ABSTRACT
It is sad to think that in this day and age when the presses turn out thousands of pages of print every hour of the day, the art of the essay, and particularly the familiar essay, should lie so nearly dead. This, one supposes, can be laid to the mad pace at which we live today. There is too little time in our rushed age for the reader to sit down for a moment to contemplate some gentle aspcet of our lives. We must be caught up in activity that is so frantic that sitting at our ease becomes a lost art. The day is long past when Charles Lamb could contemplate the joys of dining upon roast pig in a delightful essay. The days are longer gone since readers stood on the street corners and read aloud the quiet comments of Sir Roger de Coverley. The Tatler’s politics were expressed in terms which today would hardly be heard in our noisy marketplace. It repeat: It is a thing of pity that the friendly essay and the good conversatioj it betokens have all but disappeared in this day and age.
