ithout turning still to his book or looking to his pattern. mere bookish sufficiency is unpleasant." The essayist, in Fact, must not be over literary, and yet, if he have the habit, ke Montaigne or Charles Lamb, of delighting in old authors nd in their favourite expressions and great phrases, so that that habit has become part of his life, then his essays will gain richness by an inspired pedantry. Indeed the essay as it has gone on has not lost by being a little self-conscious of its unction and its right to insist on a fine prose usage and a hoice economy of word and phrase. The most perfect balance of the art on its familiar side as here represented, and after my Lord Verulam, is to be found, suppose, in the creation of "Sir Roger de Coverley." Goldmith's "Man in Black "runs him very close in that saunterer's gallery, and Elia's people are more real to us than our own acquaintances in flesh and blood. It is worth note, perhaps, how often the essayists had either been among poets like Hazlitt, or written poetry like Goldsmith, or had the advanage of both recognizing the faculty in others and using it themselves, like Charles Lamb; and if we were to take the Hyrical temperament, as Ferdinand Brunetière did in accounting for certain French writers, and relate it to some personal asseveration of the emotion of life, we might end by claiming the essayists as dilute lyrists, engaged in pursuing a rhythm 100 subtle for verse and lifelike as common-room gossip. And just as we may say there is a lyric tongue, which the true poets of that kind have contributed to form, so there is an essayist's style or way with words—something between talking and writing. You realize it when you hear Dame Prudence, who is the Mother of the English essay, discourse on Riches; Hamlet, a born essayist, speak on acting; T. T., a forgotten essayist of 1614, with an equal turn for homily, write on "Painting the Face"; or the “Tatler” make good English out of the first thing that comes to hand. It is partly a question of art, partly of temperament; and indeed paraphrasing Steele we may say that the success of an essay depends upon the make of the body and the formation of the mind, of him who writes it. It needs a certain way of turning the pen, and a certain intellectual gesture, which cannot be acquired, and cannot really be imitated. It remains to acknowledge the friendly aid of those living essayists who are still maintaining the standards and have contributed to the book. This contemporary roll includes the Right Hon. Augustine Birrell, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, Mr. G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. E. V. Lucas, Mrs. Meynell, Mr. Edward Thomas and Mr. W. B. Yeats. In addition a formal acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Chatto and Windus for leave to include an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson; to Messrs. Longmans and Co. for an essay of Richard Jefferies; and Messrs. Methuen and Co. for two by Mr. Lucas, and one by Mr. Belloc. Mr. A. H. Bullen has very kindly given his free consent in the case of "The Last of the Gleemen," a boon to be grateful for. Without these later pages, the book would be like the hat of Tom Lizard's ceremonious old gentleman, whose story, he said, would not have been worth a farthing if the brim had been any narrower. Ast to the actual omissions, they are due either to the limits of the volume, or to the need of keeping the compass in regard to both the subjects and the writers chosen. American essayists are left for another day; as are those English writers, like Sir William Temple and Bolingbroke, Macaulay and Matthew Arnold, who have given us the essay in literary full dress. E. R. The following is a bibliography in brief of the chief works drawn upon for the selection : Caxton, Morte D'Arthur, 1485; Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 1532; Bacon, Essays, 1740; Thos. Dekker, Gull's Horn Book, 1608; Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying, 1651; Thos. Fuller, Holy and Profane States, 1642; Cowley, Prose Works, Several Discourses, 1668; The Guardian, 1729; The Examiner, 1710; The Tatler, 1709; Wm. Cobbett, Rural Rides, 1830; Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, 1762; Addison and Steele, The Spectator, 1711; The Rambler, 1750-52; The Adventurer, 1753; Lamb, Essays of Elia, 1823, 1833; Hazlitt, Comic Writers, 1819; Table Talk, 1821-22; The New Monthly Magazine, 1826-27; Coleridge, Literaria Biographia, 1817; Wordsworth, Prose Works, 1876; John. Brown, Rab and his Friends, 1858; Thackeray, Roundabout Papers,. 1863; Carlyle, Edinburgh Review, 1831; Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller, 1857; Shelley, Essays, 1840; Leigh Hunt, The Indicator, 1820; Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village, 1827-32; De Quincey, Collected. Works, 1853-60; R. L. Stevenson, Memories and Portraits, 1887; Edmund Gosse (The Realm), 1895; Austin Dobson, Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1892; Alice Meynell, Colour of Life, 1896; G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant, 1901; E. V. Lucas, Fireside and Sunshine, 1906, Character and Comedy, 1907; Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta (second series), 1887; W. B. Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 1893; Edward Thomas, The South Country, 1909; Hilaire Belloc, First and Last, 1911. 24 Of Studies I. The Good Schoolmaster Thomas Fuller, Holy and Profane States How a Gallant should behave himself in a Play-house 27 30 Jack Lizard A Meditation upon a Broomstick, According to the Style and 144 147 49. The Employments of a Housewife in the Country Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 51 50. The Stage Coach The Adventurer, No. 84 152 The Scholar's Complaint of His Own Bashfulness Johnson, 52. The Misery of a Modish Lady in Solitude The Rambler, No. 157 156 Johnson, The Rambler, No. 42 160 53. The History of an Adventurer in Lotteries 54. Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago Lamb, Essays of Elia 55. All Fools' Day 168 56. Witches, and Other Night-Fears 180 184 57. My First Play 190 63. Old China 58. Dream-Children; a Reverie 59. The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 60. A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 61. Poor Relations 62. The Child Angel 64. Popular Fallacies (1) 65. 66. (11) 67. Whitsun-Eve On Going a Journey On Living to One's-Self Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village 230 Hazlitt, The New Monthly Magazine 280 292 Wordsworth 297 John Brown, Rab and His Friends 311 Shelley, Essays 323 De Quincey, Notes of an Opium Eater 78. On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth 79. The Daughter of Lebanon 81. The Old Gentleman 82. The Old Lady 83. The Maid-Servant 327 De Quincey, Collected Essays 340 29 345 Leigh Hunt, Essays, Indicator, 1820 351 PAGE 91. The Whole Duty of Woman Edmund Gosse The Realm, 1895 436 92. Steele's Letters. Austin Dobson, Eighteenth Century Vignettes 793. A Defence of Nonsense 94. The Colour of Life 96. Fires. G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant 446 Alice Meynell, The Colour of Life 450 E. V. Lucas, Character and Comedy 453 W. B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight 462 156 66 |