arrangement and the firm connexion of a long discourse, are perplexities with which numbers desire never to embarrass their understanding, or are excellences which they have not the judgment to comprehend, and the taste to relish. They wish for literary, in the same portions as physical, food; so much as will strengthen and gratify, not oppress them. And even when they have the appetite, they do not often possess the leisure, which is requisite for longer repasts. The courtesies of the world, the encroachments of business, and the engagements of pleasure, leave in ordinary lives but few hours for the gratifications of intellectual taste. But the bulk and nature of the Essay are both exactly adapted to the wants of the most common reader. It is not long enough to weary his curiosity, not grave enough to discourage him from perusal, and not sufficiently abstruse to perplex his understanding. Of compositions thus mutually pleasant to those who read and to those who write, England possesses the most admirable series, a series to which no country can produce any thing comparable either in bulk or excellence. The ancients to whom we generally refer for specimens of perfection in all the departments of literature and art, have left us few pieces similar to the modern Essay, and none strictly resembling it in its periodical form. Cicero, with that genius which qualified him to be the prince both of Roman eloquence and philosophy, was able to excel in the more light and familiar methods of writing. His dialogues upon Friendship and Old Age; his defence of the Stoical Paradoxes, and above all his Dream of Scipio, are proofs that his versatile talents could shine upon those miscellaneous topics, in which the moderns have reaped so much glory. The treatises of Seneca, though rather too scholastic and methodical, bear considerable resemblance to the moral Essay of later ages. But of all the ancient writers, none has left us so many and so admirable speci→ mens of that genius which we look for in an Essayist, as the inimitable Horace. That he wrote in verse and modern Essayists have adopted prose, is only an accidental difference in the form of their communications: and even in those productions of his pen (his Satires and Epistles) to which we allude, he himself renounces all claim to the dignity of the poet.* His complete possession of the character of the courtier and the scholar, his oblique but sharp< raillery at the pride of philosophical pretenders; the humorous satire with which he exposes not so much the enormity as the folly of every vice; the judgment and freedom with which he instructs his countrymen in the laws of sound taste and criticism, these and his other sprightly qualifications have placed him so high in the rank of public censor, that while few moderns come near him, none can advance a claim to sit above him. When a taste for polite knowledge became diffused among the Romans, their ingenuity, as they were ignorant of the art of printing, was called upon to discover means to allay a learned curiosity, and to supply that information which moderns enjoy by the medium of periodical works. The lectures and disputations of the philosophers afforded a rational entertainment for those who were capable of enjoying the sublime pleasures and contemplations of wisdom. But as such persons were few, and even they would often desire a more miscellaneous provision, Recitations were introduced. These were both in Poetry and Prose, and every scholar who could put together a certain number of lines upon any subject, collected a multitude of friends and strangers, to recite to them his new-born thoughts, and to gain in public that applause which he had already bestowed upon himself in his closet. An au thor scarcely ventured to publish before he had recited his works. Every corner of Rome resounded with declamations, till at last the practice produced a literary nausea, and became ridiculous in its excess. Juvenal asks with indignation, if he is always to remain a hearer, and to be vexed with the recitations of those who grew hoarse with their vehemence. He informs us that even in the heat of -August, when Rome was half deserted,† the toils of recita * Primum ego me iliorum, dederim quibus esse Poetas, Tectorum assiduos, ac mille pericula sævæ Urbis, et Augusto recitantes mense poetas?-Sat. 3. 6—9. tion were not abandoned. Horace in his festive manner alludes to a certain learned creditor, who condemned his debtors to the punishment of hearing his Histories, that if they could not cancel the loan of hard money, they might at least pay the soft whispers of adulation and applause.* Pliny,t writing of the great harvest of poets, declares that there was scarcely a day in all April, in which some one did not recite; but as he was an incredible scholar, he complains of the indolence of his countrymen, who were unwilling to be present at these instructive exhibitions. Such are the expedients by which the Romans, in their highest state of refinement, satisfied, and at last palled, the eagerness of literary pleasure. The invention of Printing, and the consequent diffusion of learning in modern times, has created an abundance of miscellaneous publications, although there were few eminent works of a similar nature with the Tatler before the appearance of that paper. Two Italian books, the Courtier of Castiglione, and the Galateo of Casa, are referred to by Dr. Johnson. These were published early in the sixteenth century; but they seem to be manuals of politeness, useful indeed as inculcating graces of behaviour, and regulating the ceremonies of life, but not possessing the broad and general character of the British Essays. The