ES SALT 



attempted an abortive coup d'etat, 

 was arrested but released, and after 

 the mpret's departure made himself 

 head of the provisional govern- 

 ment, Oct. 5, 1914. 



In Jan., 1916, he sided with the 

 Allies. In Feb. the Austrians over- 

 ran Albania, and Essad escaped to 

 Salonica. His connexion with the 

 Serbians, whom he had aided in 

 their 1915 retreat, made him dis- 

 tasteful to the Italians who occu- 

 pied Albania after the Austrian 

 retreat, 1918, and he was not al- 

 lowed to return there. He lived 

 for some months in Paris, and was 

 murdered by an Albanian student, 

 June 13, 1920. See Albania. 



Es Salt. Village of Palestine. 

 Identified as the ancient Ramoth 

 (Deut. iv, 43; Josh, xx, 8), it is 

 15 m. N.E. of the crossing of the 

 Jordan at El Ghoraniyeh, 20 N.E. 

 of the N. end of the Dead Sea. 

 Situated at an elevation of 2,740 ft. 

 above the sea, it is the capital of the 

 Kada (division) of El-Belka. Wine 

 and raisins are produced in the dis- 

 trict. The inhabitants are two- 

 thirds Moslems, the rest Greeks, 

 Protestants, and Roman Catholics. 

 During the Great War it was a 

 large depot of the Turks, who when 

 they retired from it, April 1, 1918, 

 brought away some thousands of 

 Jewish, Syrian, and Armenian 

 refugees. On April 30 Allenby re- 

 sumed operations E. of the Jordan, 

 and Australian mounted troops en- 

 tered Es Salt. It was evacuated 

 May 3, when Allenby withdrew his 

 whole force to the Jordan crossings. 

 See Palestine, Conquest of. 



Essay (Fr. essai, attempt ; Lat. 

 exigere, to examine). Literary com- 

 position, generally in prose, of a 

 short and informal character. The 

 origin of the word is the same as 

 that of assay, for at first it was 

 taken as indicating a testing or 

 trying of a subject. The word has, 

 however, at different times been 

 applied to a great variety of com- 

 positions, embracing at once the 

 sententious brevities of Bacon and 

 the fullness of such a philosophical 

 work as that of Locke, On the 

 Human Understanding. It is also 

 applied to certain of the didactic 

 poems of Pope. 



Montaigne (16th century) is 

 generally regarded as the origin- 

 ator of the- modern essay, as he was 

 the first to employ the word as title 

 for his pleasantly discursive and 

 personal writings ; yet, as Bacon, 

 the earliest notable master of the 

 English essay, wrote, " the word is 

 late, but the thing is ancient." 

 Bacon's Essays, 1597, are mainly 

 a succession of pithy maxims, and 

 differ greatly from the essay as it 

 was evolved during the succeeding 

 centuries ; for it was rather from 



2977 



the Frenchman than from their 

 countryman that the English es- 

 sayists derived. Ignoring its use as 

 something of an apologetic prefix to 

 philosophical and historical studies, 

 and its employment in poetry by 

 Pope and some of his imitators, the 

 history of the essay in English 

 literature may be followed in a 

 record of some of its exponents. 



Abraham Cowley, the first Eng- 

 lish author to write in the easy, 

 familiar, personal style of Mon- 

 taigne, though he frequently 

 rounded off his essay with a poem 

 on its theme, or wrote the essay as 

 little more than introduction to a 

 poem, may be called the father of 

 the familiar essay in English. It 

 was with Richard Steele and 

 Joseph Addison that the essay es- 

 tablished itself as a popular form 

 of literary composition. Their 

 personal studies in essay form in 

 The Tatler and The Spectator 

 are regarded as adumbrating the 

 English novel ; as two laughing 

 philosophers, with their genial com- 

 ment on men and affairs in periodi- 

 cal essays, they established a form 

 of the composition which continued 

 throughout the 18th century. 



