‘Je peins principalement mes cogitations’, wrote Montaigne, ‘subject informe’: ‘A toute peine le puis je coucher en ce corps aerée de la voix’ [What I chiefly portray is my cogitations, a shapeless subject […] I have to struggle to couch it in this airy body of the voice] (II.6.379/274). The metaphor of the literary self-portrait has long served as a guide for understanding the relationship between the ‘forme’ of the Essais and their formless subject, though the limitations of the analogy are now similarly well established. In place of the painter and his painting, more recent studies have drawn connections to early modern ‘registres’, account books or ledgers, to read the Essais as a record of Montaigne, preserving his thoughts and character, ready to be consulted by friends, acquaintances, unknown readers and Montaigne himself.