III. THE ESSAY
| Date | Scientific and Didactic | Literary Criticism | Miscellaneous |
| 1500 | |||
| Apologie for Poetrie | |||
| 1600 | Bacon | ||
| Milton | Cowley | ||
| Dryden | Howell | ||
| 1700 | Locke | Temple | |
| Addison | Addison | ||
| Steele | Steele | ||
| Bolingbroke | Swift | ||
| Hume | Johnson | Johnson | |
| Goldsmith | Goldsmith | ||
| 1800 | |||
| Cobbett | Jeffrey | Hazlitt | |
| Coleridge | Lamb | ||
| Hazlitt | Thackeray | ||
| Carlyle | Froude | ||
| Macaulay | Stevenson | ||
| 1900 | Symonds |