ABSTRACT
“at present the essay, as a serious, yet personal, intimate, and friendly way of public utterance, is at a low ebb. Those who write ‘easy’ essays write idly about trifles, often with some elegance, in the tone of polite society; but these things are essentially empty. The tendency is to write articles, not about things in general, about life as it is lived and thought about, or lived and not thought about by the essayist, but about something in particular—literature let us say—from a rather expert or professional point of view.”
