Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/247

* ESSAY. 215 ESSAY. the essay, the initiator of a literary form. In distinction from tragedy, the epic, and other earlier forms, spontaneity and freedom from arti- ficial limitations marked the essay, and have continued to mark it. In Montaigne's first two books of 1580 the diversity of subject is equaled alone by the wideness of range allowed on each page. Montaigne said that his aim was to portray himself, yet in doing this be well knew how at the same time to limn the tea lures of his age and to mirror the aspect of :ill humanity. He combined the evidence of his own tastes not alone with the illustration of the customs of his contemporaries, but also with wise comment on subjects of continual interest. His was the conversational method. "I speak unto paper as unto the first man I meet," he somewhere tells us, and this is the keynote to the writings of all who are truly Montaigne's de- scendants. Steele, Addison, Lamb, living, and Stevenson, all show that easy flow of language, the grace, the wisdom, and the wit, and that wide culture leading easily to a pleasant abundance of literary quotations that are the most apparent qualities in the kind of essay which Montaigne originated. The personal note is never quite absent, often rising, as in the Essays of Elia, to an egotism full of charm. The essay of this kind may be thought of as the overflow of a cul- tured nature in hours of leisure; and herein lies the secret of its absence in our life, of hurry and tension. The other preeminent name in the history of the essay is t hat of Bacon. Characteristically Eng- lish, as Montaigne was characteristically French, Bacon put. if not more suggestion and charm, more solidarity into his essays. Whether he write* el religion, of friendship, or of studies, he adheres more closely to his theme, and focuses the light of his learning more directly. In this regard Bacon rather than Montaigne is the literary progenitor of the essayist as we know him to-daj — the writer who invades every field of action, of feeling, and of thought as first and foremost an expositor. Whether it he the histori- cal essay of Froude, the political essay of Montes- quieu, the critical essay of Macaulay, Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold, the scientific essay of Huxley, the relation of all that is written to a single defi- nite subject or character is the distinguishing trait; and with this expository and primarily in- structive nature, the tendency has been away from a subjective, personal, and leisurely, to an objec- tive, unemotional, and concentrated method. Bacon himself, through the magnitude of his genius and his knowledge, was able to combine the utmost usefulness in content, characteristic of the modern essay, with the charm of style which is the more natural concomitant of the cnrlier fashion. After him Cowley, Temple, and Shaftesbury passed on the pleasant light to Steele and Addison, whose Taller and Spectator were the first of a series of journals that dis- tinctly left their impress on English society. The daily morsels of literary comment and wisdom that were served with the morning chocolate modified the manners of the very people whose foible* were so pleasantly satirized: and al- though it is true that the Spectator and its suc- cessors, by reason of their sanity and grace, ap- pealed immediately only to a definite group, a fraction of the social unit, these journals must be looked upon as a conservative force in morality as well as in literature. This praise applies to the essa ill almost all its manifestations; for reflection, the sim '/mi huh of essay-writing, is essentially conservative. A* the name indicates, the essay is a weighing — an assay thai tests and reveals the precious metal in human thought and action. The greater the charm with which this is done, the more useful becomes the exposition, and a Curtis, a Lowell, a Lamb will succeed, where a prosy writer will merely bore. John- son, for all his wisdom, was ton ponderous to make his Rambler as enjoyable as the Specta- tor, and so it holds a less cherished place in the annals of English letters. The 'written talk' es- say tradition was continued by the Guardian, and other journals, until it rose into fresh pre- eminence with the Essays of Klin, a volume writ- ten by Lamb for his London friends of his own day — for unknown friends in many hinds and of many ages. Since then there have been few to succeed in this genial field, and Irving's Sketch- Booh, the papers of Curtis. Stevenson's Yirgini- bus Puerisque stand out in sweet and pathetic solitude. Austin Dobson is perhaps the sole worthy devotee at a shrine neglected by the hur- rying crowds of to-day. Besides the authors already mentioned. Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, Browne, who wrote Reli Medici, Befoe, Goldsmith, De Quincey, Hazlitt, Wilson ('Christopher North'), Hunt, Swift, Shelley, Southey, Loekhart, and Jeffrey, may he mentioned as the important essayists who preceded Macaulay. Milton, Hume, Berkeley, and Coleridge are of course significant names, hut their essays are illustrative of little that could not be suggested by contemporary writings. With Macaulay and the trenchant articles in the Quarterly Review, the essay entered upon a more widely important career. It became the elaborate and interesting popularizer of knowl- edge. It lost its brief form and its leisurely rambling ways, and assumed an avowedly critical and instructive attitude. Fortunately. Macau- lay's manner of imparting his knowledge was as attractive and interesting as the know ledge which he had to impart. His reviews, as those of his fellow-writers, were e-*:iys and not reviews. A new edition of Milton, a new* work on Machiavelli provided the opportunity for a popular but in- clusive exposition of the England of the Protecto- rate and the Italy of the Renaissance. The age of the magazine. Eraser's, Blackwood's, the Edin- burgh Revii ir, and others ushered in the age of the essay as we now know it. Carlyle's name should be added to the English list with special pleasure and with special regret, for Carlyle marks the furthest departure from the old sim- plicity, eoiute*y. and grace; yet he shows a strong individuality, which separates him radi- cally from the colorless expositors who now crowd the field of the essay. Worthy of mention, finally, are Birrel. Gosse. Lang, Pater. Whilbey, Chesterton, and Saintsbury. In American essay-literature Emerson is the greatest name. It is in the epigrammatic force of his essays that he is most nearly akin to his famous predecessors. We remember his sayings as we remember those of the Englishman and the Frenchman. Not, however, in his epigrams or in his anecdotes is Emerson of must importance in the history of the essay, hut rather as instancing