Great Essays [antikvár]

T Introduction TO PUT the matter briefly, I like to read certain kinds of essays. I know nothing pleasanter than to sit down for a half hoiir or so with Montaigne or Bacon, with Lamb or Hazlitt, with James Thurber or E. B. White. I don't expect to be cornered or conquered by them but I do expect to join in their wandering reflections. Their letters, even when published, were not written to me but their essays were— to thousands of me's of course—and I am deeply grateful. Even novelists such as Joseph Conrad, Aldous Huxley, Stevenson, Virginia Woolf and John Erskine may be more interesting when they express their opinions direcdy rather than through their characters. Even the distinguished philosopher of the noble prose, the late George Santayana, gets a little personal in the Soliloquies in England and Other Soliloquies. In a mechanized, assembly-line world, these personal con- ! tacts are very satisfying. While others are reading mystery ! ' stories or keeping up with the novel, I like to go on little j , excursions with genial minds, perhaps to be influenced but [') never over-powered. The versatile word, "essay," has been applied to every > kind of writing except poems, plays and stories—and in fact ' some long poems have been called essays. There is Locke's I j great philosophical work. Essay Concerning the Human Un- 4; derstanding, and Malthus' Essay on the Principles of Popula-