Essayist

“ And it is this egotism, this perpetual reference to self, in which the charm of the essayist resides. If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well. The essayist gives you his thoughts, and lets you know, in addition, how he came by them. He has nothing to conceal; he throws open his doors and windows, and lets him enter who will. You like to walk round peculiar or important men as you like to walk round a building, to view it from different points, and in different lights. Of the essayist, when his mood is communicative, you obtain a full picture. ”

“ Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is in a literary sense the friend of everybody. ”

“ The essayist is a kind of poet in prose, and if questioned harshly as to his uses, he might be unable to render a better apology for his existence than a flower might. The essay should be pure literature as the poem is pure literature. ”

“ The true essayist offers you fewer doubts and peradventures. He comes with clear philosophies, to which he means to convert you. He is well armed for controversy. He will cite you Scripture, the Decalogue, and the statutes. You will find it difficult to pick a flaw in his argument. ”

“ Every constant reader has his favourite essayists. As a rule, he reads them to be soothed or to be amused. In making my confession, I must say that only a few of the essayists really amuse me. They are, as a rule, more witty than humorous, and generally they make one self-conscious, being self-conscious themselves. There are a hundred different types of the essayist. Each of us has his favourite bore among them. Once I found all the prose works of a fine poet and [Pg 242] friend of mine, Aubrey de Vere, on the shelves of a constant reader. ”

“ But, at the same time, estimating the value and rank of the essayist, we are not to leave out of the account the drawbacks and the circumstances of the period: the imperfect state of education, the comparative scarcity of books, and the limited opportunities of intellectual intercourse. ”

“ If, then, you feel like confidential writing, what may your subjects be? Essayists have written about three main classes of subjects: first always, people, their glory, their pathos, their sadness, and their whims; second, nature as it appeals to the writers in a personal way, reflecting their joys and sorrows, or contributing to their sense of pleasure, beauty, and companionship in the world; and third, matters of science, industry, art, literature, as the essayists think these affect the emotions of humanity. ”

“ Men, nature, things, all are at your beck if you but keenly feel their appeal, if you have an honest thought about them. As you treat them do not hesitate to use the word "I"; in the essay we expect the word, we look for it, we miss it when it eludes us, for the great charm of the informal essay is its personal note, its revelation of the heart of the writer.
Since the essay is urbanely personal, it does not take itself too seriously. Our definition declared that the essayist will not try to force his views upon his reader nor hold them too feverishly himself. ”

“ The personality of the author is concealed behind his statements and arguments. He does not write in the first person. In our best writing of this kind there is a careful treatment of the subject.
The method of the essay is chiefly exposition. It uses narration and description only in a subordinate way. The essayist usually has some information to impart, some argument to present, or some conclusion to be reached. His purpose naturally determines the mode of treatment. Generally there will be a beginning or introduction, a middle containing the body of treatment, and a conclusion. ”

“ Unable to depend therefore upon the confessedly untutored lay writer or even the better class essayist to tell him his place, he will establish himself, and his place will be determined in the régime of his day by precisely those qualities which he contributes to it. ”

“ Nobody, not even Lord Robertson, really wanted to debate or discuss it, least of all to discover the philosophy of it. But in an essay you can huddle up nothing. At all hazards, you must go on. This is why so many essayists have been burnt alive. ”

“ An essay, therefore, cannot be written hurriedly on the knee. Essayists, as a rule, chew their pencils. Their desks are large and are always in disorder. There is a stack of books on the clock shelf. Others are pushed under the bed. ”

“ The sauntering ease, the excursive delays, will be natural to the poet or the novelist, who is born to them; but the essayist must in a manner make them his own, if he would be an artist and survive among the masters, which there has been some doubt of his doing. It should be his care to shun every appearance of continuity; only in the practice of the fitful, the capricious, the desultory, can he hope to emulate the effects of the creative. ”

“ L’essayiste se distingue du moraliste, de l’historien, du critique littéraire, du biographe, de l’écrivain politique; et pourtant il emprunte quelque trait a chacun d’eux; il ressemble tour a tour a l’un ou a l’autre; il est aussi philosophe, il est satirique, humoriste a ses heures; il remit en sa personne des qualités multiples ”

“ He paints old thoughts in shiny varnish and, as he is able, he mends small habits here and there. And therefore, as essayists stay at home, they are precise—almost amorous—in the posture and outlook of their writing. ”

“ The greater force of the objective treatment is witnessed by many essayists and lyrical poets, whose ambition has led them, sooner or later, to attempt the novel or the play. There are weaknesses inherent in all direct self-revelation; the thing, perhaps, is greatly said, yet there is no great occasion for the saying of it; a fine reticence is observed, but it is, after all, an easy reticence, with none of the dramatic splendours of reticence on the rack. In the midst of his pleasant confidences the essayist is brought up short by the question, “Why must you still be talking?” ”

“ In their company, as in the company of every form of art, he becomes intimately aware of the fullness and richness of life. As for society at large, the essayists—and particularly those who have occupied themselves with criticism—have aided in the establishment of standards of judgment. ”

“ The literary art as practiced in college goes by the excellent name “essay-writing”: a comprehensive, modest, dignified word. It gives you liberty to write about anything; and if you happen to have the literary instinct, everything will present itself to you as waiting to be written about. To turn into words is the impulse of the born writer, like Irving, or Emerson, or Stevenson. There is probably one such person in this company, possibly there are two. But it is to the average young essay-writer that I address myself. ”

