E-text prepared by David Clarke, Chandra Friend, and the Project Gutenberg

Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

Transcriber's note:

A very small number of printer's errors have been corrected by reference to other editions.

Footnotes have been moved from the bottom of the original page to just below the referring paragraph, or in a few cases, to just after the referring sentence.

Author attribution lines have been regularized so that all appear one line below the essay to which they apply.

See also the detailed transcriber's note at the end of the work.

Everyman's Library

Edited by Ernest Rhys

ESSAYS

A Century of English Essays Chosen by Ernest Rhys and Lloyd Vaughan

* * * * *

This is No. 653 of Everyman's Library. The publishers will be pleased to send freely to all applicants a list of the published and projected volumes arranged under the following sections:

TRAVEL * SCIENCE * FICTION

THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY

HISTORY * CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS * ORATORY

POETRY & DRAMA

BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
ROMANCE

In four styles of binding: cloth, flat back, coloured top; leather, round corners, gilt top; library binding in cloth, & quarter pigskin.

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

* * * * *

[Illustration: Most current … For that they come home to men's business & bosoms.—Lord Bacon]

[Illustration: A CENTURY of ENGLISH ESSAYS: an ANTHOLOGY RANGING FROM
CAXTON TO R. L. STEVENSON & THE WRITERS OF OUR OWN TIME.

LONDON TORONTO & PARIS: J.M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK E.P. DUTTON AND
CO.]

First Issue of this Edition 1913
Reprinted 1915, 1916