18 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
ENGLISH ESSAYISTS 
(Continued from Page 1, 2d col.) 
‘ whom went beyond their leader. The 
field was an attractive one, and was 
cultivated by many writers with great 
painstaking and assiduity. The essay 
became the fashionable form of com- 
position and of interesting the reading 
public. 
The prince of English essayists was 
no doubt Addison (1672-1719) as Mon- 
taigne held the same rank incontest- 
ably in France. But Addison was one 
of a distinguished group, of which he 
was the bright, particular star. Among 
these, though they were not all con- 
temporaries, were Sir William Temple, 
Defoe, Steele, Sterne, Swift, Pope 
and Johnson. Some of these writers 
were scarcely the inferiors of Addison 
in literary power, some of them even 
surpassed him in certain directions ; 
but Time that tests all has pronounced 
in favor of Addison as the essayist, 
par excellence, of the English tongue. 
We do not disparage others when we 
say that Addison carried the essay in 
the Spectator to a height of perfec- 
tion never before reached. He has 
been succeeded, it is true, by others 
in the same prolific field who have 
won enduring fame. Coleridge, Lamb, 
Froude, Carlyle, Freeman and many 
others, including writers forthe reviews 
and magazines, have attained various 
degrees of excellence in this depart- 
ment, and added flexibility and copi- 
ousness to the language. Macaulay’s 
essays, which have been famed for 
half a century and more wherever the 
English language is known, are too 
grave and stately to be ranked in the 
same category with the Idler and 
Spectator; some of them are brief 
biographies, some are historical mono- 
graphs, and some political disquisi- 
tions; but they lack that easy flow 
and light handling which belong to 
the essay proper. The essay on Mil- 
ton, written in student days, with its 
affluence of learning and wealth and 
splendor of diction, will live as a mon- 
ument of English prose until the New 
Zealander sits on the ruins of London 
bridge, surveying the decay of the 
British empire. It is on these essays 
more than on his history, fascinating 
as that is, that Macaulay’s permanent 
fame will rest. 
Among later English  essayists, 
Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, has 
the warmest place in the hearts of 
Englishmen. Always smooth, he is 
never dull or prosy; never shallow, he 
is always clear; heis vivacious without 
frivolity ; serious, yet humorous ; by 
turns lively and pensive, grave and 
gay. Nothing is more beautiful than 
the loyal affection between him and 
his sister Mary, his life-long compan- 
ion and sympathetic helper; nothing 
SPUD ERS GTS ee AS eee 
Remover of HousejWaste and Ashes. 
Jobbing and Expressing 
H. A. BURCHSTEAD, Manager 
Board for Horses. 
Horse Clipping. Order Box with Loomis, the Jeweler. 
P.O. Address, BOX 409, MANCHESTER, MASS. 
is more pathetic than the darkening 
of the cloud of mild but hopeless in- 
sanity about the happy home. 
In the last century some of the best 
literary talent in England has found 
place in the pages of the periodical 
press, trom the palmy days of the 
Edinburg and Blackwood down to the 
Saturday Review; a kind of rehabilita- 
tion of the times of the Spectator and 
Tatler, with larger view, broader 
scope and ampler learning. One must 
now look to the reviews and maga- 
zines for the best samples of the essay 
style on both sides of the Atlantic. 
Among ourselves we have papers, like 
the Nation, which, so far as goo 
writing is concerned, compare well 
with the best English periodicals. 
But literary history must recognize 
the fact that there was something in 
the intellectual and social atmosphere 
of England in the 18th century that 
seemed specially favorable to the de- 
velopment of the essay as a form of 
literary art. And a school of writers 
who possessed the undefinable grace 
that belongs to the make-up of the 
essay sprang up almost simultaneously, 
making the 18th century the senten- 
tious age of English literature, as 
distinguished from the serious age, 
the age of Milton and Bacon, of Tay- 
lor and Barrow and Browne, which 
preceded it, and the sympathetic age 
of Landor and De Quincey, of Hallorn 
and Ruskin, which followed it. It 
was emphatically an age of belle- 
letters, an age in which the essay 
found a congenial soil and attained a 
rapid and luxuriant growth. It was 
an age of conversation and gossip, of 
refinement in literature and conven- 
tional taste. Less rich and varied 
than the age of Elizabeth or Victoria, 
it had a piquancy and picturesqueness 
all its own. 
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That you are well insured. 
When homes go up in smoke, 
Or property’s a soak 
You'll find it is no joke 
Unless you’re well insured. 
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Pulsifer’s Block, Manchester, [lass. 
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