BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

I. GENERAL WORKS ON THE ENGLISH FAMILIAR ESSAY The only book treating the whole development of the English essay in anything like a detailed way is Hugh Walker's recently published English Essay and Essayists (The Channels of English Literature, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1915). Though rather a series of portraits of individual essayists than a real history of the genre, Professor Walker's volume contains much suggestive commentary, as well as many of the essential facts. Shorter general accounts, valuable more for suggestions than for detailed information, are Edmund Gosse's in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and J. H. Lobban's in English Essays (The Warwick Library, London, 1902). Useful articles on the principal English essayists, accompanied by bibliographies, will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography.

II. MONTAIGNE AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE

ESSAY IN ENGLAND

1. Texts. The texts necessary for the study of the essay in this period are, with a few exceptions, easily accessible. French editions of Montaigne's Essais abound; perhaps the best, pending the completion of the magnificent Édition Municipale of M. Fortunat Strowski, are those of Dézeimeris and Barkhausen (for the Essais of 1580) and of Motheau and Jouaust (for the Essais of 1588 and 1595). Of the English translations, Florio's is obtainable in the Tudor Translations (3 vols., 1893) with an introduction by George Saintsbury, in the Temple Classics (6 vols., 1897), and in Everyman's Library (3 vols.); Cotton's (as revised by William and W. C. Hazlitt) in Bohn's Popular Library (3 vols., 1913). The student interested in Montaigne's sources and models will find in certain chapters of Sir Thomas Elyot's Governour (in Everyman's Library) very good examples of sixteenth-century leçons morales. Accessible also in Everyman's Library are selections from Plutarch's Moralia, in the early seventeenthcentury rendering of Philemon Holland.. -The standard edition of

notes.

Bacon's Essays is that of James Spedding in Vol. VI of The Works of Francis Bacon, collected and edited by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (new edition, London, 1890). The basis of this edition, as of nearly all modern reprints, is the third, or 1625, text of the Essays; the editor, however, gives in an Appendix the two earlier texts of 1597 and 1612, thus furnishing all the necessary material for a critical study of Bacon's development as an essayist. The same material, in a somewhat more scholarly and usable form, is also accessible in Edward Arber's Harmony of the Essays, etc. of Francis Bacon (English Reprints, Constable, Westminster, 1895). Of the innumerable other editions of Bacon, that of Mary Augusta Scott (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908) deserves particular mention for its full and helpful explanatory ·Cowley's Essays are reprinted from the folio of 1668 by A. R. Waller in the Cambridge English Classics (Cambridge, 1906). A good inexpensive edition is that of Alfred B. Gough (The Essays and other Prose Writings, Oxford Press, 1915). There are no complete modern editions of Temple. "An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning” and "Of Poetry" are accessible in J. E. Spingarn's Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century (Vol. III, Oxford, 1909); for the others, the reader must go to some one of the various collected editions of Temple's Works published between his death and the early nineteenth century. Of the less prominent or influential essayists of this period, Cornwallis, Robert Johnson, Clarendon, Collier, and Buckingham are obtainable only in early editions; Felltham's Resolves can be read in a reprint by Oliphant Smeaton (Temple Classics), and Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, in numerous modern editions, the most valuable perhaps being that by W. A. Greenhill (The Macmillan Company, 1881), and the least expensive perhaps that in the Temple Classics (1896). A good selection of English "characters" is given by Henry Morley in Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (The Carisbrooke Library, London, 1891). Of La Bruyère, the best French edition is that in the Grands Écrivains series (ed. G. Servois, Paris, 1865); the best English translation, that of Van Laun (London, 1885).