“ The study of the principles of exposition and argumentation, and of the development of the theme, as they appear in the plan and outline of the essay, take on new significance when their application to the writing of a debate or a commencement oration is made clear. The pupil discovers that the periodic sentence, parallel construction, climax, and other rhetorical devices, are effective means that he may use to accomplish his ends. For those with literary inclinations the study of plot, characterization, and poetic form and expression furnishes new inspiration for their own work. ”

“ That a book of essays on literary subjects, apparently so diverse in character, so lacking in outer unity, and so little subject to system of any sort, should take so definite a place in the history of criticism and make so single an impression upon the reader proves its possession of a dominant and important idea, impelled by a new and weighty power of personality. ”

“ A concluding essay addresses the issue of the scholar in society. The authors typically “discuss the nature, value, philosophy, and underlying assumptions of their subjects; outline the history of relevant scholarship; survey major issues and approaches of the past, present, and foreseeable future; and conclude with suggestions for further reading.” Although directed to a student audience, the essays offer authoritative and balanced introductions for all nonspecialists. ”

“ The view I have taken of the resources of the scholar, presupposes a subject as broad. We do not seem to have imagined its riches. We have not heeded the invitation it holds out. To be as good a scholar as Englishmen are; to have as much learning as our contemporaries; to have written a book that is read; satisfies us. We assume, that all thought is already long ago adequately set down in books, — all imaginations in poems; and what we say, we only throw in as confirmatory of this supposed complete body of literature. A very shallow assumption. Say rather, all literature is yet to be written. ”

“ All literature, then, may be separated into five classes,—narration, description, exposition, argument, and persuasion.
Narration tells what things do; description tells how things look. Narration deals with occurrences; description deals with appearances. Exposition defines a term, or explains a proposition; argument proves the truth or falsity of a proposition; persuasion urges to action upon a proposition. Exposition explains; argument 4 convinces; persuasion arouses. These are the broad lines of distinction which separate the five forms of discourse. ”

“ The best Performers are the best Judges in every Art, and the ingenious Author of the Essay upon Criticism, demonstrates the Justness of his Remarks, by the Goodness of his Writing. The true Spirit of Criticism seems to revive. ”

“ The inexactness with which all terms of classification are used and must be used in literature is illustrated by the extension of the word “essay,” under which are grouped so many sorts of expositions. It has become the custom to apply this name to almost any brief monograph of leisurely or reflective character. The critical papers of Hazlitt, the historical orgies of Macaulay, the humorous confidences of Charles Lamb, and the argumentative tracts of Newman on theology or of Ruskin upon social questions, are all loosely classed together as essays. ”

“ As a matter of fact there are certain [Pg 39] characteristics invariable and inevitable in each of the five species of literature—epic, drama, lyric, fiction, essay—that tell us at once something of its fitness for our purpose. The essay, for example in its typical form is by its essential nature inappropriate. The literary essay, as it is actually constituted, is in subject-matter too abstract and remote, in mood too complex and intricate, and in style too allusive and evasive. ”

“ I shall then deviate from this ancient established usage of writers, for various, and to myself obvious reasons, the most prominent of which is, that I esteem that class of persons into whose hands this work may fall, as an intelligent and reading people, better prepared to pass judgment than myself, who, if they utter criticism, will base their opinions upon the merit of the work itself, aside from the self-eulogistic encomiums of the author. ”

“ And so we return to our definition: the essay is the transcript of personal reaction to some phase or fact of life, not weighted with an over-solemn feeling of responsibility, charged with never-failing balance and humor and liberty to wander without necessarily arriving, frankly individual in its treatment of life, life as it seems to the writer, whether the essay be about people or things or nature. ”

“ As to putting the teaching into an essay—the crux there is that the people one wants to stir up about sanitation are just good family folk with no special literary bias; and they will read a tale when they won't read an essay! But do tell me if any one of you feel that the subject grates, or my way of putting it.
Now, my darling, I must tell you that I have got a telegram from my goodman—the Kapellmeister!—to say he is to be sent home in "early spring." ”

“ There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis—or one is suggested by an incident of the day—or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative—designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent. ”

“ So in all work in composition, select a subject that readily lends itself to the form of discourse demanded; or, conversely, select the form of discourse suitable for presenting most effectively your material.
Author’s Individuality. If an author is writing for other purposes than for conscious practice, he should choose the form of discourse in which he can best work, and to which he can best shape his material. Some men tell stories well; others are debaters; while yet others are wonderfully gifted with eloquence. ”

“ The writing of essays and conversations, set in a framework of scenery and incident, and delineating character admirably though only incidentally, is the field of literature in which the author stands without a rival. ”

“ So I decided that the surest way of beginning to prepare myself for the work of the critic would be to make a study of three or four of the best writers among the older, and three or four among the younger school of each nation, and to judge from the point of view of the nation. For example, in studying French literature, I would try to judge from the point of view of a Frenchman. ”

“ Shall we not ask these questions of the poem also, of the novel, the essay, the history?
Art has relations to life, and the critic is bound to consider what these relations are in any given work,—how true, how important; he is examining a human product, not a natural specimen, and is as competent to reject as to accept; he must compare, weigh, appraise, to the best of his ability. ”