Page:The American Essay in War Time, Agnes Repplier, 1918.pdf/4

252 Mr. Owen Wister, whose word it is always well to consider, holds that American essayists are as good as American novelists are bad. Just how much praise is conveyed in this somewhat gloomy comparison, I should not like to say. The notable point in Mr. Wister's criticism is his definition of Washington's Farewell Address and Lincoln's Speech at Gettysburg as belonging, "in their essence, to the family of the essay." Personally, I believe these immortal utterances to be closer in form than in essence to what has been authoritatively recognized as an essay. They are short prose compositions of faultless phrase, but also of heroic substance. They belong to the splendid category of professions of faith, political or polemical. Their wisdom is essential, not incidental. Their place is in mid-stream where the current of life bears swiftly; not in the backwater where personality finds time to intrude itself delicately upon observation.

Without accepting Dr. Johnson's interpretation of an essay as an "irregular, undigested piece," which would seem to indicate he was no reader of Bacon, there exists a not unnatural desire to sever Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" from Lamb's "Mackery End in Hertfordshire." A stout volume may be called an essay by its author. A preface or a random chapter may be classed as an essay by a compiler. Mr. Arthur Benson designates the "Anatomy of Melancholy" as a gigantic essay. If we are to accept Burton, why balk at Locke! Mr. Curtis ranks "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" with the familiar essays of Addison and Steele; and in this instance the likeness is one of essence, not form. The "Autocrat" tempers his wit to the shorn lambs of a Boston boarding-house, and the result is a brave, wise, and homely philosophy of life. Dr. Holmes, moreover, owed a great deal to his profession. Next to a statesman or a diplomat, a physician speaks authoritatively, as one acquainted with intricate human ways. But a point to be remembered is that when this admirable commentator started out to write a detached essay, he devoted