the adaptable spirit of her poetic muse, is a little prose fantasy called "The Tethered Constellations," wherein the thistledown is transformed into a star. "There is a little kind of star that drowns itself by hundreds in the river Thames-the many-rayed silver-white seed that makes journeys on all the winds up and down England and across it in the end of summer. It is a most expert traveller, turning a little wheel a-tiptoe wherever the wind lets it rest, and speeding on those pretty points when it is not flying. . . . All unlike is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It is far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds." Her fine essay "Anima Pellegrina," beginning, "Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the stranger's fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a phrase that is its own essential possession, and yet is dearer to the speaker of other tongues," is pertinent to the question of idiomatic writing. How happy are we who love our beautiful native language in knowing that our writers of the past half-century have been able to throw off the shackles of Greek and Latin bondage, to lift their voices above the flood of foreign speech that sweeps constantly into our harbors and across our country; how happy are we in reading the prose of inspired writers, prose made vital and forceful, songful and sweet by the dear, homely idioms which have struck their roots deep in our spoken language and deeper, perhaps, in our hearts. The most loquacious person in the world is the lover, and in trying to say farewell to the subject of the essay we experience something of the lover's difficulty when told that he must now be silent about the charms of his beloved. Mayhap, like the lover, we have been at times extravagant in our praise; perhaps we have, in the excess of affection, "looked the thing into loveliness"; perhaps we have been blind to faults or, seeing them, have rather glossed them over; unashamed, we admit everything. If these chapters induce, perchance, one reader to read and learn to love one essay, then we shall not have written in vain, for his life will be sweeter, and because of this the world about him will be more significant and more beautiful. If it does not accomplish even this, our little book will still be glad to travel through desert places and acclaim the praises of that child of sunlight and of shadow, of stern reality and of mystic dreams, of sorrow and of joy, of that lovely, immortal child whose heart is as a rainbow and whose footfall is as silver moonbeams on the sleeping flowers the literary essay. READING LIST OF CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS This list is intended to supplement the reading already indicated in the text itself as necessary to a comprehensive grasp of the essay. It will perhaps serve as a guide to teachers, students, or readers who wish to keep abreast of the times in things literary. Even a cursory glance at the authors named in it will give a hint that the essay has come to stay and demands attention. ABBOTT, CHARLES C. (1843–1919), naturalist. Days Out of Doors, Freedom of the Fields. ABBOTT, LYMAN (1835-1922), editor and author. Problems of Life, The Spirit of Democracy. ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY (1836-1907), editor of Atlantic Monthly. Ponkapog Papers. AUERBACH, JOSEPH S., lawyer. Essays and miscellanies. BAKER, RAY S. ("David Grayson") (1870- ), magazine editor. Adventures in Contentment, The Friendly Road. BARRIE, JAMES M. (1860- ), Scottish novelist and playwright. My Lady Nicotine, Margaret Ogilvy. BEERBOHM, MAX (1872– And Even Now. Bennett, Arnold (1867– ), English critic. More, Yet Again, ), English novelist. Literary Taste: How to Form It, Things that have Interested Me. BENSON, ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER (1862- ), English poet and essayist. At Large, The Silent Isle. BERGENGREN, RALPH (1871- ), dramatic critic. The Perfect Gentleman, The Comforts of Home. BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE (1850- ), chancery barrister. Obiter Dicta, In the Name of the Bodleian. BLACK, HUGH (1868- ), professor of practical theology in Union Theological Seminary, New York. Friendship, Work. BOLLES, FRANK (1856-1894); naturalist. Land of the Lingering Snow. BRIGGS, LE BARON R. (1863- ). Dean of Harvard University. School, College, and Character. BROOKE, RUPERT (1887-1915), English poet; died in the Ægean. Letters from America. BROUN, HEYWOOD (1888- ), newspaper man. Seeing Things at Night. BRYCE, JAMES (1838-1922), diplomat. Hindrances to Good BUTLER, ELLIS PARKER (1869- ), author. Ghosts What Ain't. Gentle Reader, The Pardoner's Wallet. ), clergyman. The CURTIS, G. W., editor of Harper's Magazine. Prue and I, From the Easy Chair. DOBSON, AUSTIN (1840- ), poet. Eighteenth Century Vignettes. DON MARQUIS (1878 State. ), newspaper man. The Almost Perfect DOUNCE, HARRY E. (1869- ), staff of New York Evening Post. Some Nonsense about a Dog. DOWDEN, EDWARD (1843- ), professor in Dublin University. EATON, WALTER PRICHARD (1878- ), dramatic critic. Green GEROULD, KATHERINE F. (1879- ), writer. Modes and Morals. |