CHAPTER VII.

_THE BEST ENGLISH ESSAYS._

Many people fancy that essays are not popular or easy reading; but when Addison published his Spectator, this little sheet of essays came out every morning, as a daily paper, and was immensely successful. Today there are not many standard novels that sell better than Lamb’s Essays. Macaulay was read in his day from one end of the English-speaking world to the other, and so was Carlyle. Ruskin, who was essentially an essayist, though of a peculiar type, received a hundred thousand dollars a year as profits on his books, which he published himself through George Allen, a printer in a small country town. And in our own country Emerson is a sort of bible to many people.

Those who learn to like essays become very fond of them, and it is only to people who never have read them much that they seem dry. The fact is, there are only certain writers and certain of their works that we shall care for.

If you like epigram, one of the best books to read is Bacon’s Essays. Each essay is very short; the subjects are of everyday interest; and the sentences are short and sharp. One does not care to read much of such a book at a time--only a few pages. But Bacon’s Essays is a book to own and take up for half an hour now and then through a number of years. We read these essays much as we do favourite poems.

Bacon belongs to the time of Shakspere, and his language is a little antiquated. Much less so is that of Addison, who wrote over a hundred years later. There is a certain story-like character in his essays that makes them especially interesting. He tells us about Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. Sir Roger, of whom he writes in a series of essays, is especially interesting. Then Addison has humorous little papers on Advice in Love, the art of flirting the fan, etc., etc.

Swift, who wrote about the same time as Addison, is still more of a story teller. Gulliver’s Travels is often classed as a novel, though as a matter of fact it was written as a satirical essay on the foibles of England in Swift’s day. Next to Gulliver’s Travels we are likely to be most interested in A Tale of a Tub, and The Battle of the Books, which are more regular essays than Gulliver.

But the greatest of all the old essayists is Lamb. His most famous essay is that On Roast Pig, in which he tells the story of the origin of roast pig as a dish. Only less interesting is Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist, and the essay on Poor Relations.

The charm of Lamb is his humour, his good nature, his kindly heart, his quaint way of saying things. We learn to love him. No one has ever equalled him or imitated him. And when we have read his essays, we want to read his life--how he gave up the woman he loved to care for his poor sister who had killed her mother in a fit of insanity and had often to go to the asylum through all her life. Lamb was fond of his glass, and fond of the city, and fond of his friends. When we know him we must love him, and nothing else matters.

If we have a taste for the curious and lofty in description, we shall like De Quincey, the opium-eater. In the Confessions of an English Opium Eater we have an account of himself and his opium-eating, which is rather dry; but his wonderful dreams fascinate us. These we find at their best in his masterpieces Suspiria de Profundis and The English Stage Coach, which are indeed the height of impassioned prose, lofty poetry without meter, splendid dreams and fancies.

De Quincey wrote a great deal, and much that is merely dry and scholarly. But often he has something quaint and curious, such as his “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” and wonderful stories such as the Flight of the Tartars and the Spanish Nun.

Carlyle wrote in such a jagged, queer, hard style that nowadays few people can get used to a book like Sartor Resartus. The philosophy of Sartor will be found in a delightfully simple essay entitled Characteristics, the point of view in which is deeply interesting. Another simple and readable essay is that on Burns, and the essay on Goethe is worth reading, and that on Jean Paul Richter. Perhaps when one gets used to him one will wish to read Heroes and Hero-Worship, The French Revolution (or a part of it), and last of all that queer philosophy of clothes, Sartor Resartus.

If one cares for philosophy he should certainly read Emerson’s original essays, beginning with those on Compensation, Self-Reliance, Love, the Over-Soul, Friendship, Circles, and Nature.

Emerson’s essays have no beginning or end, and one might as well begin in the middle as anywhere else. He does simply one thing and that is interpret man in the light of modern transcendental philosophy. He had caught the great philosophic idea that God, man, and nature are but one substance, governed by the same laws, reaching out to infinity, and kin to everything within the bounds of infinity. Every common thing in life he views again from this new point of view; and the revelation is wonderful. Emerson does not discuss this philosophy or tell us anything about it; but he makes us see the whole world in the transforming light of it.

In his two original volumes of essays he does this supremely well; and then in many later volumes he does it over and over. Such volumes, good in their way but less original than the first, are Representative Men, Society and Solitude, and Conduct of Life.

