subject to subject, the absence of all elaboration in the plot of the slight thread of story introduced, the little, sudden flashes of wit, the poetical description, the exquisite delineation of character betrayed rather by what the Autocrat's companions say and do than by any formal description of them by himself. It is a pot-pourri of useful, varied, elegant learning, information on the sciences, arts, and letters, communicated amid such fascinating interlude, such constantly recurring diversion and food for smiles and laughter, that it is absorbed eagerly by the least scholarly."

Says R. Shelton Mackenzie: "The Autocrat is as genial and gentle, and withal as philosophical, an essayist as any of modern times. Hazlitt, saturnine and cynical, would yet have loved this writer. Charles Lamb would have opened his heart to one who resembles him so much in many excellent points. Leigh Hunt, we dare say, has been much delighted with him. Thomas Hood, the great humanitarian, would have relished his fine catholic spirit. The Autocrat is, however, something more than an essayist; he is contemplative, discursive, poetical, thoughtful, philosophical, amusing, imaginative, tender-never didactic. He interests variously constituted minds and various modes of mind."

The Autocrat was followed by The Professor at the Breakfast-Table in 1859, and by The Poet at the Breakfast-Table in 1861. The plan of both these works is similar to that of the first, but they lack its originality and vivacity.

REFERENCES.

Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Comic Writers.

Thackeray's English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century.

Whipple's Literature and Life.

Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature.

Tuckerman's Essays.

Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith (1861).

See, also, other reference-lists for names of authors mentioned in this

chapter.

CHAPTER X.

ESSAYS.

Michel de Montaigne-Bacon-Milton-Cowley-Dryden-EvelynSir William Temple-Andrew Fletcher-John Locke-Sir Richard Steele The Tatler-Joseph Addison-The Spectator-The Guardian -Dr. Johnson-The Rambler-The Adventurer-The ConnoisseurThe World The Idler-The Mirror-The Lounger-Oliver Goldsmith-The Citizen of the World-Dr. Benjamin Franklin-Charles Lamb Essays of Elia-Leigh Hunt-William Hazlitt-Professor Wilson-Noctes Ambrosiana-Thomas De Quincey-Lord Macaulay -Thomas Carlyle-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

AN essay, strictly speaking, is an attempt to elucidate, within certain limits, the most important facts and thoughts concerning a chosen subject, and to place these thoughts, in an attractive shape and a clear light, before the reader. The limits of an essay, as to both time and treatment, are such that it is not usually either comprehensive or exhaustive. It is a view merely of certain phases of the subject as seen from the peculiar standpoint of the author and through the glasses which he holds. before our eyes. The subject itself may be of any kind whatever, and the style of thought and treatment. depends chiefly upon the mood of the writer. The object of the essay, although apparently didactic, is to please no less than to instruct; and the most perfect examples of this class of writing possess all the beauty and worth of true works of art.

The essay as a distinct species of prose composition is of modern origin; we may date its beginning in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Michel de Montaigne, a Frenchman, may be called the first essayist; he not only invented this kind of writing, but he popularized it, and

supplied a host of followers and imitators with valuable suggestions and models. His Essays* have exerted a marked influence upon the manner and style of thought of more than one English writer. The principal subject of Montaigne's Essays-the central thought around which all other thoughts, influences, and effects are grouped-is himself. As we read, we fancy that he speaks to us. He tells us all about his good qualities and his bad, his infirmities and his habits of life, his preferences and his antipathies-not a page but that he alludes to himself. His essays bristle with quotations; more than half of all that he has written is said to be borrowed from the ancient classics. And yet his quotations are so skillfully interlarded that we scarcely observe that they are not his own words. "He has all the virtues, he says, except two or three; never makes enemies, never does any man an injury; makes it his rule to keep things comfortable about him; is extremely kind-hearted and eminently selfish. He is lacking in the domestic faculty; cares little about his wife, and does not pretend to care at all about his babies; and he is always interfering with servants, so that they hate him. As regards his reading, it is without method, desultory; he takes up his books one after the other, and browses among them, reading Latin histories for his chief pleasure." Such was the founder and originator of the modern essay, and such were his essays-the most popular prose works written in the sixteenth century. It is our purpose in this chapter to speak of the writings. of some of the most eminent of his English successors and imitators.

The English essay began with Lord Bacon. His Essays, as originally published in 1597, were ten in number: 1. Of Studies; 2. Of Discourse; 3. Of Ceremonies and Respects; 4. Of Followers and Friends; 5. Of Suitors; 6. Of Expense; 7. Of Regimen of Health; 8. Of Honor and Reputation; 9. Of Faction; 10. Of Negotiation. To these

*First published in 1582.

ten, several others were added in subsequent editions, until, in 1625, they numbered fifty-eight. In the dedication of the last edition to Lord Buckingham, Bacon says: "I doe now publish my Essayes; which, of all other workes, have beene most currant: For that, as it seemes, they come home, to mens businesse, and bosomes. I have enlarged them both in number, and in weight; so that they are indeed a new work." Perhaps the best, as well as the most characteristic, of these remarkable essays is the one on Studies. It is brief; we copy it entire:

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but there is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; confidence a ready man; and writing an exact man ; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know

that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend; "Abeunt studia in mores;” nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; shooting is good for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, and the like; so, if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are "Cymini sectores;" if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call upon one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyer's cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

Says M. Taine: "There is nothing in English prose superior to the diction of Bacon. His mode of thought is by symbols, not by analysis; instead of explaining his idea, he transposes and translates it,-translates it entire, to the smallest details, enclosing all in the majesty of a grand period or in the brevity of a striking sentence. Thence springs a style of admirable richness, gravity, and vigor, now solemn and symmetrical, now concise and piercing, always elaborate and full of color."

Says Macaulay: "It is by the Essays that Bacon is best known to the multitude. In these alone is his mind brought into immediate contact with the minds of ordinary readers. There he opens an exoteric school, and talks to plain men, in language which everybody understands, about things in which everybody is interested. He has thus enabled those who must otherwise have taken his merits on trust to judge for themselves; and the great body of readers have, during several generations, acknowledged that the man who has treated with such consummate ability questions with which they are familiar may well be supposed to deserve all the praise bestowed on him by those who have sat in his inner school."