French can boast some early writers, who come much nearer to the standard. The Essays of Montaigne, which appeared in 1580, are far superior to the ordinary productions of that age; and even to this day the author has not been surpassed by any of his countrymen, in that department of literature which he selected. He writes with a naïveté which is so agreeable, that we are willing to overlook an offence which is not often pardoned, the excessive fondness with which he talks of himself. In 1687, La Bruyere published the characters of Theophrastus, translated from the Greek, with the manners of his own age. This work, of which Steele has made a little use in his Tatler,§ is full of accurate and vivid painting. His * Odisti et fugis, ut Rusonem debitor æris, Qui nisi cum tristes misero venere Calendæ, Mercedem aut nummos unde unde extricat, amaras Serm. lib. 1. 3. v. 86-9. + Epist. Sosio Senecioni. lib. 1. Life of Addison. § See No 9. acute knowledge of the depths and intricacies of the human heart, has rescued the work from the fate of a temporary production, and made his characters to be just representatives of human nature in all ages and modifications of society. Still his plan, compared with that of the British Essayists, is a confined one, as it embraces only a single topic of their ordinary speculations. But of all the French writers, prior to the eighteenth century, none shone more in the varieties of literature than the learned Bayle, author of the celebrated Historical and Critical Dictionary. His literary journal (Les Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres) from the year 1684 to 1687, and his Answers to the Questions of a Provincial, which form a melange of historical, philosophical, and literary subjects,* are carly examples of those miscellaneous lucubrations, with which the curiosity of later days has been almost oppressed. England has been more fertile than any other country in Essayists, even before the famous era of its periodical writers. The illustrious Bacon, whose greater works (having accomplished their end and reformed the entire basis of philosophy) are now seldom perused, still finds numerous readers for the lighter productions of his Essays. The acumen of the writer and the profundity of his thoughts, will ever attract (notwithstanding the antique quaintness of his style) a sufficient number of readers among those who use books as the food of reflection and meditation. Lord Clarendon, much more inflexibly virtuous, though less deeply learned than Bacon, has left us various dissertations, which, though longer than the modern essay, chiefly descant upon the same topics, and are the works of a sound and judicious understanding. The agreeable Miscellanies of Sir William Temple, an accom-plished man and scholar, are well known, even at the sent day and the Essays of Jeremiah Collier, though not capable of affording any gratification to a modern reader of taste, are still remembered on account of the author's vehemence in behalf of virtue, and the reformation of our theatres, which was effected by his "hort View of the immorality and profaneness of the English stage." pre All the works of these authors have obtained that share * Article Bayle, in Siècles Littéraires de la France. of renown which is due to them; but there is one writer, who has experienced the caprice of literary favour, and who, though for a long time distinguished with a conside→ rable portion of celebrity, has gradually sunk into unmerited neglect. Owen Felltham was the author of Resolves Divine, Moral, and Political, the second and third editions of which were published as early as the year 1628. From the time when they were given to the world to the year in which the Tatler appeared, they passed through twelve editions; a proof, when we consider the small number of readers in those days, that their popularity was very great. They contain two hundred (or as Felltham calls them a duple century* of) short Essays upon a great variety of subjects, from the most sacred to the most humble, from the duties of prayer and devotion to the entertainments of music and dancing. All the topics are discussed with great acuteness of thought, sprightliness of fancy, and solidity of judgment: whilst they inculcate a most ardent love of virtue and religion, they are entirely free from any tincture of a morose and fanatical spirit, and the reader must rise from the perusal of them with more amiable and more cheerful inclinations. Their style is the quaint and an tique garb of the age in which they were written, which circumstance, it is probable, has been the cause of the disregard which they experienced in the last century, amidst the splendour of numerous works abounding with all the attractive graces of language. If, however, the reader of reflection will venture upon the perusal of one or two Resolves, fixing his mind upon the shrewdness and propriety of thought instead of being offended by the eccentricity of a few conceits, it may be predicted that he will not need much incentive to proceed in the study of the whole work. For those whose ears are so delicately modish, that they cannot endure the rough diction of our ancestors, an edition of Felltham has been prepared by a gentleman,+ who has modernized the language with much judgment, and *Edition, 1631, which is the fourth, and the earliest I have seen. + James Cumming, Esq. F. S. A. to whose volume I am indebted for the notice of the editions of Felltham. The work of Felltham had not entirely escaped the research of Dr. Johnson. In No. 69 of the Idler, upon the subject of translation, he alludes to an opinion expressed in Felltham's Preface to his Book. |