3. Prose. In prose we have to chronicle a distinct advance. For the first time we have periodical literature occupying a prominent place in the writing of the time. At this point, therefore, it is convenient to summarize the rise of periodical literature.
(a) The Rise of the Periodical Press. The first periodical published in Europe was the Gazetta (1536), in Venice. This was a manuscript newspaper which was read publicly in order to give the Venetians information regarding their war with the Turks. In England news-sheets were published during the reign of Elizabeth, but they were irregular in their appearance, being issued only when some notable event, such as a great flood or fire, made their sale secure. The first regular English paper was The Weekly Newes (1622), issued by Nathaniel Butter. The sheet contained some items of news from abroad, and was devoid of editorial comment or literary matter.
During the Civil War of the middle of the seventeenth century both Royalists and Roundheads issued their newspapers, which appeared spasmodically and seldom survived for any length of time. A Royalist journal was the Mercurius Anglicus, which was succeeded by several others of somewhat similar names. The Roundhead publications were the Mercurius Pragmaticus, the Mercurius Politicus, and others. After the Restoration newspaper-writing became so popular and so troublesome that the Government in 1662 suspended all private sheets and issued in their place the one official organ, The Public Intelligencer. This became The Oxford Gazette (1665), and finally The London Gazette (1666). The office of Gazetteer became an official appointment, and Steele held it for a time.
In 1682 the freedom of the Press was restored, and large numbers of Mercuries and other periodicals appeared and flourished in their different fashions. Advertisements began to be a feature of the papers. In The Jockey’s Intelligencer (1683) the charge is “a shilling for a horse or coach, for notification, and sixpence for renewing.” In 1702 The Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper, was published, and it survived until 1735. Then in the early years of the eighteenth century the fierce contests between the Whigs and the Tories brought a rapid expansion of the Press. The most famous of the issues were Defoe’s Review (1704), a Whig organ whose writings brought its editor into disrepute; and its opponent The Examiner, the Tory paper to which men like Swift and Prior contributed regularly. These newspapers are almost entirely political, but they contain satirical work of much merit.
Then in 1709 Steele published The Tatler. At first it was Steele’s intention to make it entirely a news-paper; but under the pressure of his own genius and of that of Addison its literary features were accentuated till the daily essay became the feature of leading interest. The Spectator, begun in March, 1711, carried the tendency still farther. The literary journal has come to stay. Steele’s Plebeian (1718) is an early example of the political periodical.
(b) The Rise of the Essay. Johnson defines an essay as “a loose sally of the mind, an irregular indigested piece, not a regular or orderly performance.” This definition is not quite complete, for it does not cover such an elaborate work as Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding. But for the miscellaneous prose essay, which it is our immediate business to consider here, the definition will do. An essay, therefore, must in other words be short, unmethodical, personal, and written in a style that is literary, easy, and elegant.
The English essay has its roots in the Elizabethan period, in the miscellaneous work of Lodge, Lyly, and Greene, and other literary free-lances (see p. [142]). Sir Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie, published about 1580, is a pamphlet that attains a rudimentary essay-form. But the first real essayist in English is Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who published a short series of essays in 1597, enlarged in two later editions (1612 and 1625). His work follows that of the French writer Montaigne, whose essays appeared about 1580. In Bacon we have the miscellany of theme and the brevity, but we lack the intimacy of treatment and of style. Bacon’s essays are rather the disconnected musings of the philosopher than the personal opinions of the literary executant.
The defects of Bacon were remedied by Abraham Cowley (1618–67), who writes on such subjects as Myself, The Garden, and other familiar themes. His style is somewhat heavy, but he has a pleasant discursive manner, different from the dry and distant attitude of Bacon. He provides the link between Addison and Bacon. Another advance is marked by a group of character-writers who flourished in the first half of the seventeenth century. They gave short character-sketches, often very acute and humorous, of various types of people. The best known of such writers are Joseph Hall (1574–1656), John Earle (1601–65), and Sir Thomas Overbury (1581–1613). Overbury wrote short accounts of such types as the Tinker, the Milkmaid, and the Franklin. His sketches are short, are pithily expressed, and reveal considerable knowledge and insight.
During the Restoration period we have Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1666), Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), and Temple’s Essay on Poetry (1685). The two first works are too long to be called essays proper, and fall rather under the name of treatises. Temple’s essay, one of many that he published, is rather long and formal, but it is nearer the type we are here considering.
With the development of the periodical press the short essay takes a great stride forward. It becomes varied, and acquires character, suppleness, and strength. The work of Addison and Steele has already been noticed at some length. In The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711) they laid down the lines along which the essay was to be developed by their great successors. Other essayists of the time were Swift and Pope, who contributed to the periodicals, and Defoe, whose miscellaneous work is of wide range and of considerable importance.