2. Studies. There exists no adequate single account of the early history of the English essay. Certain pages in the Cambridge History of English Literature (particularly Vol. IV, chap. xvi, and Vol. VIII, chap. xvi) furnish a few facts, but for more detailed information one must have recourse to special monographs and articles. Only the most notable of these can be mentioned here. For all that relates to Montaigne and the origins of the essay the authoritative work is M. Pierre Villey's Les Sources et l'évolution des Essais de Montaigne (2 vols., Hachette, Paris, 1908). The main results of this study, together with much illustrative material, are presented in

briefer compass in the same writer's Montaigne: textes choisis et commentés (Plon-Nourrit, Paris, n.d.). Other studies by Villey concern Montaigne's influence in England. See especially "Montaigne en Angleterre,” in Revue des deux mondes (1913), pp. 115–150, and "Montaigne a-t-il eu quelque influence sur François Bacon,” in Revue de la Renaissance, t. XII (1911), 121–158, 185–203; t. XIII (1912), 21–46, 61–82-— the latter containing by far the best exposition of Bacon's development as an essayist that has yet appeared. The chapter on Montaigne in A. H. Upham's The French Influence in English Literature from the Accession of Elizabeth to the Restoration (New York, 1908), while for the most part superseded by Villey's later work, nevertheless deserves to be consulted for its treatment of Montaigne's influence on Cornwallis, Browne, and other minor writers. Other sources of information or ideas on the essay in the seventeenth century are Joseph Texte's "La descendance de Montaigne: Sir Thomas Browne" in Études de littérature européenne (Paris, 1898), Charles Lamb's "The Genteel Style in Writing" (on Sir William Temple), in Last Essays of Elia, and Professor E. C. Baldwin's studies of the development of character-writing (see Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vols. XVIII and XIX).

III. THE PERIODICAL ESSAY OF THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY

1. Texts. The British Essayists of A. Chalmers (1803, and various later editions) contains reprints of the following eighteenth-century periodicals: Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, Rambler, Adventurer, World, Connoisseur, Idler, Mirror, Lounger, Observer, and Looker-on — in a word, of nearly all the more important or influential collections. Many essays not appearing in these papers may be found in Nathan Drake's The Gleaner: a series of Periodical Essays; selected and arranged from scarce or neglected volumes (4 vols., London, 1811). Of the periodicals which preceded the Tatler, such as the Athenian Mercury and Defoe's Review, there are unfortunately no modern reprints. The best texts of the more important essay-papers are to be found, not in the general collections mentioned above, but in separate editions. The standard edition of the Tatler-an edition by no means critical, however is that of G. A. Aitken (4 vols., London, 1898-1899). The Spectator has been admirably edited, with respect to both text and commentary, by G. Gregory Smith (8 vols., London, 1897-1898; practically the same work is reprinted in four volumes in Everyman's Library). Fielding's essays are accessible

in his Works (ed. Leslie Stephen, Vol. VI, London, 1882), and a critical edition of his Covent-Garden Journal has recently been announced by the Yale University Press. Goldsmith's Citizen of the World may be read in an excellent but inexpensive reprint by Austin Dobson (2 vols., the Temple Classics, 1900). The same series contains also his Bee and other Essays. Of the numerous volumes of selections of eighteenth-century essays two only need be mentioned, for the excellence of their editing: Austin Dobson's Steele: Selections from the Tatler, Spectator and Guardian (Oxford, 1885; 2d edition, 1896), and Wendell and Greenough's Selections from the Writings of Joseph Addison (Ginn and Company, Boston, 1905).

2. Studies. Historical study of the eighteenth-century periodical essay may be said to have begun with Nathan Drake, whose Essays . . . illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, and Essays ... illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler were published in 1805 and 1809-1810 respectively. Despite their early date, these works are still valuable sources of information, particularly of a bibliographical sort, on the eighteenth-century periodicals. They need, however, to be supplemented by more recent studies, such as A. Beljame's section on the early periodicals in his Le Public et les Hommes de lettres en Angleterre au dix-huitième siècle (Paris, 1881), Leslie Stephen's article on Addison in the Dictionary of National Biography (1885), G. A. Aitken's account of the Tatler and Spectator in his Life of Richard Steele (1889; see especially Vol. I, pp. 239–258 and 309-321), Lawrence Lewis's The Advertisements of the Spectator (1909; valuable for the understanding it gives of some of the material conditions amid which the eighteenth-century essay took form), and Harold V. Routh's very suggestive study of Addison and Steele in the Cambridge History of English Literature (Vol. IX, chap. ii, 1913). Readers in search of appreciative comment on the eighteenthcentury essayists will naturally turn to the lives of Addison by Dr. Johnson and Macaulay, to Thackeray's English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, and to Hazlitt's finely discriminating lecture "On the Periodical Essayists" in his English Comic Writers.