that fish, a Roughhead grenadier, Macrourus berglax, is a Rattail, a member of the closely related family the Macrouridae--and they're deep-water fishes that live on the continental slopes and across the abyssal plains of all the oceans of the earth. Their armoured head, those heads of theirs, they're pitted with sense organs, and their eyes I tell you, in 1908 a German biologist, August Breauer--he worked out that the retina of a Rat-tail had around 20 million long slender rods in an area of one-sixteenth of a square-inch. And that, Redmond is around 225 times more than we have in our own eyes. Now, as you may know, the rods are for night-vision, so in dim light a Rat-tail may be able to see over 200 times as well as we can! And that's not all, because on the underside of most Rat-tails , but not ours, not this particular one, the Roughhead grenadier, there's an open gland in which they play host to luminous bacteria. Most of the time they leave their bacteria alone, waiting round the gland and they squeeze their bacteria, they annoy them--and the bacteria light up! And they've other special muscles too, like haddock--they've got really big swimbladders, the Rat-tails, and in the males, only in the males, they have these bizarre muscles set round the swimbladder. So it's obvious, isn't it? Their function must be entirely sexual. So imagine that! The males drum in the abyss--in the black night, the perpetual darkness, they drum up their females! And Redmond, it must be noisy down there, and full of the weirdest flashing lights, red and purples and blues, whatever--because I.G. Priede, Monty Priede, a hero of mine, at my own university, Aberdeen: he's estimated that for just two species of Rat-tails in the abyssal depths, Coryphaenoides armatus and yaquinae, at a population density of about 200 fish per square kilometer, you have a global biomass of around 150X10^6 tonnes. And that, Redmond, is just about the total world commercial fish catch!"

Montaigne riffing on the vanity of human knowledge is one of the more satisfying themes of his essays. He quotes philosophers, scientists and poets, juxtaposes their beliefs and arguments, and, as often as not, confesses his incapacity for voting a party line, or holding to any line whatsoever. "The writings of the ancients, I mean the good writings, full and solid, tempt me and move me almost wherever they please; the one I am listening to always seems to me the strongest; I find each one right in his turn, although they contradict each other." (Apology for Raymond Sebon).

There's a pronounced conservative streak in Montaigne's skepticism: "Thus when some new doctrine is offered to us, we have great occasion to distrust it, and to consider that before it was produced its opposite was in vogue; and, as it was overthrown by this one, there may arise in the future a third invention that will likewise smash the second." 

Perhaps this is what allows him, despite a memory buzzing with Lucretius and other top-drawer pagan writers, to remain a faithful Catholic in a time of religious upheaval.

I've had a copy of Phineas Finn gathering dust on my dresser-drawer for a couple years, but I hadn't read a single line of Anthony Trollope's until last week. A few words of admiration moved me to start, beginning with this pugilistic essay by David Mamet, titled Charles Dickens Makes Me Want to Throw Up:

"I’ve read Anthony Trollope’s entire work several times, not because I am schooled, educated or right-thinking—I don’t believe I am more afflicted in these than most—but because I like to read. Trollope’s 47 novels, nonfiction and incidental work are a delight. His prose is clear, perfectly rhythmic, concise and, at turns, trenchant and profoundly funny."

Mamet's right, whatever one thinks of Dickens. On page 83 of Phineas Finn is a passage that squares with each descriptor of Mamet's phrase; a lucid take on American politics, that doesn't ring false in December 2017:

"[In the United States]...political enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The leader of parties there really mean what they way when they abuse each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were about to tear each other limb from limb."

Mamet reports that Trollope, a true monster of prolificity, awoke at 5:30 each morning to churn out 2,500 words. He wrote his novels while working a regular shift at the post office and raising two children.

I finished Volume II of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire this morning, which ends on a characteristically ominous note. The Emperor Theodosius is holding a feast for his dangerous and divided subjects, the Goths—recent immigrants and refugees, pushed toward the empire by the invasion of the Huns and finally admitted by the Emperor Valens—who split their allegiance between Fravitta “a valiant and honorable youth,” and “the fierce and faithless Priulf.” Here’s what happens: 

“…When the chiefs of both parties were invited to the Imperial table, they were insensibly heated by wine, till they forgot the usual restraints of discretion and respect; and betrayed, in the presence of Theodosius, the fatal secret of their domestic disputes. The emperor, who had been the reluctant witness of this extraordinary controversy, dissembled his fears and resentment, and soon dismissed the tumultuous assembly. Fravitta, alarmed and exasperated by the insolence of his rival, whose departure from the palace might have been the signal of a civil war, boldly followed him; and, drawing his sword, laid Priulf dead at his feed. Their companions flew to arms; and the faithful champion of Rome would have been oppressed by superior numbers, if he had not been protected by the seasonable interposition of the Imperial guards. Such were the scenes of Barbaric rage, which disgraced the palace and table of the Roman emperor; and, as the impatient Goths could only be restrained by the firm and temperate character of Theodosius, the public safety seemed to depend on the life and abilities of a single man.”

You can guess how that will turn out.