Through the medium of spoken or written meditations men have always expressed their personalities, and thereby have approached the writing of essays. Many sections of the Bible are practically essays, especially those passages in Ecclesiastes that speak concerning friendship, wisdom, pride, gossip, vengeance, punishment and topics of similar type. In the ancient Greek and Roman orations are essay-like sections in which the speakers paused for a moment to express their innermost thoughts about life, patriotism, duty, or the great fact of death. Cicero, one of the most remarkable Romans, wrote admirably and with a spirit of familiarity and frankness, on friendship, old age, and immortality. In all ages, in speeches, in letters, and in longer works, essay-like productions appeared.
The invention of the modern essay,—that is, of the extremely informal, intimate and personal meditation,—came in 1571, in France. The inventor of the new type of literature was Michel de Montaigne, a retired scholar, counsellor and courtier, who found a studious refuge in the old tower of Montaigne, where he meditated and wrote for nine years. His essays, which were first published in 1580, are so delightfully informal, so frankly personal, so clever and well-aimed in humor, and so wise, that they are almost without parallel. In 1601 an Italian, Giovanni Florio, translated Montaigne's essays into English. Immediately the essays became popular and they have deeply influenced the writing of essays in English. In 1597 Francis Bacon published the first of his essays, but he did not write with the familiarity that characterized Montaigne. Nevertheless, his work, together with that of Montaigne, is to be regarded as representing the beginning of the modern essay.
It was not until the development of the newspaper in the eighteenth century that the essay found its real period of growth as a literary type. In the first half of the eighteenth century The Tatler and The Spectator, and similar periodicals, gave an opportunity for the publication of short prose compositions of a popular nature. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, writing with kindly humor on the foibles of the day, did much to establish the popularity of the essay. Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith and other writers, in other periodicals, continued the writing of essays, and made the power of the essay known.
Until the time of Charles Lamb, in the first half of the nineteenth century, no English writer had even approached the familiar charm of Montaigne. Bacon had written in a formal manner; his followers had held before them the thought of teaching rather than the thought of self-revelation; the eighteenth century writers had delighted in character studies and in observations on social life and customs. Lamb, on the other hand, wrote not to instruct but to communicate; not about the world but about himself. He restored the essay to its position as a means of self-revelation. The most notable fact about Lamb's essays is that they reveal him to us as one of the persons whom we know best. At the same time humor, pathos and beauty of expression are so remarkable in Lamb's essays that they alone give them permanent value.
Other writers of the essay, like Leigh Hunt, Sydney Smith, William Hazlitt, and Francis Jeffrey, wrote powerfully but none of them with a charm equal to that of Lamb. Thomas de Quincey, writing in a highly poetic style, did much to stimulate poetic prose. Lord Macaulay, in a number of critical and biographical essays, wrote forcefully, logically, and with a high degree of mastery of style but he paid slight attention to self-revelation.
It is evident, then, that there are two marked types of the essay,—one, the formal, purposive composition; and the other informal and intensely personal in nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and James Russell Lowell represent the first type. Many excellent articles in periodicals, and many of the best of editorial articles in newspapers are in reality essays of the formal kind. Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry D. Thoreau, George William Curtis and many others represent the second type.
In modern times the world has been blessed by the writing of a number of essays of the charming, familiar type. John Burroughs has revealed his love for the world of nature; Henry Van Dyke has taken us among the mountains and along the rivers; and Gilbert K. Chesterton, Arnold Bennett, Samuel M. Crothers, Charles Dudley Warner, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Brander Matthews, Agnes Repplier and a host of others have written on many and varied subjects.
Great essayists, like great novelists or great poets or great dramatists, are rare. It is only now and then that a Montaigne, a Charles Lamb, or a Robert Louis Stevenson appears. It is to the glory of literature, however, that there are so many who write in the field of the essay, and who approach true greatness, even if they do not attain it.
V
ESSAYS WELL WORTH READING
| Joseph Addison Sir Richard Steele | The Spectator |
| Apochrypha, The | Ecclesiasticus |
| Arnold, Matthew | Culture and Anarchy |
| Bacon, Francis | Essays |
| Bennett, Arnold | How to Live on 24 Hours a Day |
| Browne, Sir Thomas | Religio Medici |
| Bible, The Holy | Ecclesiastes |
| Burroughs, John | Birds and Bees |
| ” ” | Locusts and Wild Honey |
| ” ” | Wake Robin |
| ” ” | Winter Sunshine |
| ” ” | Accepting the Universe |
| Carlyle, Thomas | Heroes and Hero Worship |
| Curtis, George William | Prue and I |
| Chesterfield, Lord | Letters to His Son |
| Crothers, Samuel M. | The Gentle Reader |
| Emerson, Ralph Waldo | Essays |
| Goldsmith, Oliver | The Citizen of the World |
| Grayson, David | Adventures in Contentment |
| Harrison, Frederic | The Choice of Books |
| Hearn, Lafcadio | Out of the East |
| Holmes, Oliver Wendell | The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table |
| ” ”” | The Professor at the BreakfastTable |
| ” ”” | The Poet at the Breakfast Table |
| ” ”” | Over the Teacups |
| Irving, Washington | The Sketch Book |
| Johnson, Samuel | The Idler |
| ” ” | The Rambler |
| Lamb, Charles | Essays |
| Lowell, James Russell | Among My Books |
| Matthews, Brander | Aspects of Fiction |
| Mabie, Hamilton Wright | Essays on Nature and Culture |
| Macaulay, Thomas Babington | Milton |
| Maeterlinck, Maurice | Field Flowers |
| ” ” | News of the Spring |
| ” ” | Old Fashioned Flowers |
| Mitchell, Donald G. | Reveries of a Bachelor |
| ” ” ” | Dream Life |
| Montaigne, Michel de | Essays |
| Pater, Walter | Appreciations |
| De Quincey, Thomas | Vision of Sudden Death |
| ” ” | Dream Fugue |
| Repplier, Agnes | In Our Convent Days |
| Ruskin, John | Sesame and Lilies |
| Roosevelt, Theodore | The Strenuous Life |
| Ross, E. A. | Sin and Society |
| Shairp, John Campbell | Studies in Poetry and Philosophy |
| Stevenson, Robert Louis | Inland Voyage |
| ” ” ” | Travels with a Donkey |
| ” ” ” | Virginibus Puerisque |
| ” ” ” | Memories and Portraits |
| ” ” ” | Later Essays |
| Thoreau, Henry David | A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers |
| ” ” ” | Walden |
| ” ” ” | The Maine Woods |
| ” ” ” | Cape Cod |
| Van Dyke, Henry | Little Rivers |
| ” ” ” | Fisherman's Luck |
| Wagner, Charles | The Simple Life |
| White, Gilbert | The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne |