January J, 191S 
LAND & WATER 
Eife anil Jtctters 
By J. C, Squire 
An Essayist 
THE term " Essay " is one whicli is employed of 
a numerous \-ariety of things. They range from 
the school-boy's painfulh' accumulated thousand 
words on some absurd subject in which he does 
not take the slightest interest to Locke's jiorrible great ' 
treatise on the Human Understanding. E\en when these 
things have been ruled out, and only indubitable and universally 
acknowledged essays remain, the critic is hard put to it to 
frame an inclusive and exclusive deiinition which will at once 
rope in Montaigne, Bacon, Cowley, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, 
Lamb, Hazlit, Wasliington Irving, De Ouinccy, Stevenson, 
Mr. Chesterton, Mr. Belloc, Mr. Lucas.' Dr. "Johnson and 
Lord Macaulay, and rope them off from authors who, although 
tliev l)'a\T composed short prose works, are deemed to ha\"e 
written ratlier articles, studies or sketclies than essays. Some- 
body says an essay must be whimsical and wayward, and 
up leaps Lord Macaulay. Somebody else sa\s it must not 
be didactic, and immediately one remembers a hundred 
e.xamples, not excluding, some of Stevenson's, which are 
deliberately improving. Name any element as impossible 
and you will find it present ; any element as indispensable 
and you will find it absent. One feels that there is something 
that all genuine essayists have in common, besides their 
unlikcness from each other. But for myself I am inclined to 
commit myself to only one positive generahsation and that 
is, that no essay on record is a billion words long. 
***** 
The succession of English essayists is an illustrious one, 
and although we have no great living writer to whom the 
essay is his only or principal form, the present age is fairly 
rich in them. Mr. Robert Lynd^ whose // lite Germans 
Conquered England (Maunsel, js. 6d. net.), follows liis 
Book of Tin's and Thai — is certainly excelled by no other 
li\ing writer in the kind. Until a new essayist appears 
it is always difficult to imagine how a really new one can l)e 
jKjssible. Every conceivable thing seems to have been done 
within the essayist's narrow limits. But the thing solves 
itself ; the essay is a personal thing, and no two personalities, 
expressing themselves candidly and following their own 
bents, will produce exactly similar results. Mr. Lvnd's 
essays arc of several sorts. Some are predominantly political ; 
some deal with general human characteristics or social institu- 
tions ; some arc mainly descriptive. But there is not one 
which a stranger could for one moment dream of assigning 
to any other writer. The large familiar elements, observa- 
tion and reflection, humour and wit, common sense and ideal- 
ism, fancy and imagination, eloquence and a nice choice of 
words, arc all here, but mingled once more in novel propor- 
tions and united by a new and fresh personattty. Nowhere 
does Mr. Lynd's unique gift come out more strikingly than 
in his political and moral .sermons. Plenty of people have 
preached such : plenty of men have proclaimed this gospel 
of Liberalism an d Nationality, of democracy and freedom, 
of courage, chivalry and , generosity ; and Mr. Lynd's own 
pages bristle witli the names of men who have believed and 
preached very much what he believes and preaches himself. 
But it is pretty safe to say that not one of them has promulgated 
his doctrines with Mr. Lynd's high spirits. Mr. Shaw can 
buffoon and can ram home a moral doctrine witli a comic 
illustration ; but his power in this regard has flourished at 
the expense of his ability to appeal to the heart. Except 
for Mr. Chesterton, I cannot think of another writer who can 
be so thoroughly didactic as Mr. Lynd, whilst preserving his 
whimsical pojnt of view ; who can play tiie fool for our amuse- 
ment, and, at the same time, send us away feeling that we 
have been in contact with the heart of goodness and that we 
simply must behave ourselves better. He at once communicates 
his profound reverence for humanity and his avowed doctrine 
that almost the whole of mankind can be grouped imder the 
three types of tiie ass, the goat .and the goose. The reason 
is that he is honest witli liimself, that he is aware of his diviner 
impulses and at the same time aware, if I may say so, that there 
is a good deal of the ass, the goat and the goose in himself. 
It is not easy to illustrate his greatest quality, namely, his 
power of argument. To show that properly one \\ould 
have to quote bodily some such essay as that on " A Nation- 
ality," or that other one on " Ceward Conscience," wiiicii 
concludes : 
It there a single nation in the world that has a bad conscience 
at the present mumeui ? If there is, let it hold up its hand ; 
it is the hope of the human r;^cc.. 
and in the course of which, discussing the Gerniau's efforts 
at self justification, he obserxes that " one gets a certain 
comfort from .seeing a nation take oft" its hat to justice, even 
if it passes by on the other side." His humoUr too, is a 
matter rather of paragraphs than of phrases, thougli one 
finds very agreeable little accidents like "the coral insect— 
if it is an insect — I speak without prejudice — " pnd the 
comment on the present campaign for the Simple Life in the 
National Interest : , 
aged bon vivavts will have to dye their hair and smuggle them- 
selves into the army in order to get a decent plate o£ roast 
beef. 
and the terse peroration of his study of myths, war myths 
and others : 
.'Mreadv tlie visionary armv has melted into thin air. The 
Belgian child is .slowly melting. Kven Lord Haldanc is 
melting. The myths of savages grow with a certain gigantic 
slowness, and they enjoy long Ii\es like forest trees and tor- 
toises, but the myths of civilised men last no longer than 
garden flowers, or grass, or cheese, or the daily paper. 
His descriptive and humorously reflective genius it would be 
easier to illustrate. 
One has seen many rhapsodies on London's beauties, 
but none at once so accurate and so fanciful as his 
beautiful essay " The Darkness;" one has seen many attacks, 
on London's ugliness, but none so convincing as the drab 
catalogue which fills the first two pages of "On Doing Nothing." 
But for a characteristic passage, I had rather, I think, come 
to his philosophic lament " Farewell to Treating." 
I'ngland is a public-house-going -nation. She drank- beer 
under the sign of the Seven Stars, and rested the soles of her 
feet in the sawdust at the bar of the Salutation and Cat Iqng 
before Columbus lost him.self at sea, or Isaac Newton began 
to take note of falling apples. Is not the very word " public- 
house " an epitome of the history of a nation's pleasure ? 
There ha\e been periods in history when men ha\e 
been compelled by law to go to church, but no law was 
ever needed to drive a man into an inn. He has found 
here a true house of peers, in which Oliver Cromwell's ideal 
that every Jack shall be a gentleman is realised as it has not 
yet l>een realised in politics. The public-houses in cities 
are not, I admit, so democratic as that. Their public bans 
and private bars and saloon bars and jug-and-bottle entrances 
wall off the classes from each other like animals in cages, and 
in some of them even a row of little shutters, at the height 
of a man's face, conceal the respectable tradesman from his 
carter, who mav be roaring in the four-ale bar. None the 
less, the public house is, on the whole, a place of relaxation 
and friendliness. Men who have left their homes with soiu" 
faces here find no difficulty in beaming upon strangers. Such 
an atmosphere of generosity indeed dwells in the public-house 
like a guardian spirit that the law has had on more than one 
occasion to step iii and forbid men to be excessively friends 
with one another. And now comes the no-treating order, as 
another fetter upon this easy traditional charity. It is no 
longer possible to pay for another man's drink in a London 
])ublic-housc, whether he be your friend or whether, he be 
one of those homeless night birds with the sadness of defeat 
in their hollow eyes, for whom all is lost save beer. 
When wc have read essays like this it is easy to understand 
what it is that makes Mr. Lynd so powerful as a political 
debater. The two most essential qualities are to be found 
in the last twenty words. 
THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 
AND AFTER 
rOK J.\NU.\IiV coniDKiues a new volume, and contamc— 
Americans. Hall! Ky Sir WILUAM W.\TSO\. 
In the Balance. \'-3 In. .MiTUCll 8n.\D\VELL. 
The British Conatitution and the Conduct of War 
in Sl'KNSICi; wn,KIX.-<(lN (Chicliilo ITol. of Military Histor), Oxford.) 
Let Women Say! An Appeal to the House ot Lord*. 
liy Mr.*. UtlMPHIlY W.\KD. 
Riisso German Relations and the Sabouroff Memoirs (concluded). 
l)y I'KOFliSSOU J. V. SIMPSOX. 
The Enemies ol Child Lite. 
r.v Sir AlUHbll XliWSHOI.ME, K.C.B., M.D. 
Fad versus Dogma i an Appeal to the Church. 
Uv Sir OLlVr.ll LODGIi. F.H.S. 
Teuton anainsl Roman. Dy the Very licv. C.VXON WIIXIAM BAILIIY. U.D. 
The German Octopus. By W. MOIiRIS COLLES. 
Shahspeare and Italy. By Sir 1 DWAUU si;i.I.IVAN, Bart. 
Literature and Politics. liy C.ii>tain i. H. MOKGAN. 
Parnell and his Liberal Allies. liy WILLIAM O'BniLN, M.P. 
The Fight against Venereal Intection: a Rejoinder. 
liy Sir nn,VAX DOXKIN, M.U. 
Jerusalem Delivered: a Commemoration and a Warning. 
By WALTER 8ICHKL. 
Capital and the Coet ot War. By W. H. .MAIJ-OCK. 
The 'Freedom of the Seas." By JOHX LEYLANU. 
I.oudoL: S|i;>lti»»<iodc. BalUiilvue 4. Co.. Ltil., 1, .Sew Street Si]U«re. 
