The literary essay is as elusive and charmingly indefinable as a spring day in the woods. The throaty note of the homing bird, the brook laughing irresponsibly, the whimsical pathways which the walker seems to be fashioning for himself only to find that they lead him back to the garish world just a moment too soon, the trees keeping their vigil in a stillness that whispers of God-all these combine into an effect which we term "atmosphere." Reading an essay is like taking a stroll in the woods when tired. In the one case nature communing with us lightens the burden of world-weariness that weighs upon us at times; in the other we are refreshed by the sweetness that comes from the heart of one who has preserved or found amid the stress and bitterness of life peace of soul-for the true essayist is graduated from the school of experience. In this school he has learned in fuller measure the truth that makes

men free, with the freedom of spiritual rebirth. And as one who glories in the miracle of spring's rebirth does not want as companion during his stroll the mere botanist seeking his specimens, so the lover of the essay, glorying in the freedom of the essayist's regenerated soul, shuns the fellowship of the mere rhetorician with his categorical definitions.

The modern scholar with his definitely pigeonholed knowledge of literary forms will quarrel with this beginning and will remind us of the rule established by that prince of Latin stylists, that master of the letter essay, Cicero: "Any study, indeed, which is to investigate a subject in a reasonable manner, should be begun by a definition, so that it may be understood what the matter under inquiry is." Yet Cicero himself admits the difficulty of formulating definitions, "in the consideration of which men's minds are frequently attracted to opposing opinions." Cicero was, however, speaking here of unliterary subjects, while our subject, being literature with all the liberties of the literary, gives us a certain liberty in our study of it. The particular difficulty in defining the essay is to avoid both a definition so general as to include all prose writings not strictly to be classed as history or fiction and one so restricted as to embrace only one type of essay, the personal or familiar. The title of this book, The Literary Essay in English, would seem at first sight to increase the difficulty of finding an adequate definition of the essay as a form of literature. Some informal exposition of the term "literary" as it is variously employed will, perhaps, be of assistance not only in our

work of definition but also in that of clearing the ground for satisfactory classification of essays. Applied to any form of literature the term "literary" denotes artistic perfection according to kind; applied in a restricted use to the lyric in poetry and to the personal essay in prose, it may be interpreted to mean not only this perfection of kind but also, and absolutely, the author's artistic expression of his personality. Under our title, then, we shall have liberty to treat, along with the personal or strictly literary essay, those essays which, while artistically perfect in their own kind, have not the dominatively lyric or subjective quality. Rules, outlines, classifications, are all well enough in their way; they are academically necessary in connection with all forms of literature; and they attain new and significant consequence in their application to the personal essay, which, like the lyric, has its own rule, a rule with but one requirement. The lyric requires that the poet possess the gift of song; the essay requires that the author have attained perfection of style. The essay is a fairy creature who can assume the rôle of philosopher, scientist, critic, confidential friend, gossip, court foolof anyone who can write prose and who wishes to express his opinion about something or somebody.

Many delightful things have come from France, and it is from France that we have the essay as a distinct form of literature. In the literary sense in which Montaigne employed it, the word essais meant "a trial, attempt, or endeavor." Incompleteness, tentativeness, were felt by the inventor to be characteristic of the new literary genre. This idea persisted when the essay was

transplanted into England, and Doctor Johnson gave it a rather contemptuous definition in his dictionary: "a loose sally of the mind, an irregular, undigested piece, not a regular and orderly performance." But this "undigested piece" engaged literary genius vital enough to make the essay a part of the very life of literature; this little morganatic love with whom the princes of literary royalty dallied away delightful hours in halfshamed secrecy came to number among her offspring children of most royal rank. Boasting now perfection of form and finish, in its latest and most ideal development, the literary essay creates an atmosphere of strength and companionship, of virtue and loveliness. Artistic conception, unity, integrity, self-completion, and, above all, expression of the author's personality are its essential characteristics.

SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS

To appreciate the essay adequately we must understand something of the difference between prose and poetry, and must determine what constitutes the real beauty of prose writing. Though prose cannot make use of those external aids to beauty, the meter and rime of poetry, it has in common with its sister art rhythm and harmony of phrasing. The artist, whether in prose or poetry, has but the material common to both out of which to fashion the child of his brain-thought for the soul and words for the body. Poetry is more imaginative than prose and is usually on a higher plane of thought, but with the admission of this difference-unless

perhaps we accept the view of those who hold that poetry appeals primarily to the emotions and prose to the understanding our comparison or contrast between the matter of prose and that of poetry must necessarily end. But the externals, the technique of these two arts, give opportunity for endless comparative study. Formal poetry is made by the welding together of two rhythms, the basic meter and the phrasal overtone, and in this harmonic effect is its beauty, a beauty made more effective by a quality of return in the musical and rounded links of rime. Prose, too, has its pattern and its symphonic rhythm, though its movement is much more direct, more forthright, than that of poetry. The poet may choose any one of a dozen metrical schemes and weave upon it an exquisite web of lovely dreams, but the prose writer must fashion his own pattern as directed by his subject matter and the working of his mind upon it. Without restricting the thoughtprocess in any way, never molding his ideas to fit some desired form of expression, the prose writer must create prose which is rhythmical without being metrical; he must combine long and short syllables, accented and unaccented syllables, in an ever-recurring yet evervaried leading movement as elusive and intangible and at the same time as surely evident as the leitmotiv in the music dramas of Wagner. If he can do this, we can but call him an artist.

True literary art is, as is every art, the result not only of the love of the beautiful, which inspires us to seek after the adequate expression of it in something external to ourselves, but also the result of perfect mas