the birds and the bees according to Montaigne.

Montaigne's essay "On Some Lines of Virgil" is hardly about Virgil. Sure, he throws in some Virgil quotes, but the essay is not about the quotes--the quotes can be ignored, and by modern readers who can't read latin (I can barely read it with three years of latin), they are guarenteed to be ignored. No, the essay itself is about sex, and Montaigne reminiscing about his days as a bachelor.

Montaigne writes in hypotaxis, but he uses complex and suspenseful sentences throughout this essay. He conceals the content of his sentences by adding and interrupting his sentences with either one clause or many, many clauses after a simple sentence: " Man, says Aristotle, must approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of reason. " (pg 7)

and: "The bounty of ladies is too profuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire; to evade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Plato take in their laws." (pg 10)

Also check out this massive sentence:

Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health, such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me withal; that fire of sprightliness and gayety darts into the mind flashes that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.

Without clauses, lists, and other interruptions, this is what the simple version of this sentence looks like: "Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the extraordinary emotions of the soul...they have not attributed a part to health."

I think this structure works with the content of Montaigne's essay rather well--it is long winded and the extra clauses of information add to humor of the piece. It does, however, make it difficult and exhausting to read, especially from a modern standpoint. Which, I think, is a shame because Montaigne is brilliant. The exhaustive structure of this piece actually seems to wind down towards the end, and even a little earlier in the essay, his sentences are varied between the short, medium, and long (though still mostly long).

He concludes with this paragraph, which is still full of syntactical interruptions, but less than usual:

I say that males and females are cast in the same mold, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction between their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex than to excuse the other; `tis according to the saying "The Pot and the Kettle." (pg 39)

The structure as a whole of this essay is rather odd, though. It takes Montaigne a good five pages to get to his actual "subject." I think it does a have a structure, just a very wide and patchy one.