Macaulay is not read nearly as much nowadays as he was in his own time. His style is oratorical, and highflown oratory, especially in essays, is not popular today. For all that, one cannot well afford to miss reading the famous descriptive essays on the Trial of Warren Hastings, Lord Clive, Milton (in which will be found the famous description of the Puritans), and the essay on History. There are two first rate essays on Samuel Johnson, the best one being a review of Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, beginning at the point at which Macaulay finishes with Croker and takes up Boswell. Another good essay is that on Frances Burney or Madame D’Arblay. Those who have time will even wish to read Macaulay’s History of England, with its wonderful and gorgeous descriptions, that make the scene live before the eyes.

Of splendid modern prose writers, Ruskin is one of the greatest. It takes a little effort and a little choosing to learn to like him; but those who will take the pains to study him will be richly rewarded.

About the simplest thing he wrote was Ethics of the Dust, a series of conversations with some young girls about nature and everyday life. Children of ten are said to have read this book and liked it; yet it is by no means childish, and anyone might enjoy it.

Next in general interest and simplicity is Sesame and Lilies--a queer title. The first chapter is “Of King’s Treasuries”--meaning books; and the second “Of Queens’ Gardens,” meaning the dominion over nature and society which culture gives a woman. This is one of the very best books ever written on How and What to Read, though written in a very symbolic style that will require more than one reading fully to understand it.

Another book of quite a different kind is called in Ruskin’s odd fashion Crown of Wild Olives. It is a series of essays on work and the things in life worth working for.

These three books are short, and perhaps at first many will not like them very much; but liking will grow with time.

There is a book, however, that will well repay getting and reading in part, from time to time, for many years. That is Modern Painters. It is in four large volumes, and from the title one might suppose it was a technical history of modern painting. This is not the fact, however. It is a popular study of the noblest element in art, and throughout the four volumes one will find marvellous pictures of word-painting, such as Ruskin’s description of Turner’s Slave Ship, when he is discussing sea-painting. He talks of art and nature, always looking at art from the point of view of nature; and the volumes are so well divided into chapters and sections, each with its title and sub-title, that one can pick out an interesting subject here, and another there. It will be of especial interest and value to any one who cares at all about art. Ruskin wrote the first volume of this work before he was twenty-four, and it is perhaps the most brilliant thing he ever did. It is full of life and colour and splendid word-painting.

The reader who believes in culture and wishes to cultivate the esthetic and refined should certainly read Matthew Arnold’s book Culture and Anarchy. It requires a close and logical mind to appreciate and understand him, and to read and like him is not easy, but a liking for his chapter on Sweetness and Light is an excellent test of one’s real success in the cultivation of culture.

It will be seen that there are good essays of many types. There is the epigrammatic discussion of everyday matters, such as we find in Bacon, and in quite a different way in Emerson; and there is the quaint and playful humour of Addison and Lamb; there is the splendid rhetoric of De Quincey and of Macaulay, and the splendid word-painting of Ruskin; there is the preaching of Carlyle, and the literary lecturing of Matthew Arnold. If we cannot know all, we must choose our bent and follow the lines we like best.

The most popular form of the essay is that of Addison and Lamb, the quaint, amusing, human badinage on familiar topics, full of love, and full of sense. Along this line there are a few good modern books--Oliver Wendell Holmes’s Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Ik Marvel’s Reveries of a Bachelor, Charles Dudley Warner’s Backlog Studies, and Barrie’s My Lady Nicotine and When a Man’s Single.[3]

The essay can never be read in a hurry, nor by one who feels himself rushed. The great essayists wrote in the most leisurely manner possible, a very little at a time, and only when in precisely the right mood. In the same way must they be read--alone, before an open fire, of a long winter evening. The woman who delights in these things will sit curled up in a great easychair, her head tipped against the back, the light well shaded over her shoulder. The man will, if he is a smoker, inevitably want his pipe. No modern cigar will do, and the vulgarity of chewing is utterly inconsistent with a taste for reading essays. It is the refined, the imaginative, and the dreamy who will especially delight in this form of literature.

Note: Most of the essays mentioned in this chapter will be found in a volume entitled “The Best English Essays,” edited by Sherwin Cody.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Barrie’s great novel is The Little Minister.]