In the hands of Daniel Defoe 

 early in that century, the periodical 

 essay received that particular bent 

 out of which developed the news- 

 paper leader. Towards the middle 

 of the century the periodical essay 

 was revived in The True Patriot, 

 The Rambler, The Covent Garden 

 Journal, The Adventurer, The 

 Idler, The Bee, The Citizen of the 

 World, and many more, and found 

 its most notable writers in Henry 

 Fielding, Samuel Johnson, and 

 Oliver Goldsmith. These various 

 works were brought together in 

 British Essayists, with prefaces by 

 A. Chalmers, 45 vols., 1817. 



With the 19th century the essay 

 branched more definitely into two 

 main kinds, both already, but less 

 distinctly, differentiated, the fami- 

 liar and the critical essay. Of the 

 writers of the former kind the 

 greatest examplar is Charles Lamb, 

 whose Essays of Elia, 1823, Last 

 Essays of Elia, 1833, and uncol- 

 lected essays may be said to have 

 influenced many of his successors 

 up to the present day. At the same 

 period William Hazlitt was writer 

 of essays of a more robust charac- 

 ter, and Leigh Hunt was master of 

 a dainty, graceful essay style, less 

 charmingly individual than that of 

 Lamb. The critical essay received 

 a stimulus from the establish- 

 ment of the quarterly reviews and 

 the rapid growth of the magazines, 

 Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, 

 and Thomas Babington Macaulay 

 being among its most notable ex- 

 ponents. 



ESSAYS OF ELIA 



Later essayists of note were 

 William Makepeace Thackeray, ' 

 whose Roundabout Papers (1863) 

 takes high rank among familiar 

 essays, James Anthony Froude, 

 and Matthew Arnold ; while more 

 recently Robert Louis Stevenson, 

 Austin Dobson, Augustine Birrell, 

 Arthur Christopher Benson, and 

 Edward Verrall Lucas have won 

 applause by their diverse writings 

 in this form. In America Ralph 

 Waldo Emerson has been the most 

 notable essayist, though Edgar 

 Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 

 James Russell Lowell, and more 

 recently Paul Elmer More (Shel- 

 burne Essays) must be mentioned. 

 See English Essays, ed. J. H. 



Lobban, 1896. Walter Jerrold 



Essay on Man, AN. Moral 

 poem by Alexander Pope. It takes 

 the form of four epistles to Lord 

 Bolingbroke, who is supposed to 

 have suggested the theme, and was 

 published anonymously in 1732-34. 

 Though it has been objected that 

 the author was hampered by the 

 metaphysical nature of his subject, 

 and gives no consistent scheme of 

 beliefs, the Essay will always be re- 

 membered for the many terse sen- 

 tences it has added to the great body 

 of familiar quotations. Among 

 these are : " The proper study of 

 mankind is man," "Hope springs 

 eternal in the human breast," 

 " Die of a rose in aromatic pain," 

 "Pleased with a rattle, tickled 

 with a straw," and a large number 

 of others. 



Essays and Reviews. Volume 

 by seven writers, six of them clergy- 

 men of the Church of England. 

 On its publication in 1860, its 

 rationalistic tendencies aroused a 

 storm of criticism. Two of the 

 clergymen Williams and Wilson 

 were suspended by the ecclesias- 

 tical courts, but the suspension was 

 revised on appeal to the Privy 

 Council, when, as it was said, Lord 

 Chancellor Westbury " dismissed 

 eternal punishment with costs." 

 The contents of the volume were : 

 The Education of the World, Fred- 

 erick Temple ; Bunsen's Biblical 

 Researches, Rowland Williams ; 

 On the Study of the Evidences of 

 Christianity, Baden-Powell ; The 

 National Church, H. B. Wilson ; 

 The Mosaic Cosmogony, C. W. 

 Goodwin ; Tendencies of Religious 

 Thought in England, 1688-1750, 

 Mark Pattison ; and the Interpreta- 

 tion of Scripture, Benjamin Jowett. 



Essays of Elia. Volume of 

 familiar papers on various themes 

 by Charles Lamb, published in 

 volume form in 1823 after appear- 

 ance in The London Magazine, and 

 supplemented in 1833 by the Last 

 Essays of Elia. These essays, vary- 

 ing from grave to gay, pervaded 



T 4 



