PREFACE

B

LESS the essayist! He is our true literary friend.

He in

structs, entertains, or amuses us, and he does it quickly.

He knows that in these rapid days time is of the essence of the contract and is always on time in closing. He gives us no preface, puts no "stump speech in the belly of the bill," and does not detain us by a peroration or even a benediction. The latter we pronounce. He points to no quarto or folio as his accumulation of thought. He hands us a morsel, bids us taste its sweetness, smell its fragrance, and be thankful that it is only a morsel. He invites us to a lunch and not a dinner, and yet how choice is that lunch! Ganymede serves at the table. With him it is not quantity, but quality; multum haud multa. He has few words, but they are thoughtbearers. They mean something; suggest something. We are stronger, better, happier, when we have read them. And this, because some one thought has been placed before us so clearly, so vividly, that we recognize its reality, its value, as never before.

The essayist has often the suggestiveness, the divination of the poet. Indeed, he may well be called the poet's cousin. They both are seers, prophets. Montaigne anticipated the France of to-day. Rolling a single idea over and over, he sees what its force is, what its tendency; and so seeing declares with the accuracy of the mechanical engineer what will be to-morrow's result of to-day's idea.

But the essayist has not always the solemnity of the prophet. He knows that we like to be pleased, to be amused, and with his gifted pen he touches the secret springs of pleasure and amusement. How often when tired do we pick up some friendly essay, and reading it find it potent to "drive dull care away."

To many, an essay suggests something not only small, but crude. One of the definitions of the word is "attempt." And so to them an essay is a mere attempt at literary production, which, by reason of its imperfections and incompleteness, deserves no or only partial recognition. At the mention of the word, the mind involuntarily recalls the annual commencements of the various high schools, academies, and other educational institutions, and fancies that it sees ten thousand young men and women standing on the platform, in the best of black suits, or the whitest of white dresses, and filling the hearts of at least loving and hopeful parents and friends with wonder and admiration at their first literary efforts, their essays. The more ambitious graduates call their productions orations, but the great majority name theirs essays. That word is much less pretentious. And in this connection it is worthy of note that the graduates in advanced courses of the higher institutions, as well as they who return to claim a higher academic degree, do not content themselves with essays, but always prepare theses. The difference between an essay and a thesis seems large, and they forget that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet.

It

As suggested, this common thought as to essays is correct, in respect to the matter of brevity. The essay is relatively short. has not the ponderous length of the historical work, theological treatise, or book on science or political economy. And yet brevity is no vice in literature or elsewhere. It is the soul of wit. And so an essay commends itself by its very brevity. We read it quickly. But mere brevity does not make every literary composition an The news paragraphs with which our daily papers teem are not essays. Novelettes or short stories are not essays. Indeed, it may be said that no mere narrative of events, description of scenes, or story, can be called an essay. Yet each may rightfully be used in an essay to make more clear and vivid the thought of the writer.

essay.

On the other hand, in the editorial columns of the press are often essays, good, bad, or indifferent. For they are brief arguments in support of some proposition of politics, finance, or social economy; brief developments of some thought, interesting, or supposed to interest the public mind.

The charm of the essay, it may be added, is not only its brevity, but also in a certain sense its narrowness. The attention is called to a single matter, its development, its relations, and its suggestiveness. We are not burdened with many things; with either length or breadth. We, of course, are not content with a simple collocation of words, a mere display of rhetoric; but we expect and have a right to expect that some thought will be fully presented; and in the more ambitious, that the relations of that thought to life and its experiences will also be suggested. As Lord Bacon, the prince of essayists, quaintly says:

«To write just treatises requireth leisure in the writer and leisure in the reader, which is the cause that hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient."

The literary style of the essay varies, determined always by the character of its thought, the subject-matter. If that be a serious one, we look for a solemn, didactic, style; if of a lighter nature, an easier, gayer, flow of words. And one of the beauties of the essay is the adaptation of style to thought. There is that harmony between thought and expression, the significance of which we understand, when we speak of the fitness of things.

Alexander Smith says, in his essay on the "Writing of Essays, ""The essay, as a literary form, resembles the lyric, in so far as it is molded by some central mood,-whimsical, serious, or satirical. Give the mood, and the essay, from the first sentence to the last, grows around it as the cocoon grows around the silkworm. The essay writer is a chartered libertine, and a law unto himself. A quick ear and eye, an ability to discern the infinite suggestiveness of common things, a brooding meditative spirit, are all that the essayist requires to start business with."

The essayist carries a free lance. The world is his range. He grapples the most serious things of time and eternity, of life and death, or the most frivolous fancies of the passing hour. And his answer must in its movement be in harmony with the thought he presents. We take Lord Bacon's essays, and as we read his thoughts on the earnest matters of life we find his literary style in full

accord therewith.

Clear, didactic, solemn, we feel that a preacher is talking to us, and as we read we know that he never wrote Shakes

peare's plays.

We read Charles Lamb and are rested, as his sweet, playful words pass before us. How he loved the bright, sunny side of life! The humor, the delicate touch, the gentle picture of our weaknesses, amuse and interest us. As we lay his essays down, we can but think how his friends must have enjoyed his companionship.

And so we might go on and characterize the various essayists of the world. They have given us the choice bits of literature. They are not mere mechanical forces. They work in harmony with nature in its highest processes. They do not take literature and simply compress it. They do not give us condensed milk, but in sympathy with that subtle, higher, mysterious action of nature's forces, they work out from the milk of life the richer, more nourishing and comforting cream: and so every one invokes blessings upon the essayist.

With these preliminary words we pass on to say that in these volumes we have tried to extract the cream of the cream. If any one thinks that this selection is an easy work, he does not know the range of the essay. And justice to myself, and to the others connected with this publication, compels me to add that the credit for the work belongs to them rather than to me. I say this not out of compliment, but because of its truth.

Further, we have had before us the same general idea that was pursued in "The World's Best Orations." We did not then take all the great orations of even the world's greatest orators. We aimed to present a comparative view. We sought to show by illustration the range of oratory, and by placing before the reader some entire orations of the greatest orators, and selections from those of lesser rank, to present a sort of historical epitome or encyclopædia of oratory. We believed that such a compilation was better than a volume of statistics, and yet in a certain sense subserved the same purpose. It was not a mere collection of figures, such as the census bureau gives, but a gathering of those speeches which have moved and affected the world's history.