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XX. Essays and Letter-Writing
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Though Mr. C. E. Whitmore in his paper, “The Field of the Essay” has suggested with exceptional sharpness the full function of the letter in the development of various essay types, he has, like other writers on the essay, failed definitely to relate the two forms. Both types are exceedingly vague and complex. And if Mr. Whitmore decides that “the effort to discover a single continuous ‘essay tradition’ in English is vain” and adds that he “can see no reason to suppose that Lamb's work would have been in the slightest degree altered if Bacon had never written a line;” it is likewise true that the letter throughout its history shows perhaps even more striking irregularities and lack of discipline. Nevertheless, though both essay and letter are inchoate literary identities which have in the past taken on a variety of exteriors, there are undoubtedly points in common between them; there is even, I should like to show, sufficient evidence to argue a definite and deliberate indebtedness on the part of essay writers for elements which belong primarily to the familiar letter and to it alone of all recognized literary forms.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1926
References
1 P.M.L.A., XXXVI, 551 ff.
2 Essays, Author to the Reader.
3 Essays, A Consideration upon Cicero, Bk. I, Ch. xxxix.
4 Essays, Dedication to Prince Henry, 1612 edit. This dedication was cancelled before publication owing to the death of the Prince.
5 The title-page of the Spanish Letters, Historicall, Satiricall, and Moral, of the famous Don Antonio de Guevara, (trans. 1697), advertises that they were “written by way of Essay on different Subjects, and every where intermixt with both Raillerie and Gallantry.”
6 The tone of Thomas Forde (Familiar Letters, 1660), one of Howell's closest imitators, was somehow, in spite of the best intentions, impersonal. Loveday, another follower (Letters, 1659), has in one case at least—Letter XXVII to his Sister F. Concerning Prayer—written a genuine Baconian essay.
7 Love and Business (1702), pp. 112 ff.
8 Characteristics, Miscellaneous Reflections, No. 1, Ch. III.
9 The Correspondence of William Cowper, ed. Thomas Wright, London, 1904; I, 221, Aug. 6, 1780.
10 Ibid., I, 341, Aug. 16, 1781.
11 A Letter Book, pp. 24-5.
12 C. B. Bradley, “The English Essay—Its development and some of its perfected types.” University Chronicle, (Berkeley, Cal.), I (1898), 393ff.
13 A Century of Essays (Everyman edition), p. ix.
14 W. L. MacDonald, The Beginnings of the English Essay. University of Toronto Studies, 1914.
15 D. T. Pottinger, English Essays, p. ix.
16 W. L. MacDonald, op. cit., p. 19. Bacon likewise writes: “As for my essays and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreation of my other studies, and in that sort purpose to continue them; though I am not ignorant, that those kind of writings would, with less pains and embracement (perhaps), yield more lustre and reputation to my name, than those other which I have on hand.” Letter to the Bishop of Winchester, Works (ed. Spedding, 1874), xiv, 374.
17 Epistolœ Ho-Elianœ, Bk. II, Nos. 55-60.
18 Ibid., II, 8-11. Beside these it is only fair to set a similar series of letters on education, which William Cowper—most familiar of letter-writers—wrote to his intimate friend, Unwin; a comparison which should in part, at least, absolve Howell.
19 Ibid., II, 54.
20 Ibid., III, 7.
21 Ibid., IV, 43.
22 Ibid., III, 23.
23 For others of Howell's letters which are essentially essays, cf.: Ep. Ho-El., I, v. 42; I, vi, 14; II, 8; II, SO; III, 3; III, 8; III, 9; IV, 7.
24 Joseph Jacobs mentions these points of contact in his edition of the Ep. Ho-El., II, lxvii.
25 “…. But such little Remarks, as may be continued within the Compass of a Letter, and such unpremeditated Thoughts, as may be Communicated between Friend and Friend, without incurring the censure of the World or setting up for a Dictator, you shall have from me since you have enjoyn'd it.”
26 E.g., Goldsmith's Chinese Letters, or Swift's Drapier's Letters.
27 The bare fact of these relations is mentioned at the several points by E. V. Lucas in the notes to his excellent edition of the Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. His immediate task did not lead him to study the resemblances, or, except in one instance, to comment even slightly upon them.
28 To William Wordsworth, April 9, 1816.
29 The Two Races of Men.
30 Though this letter to Coleridge is undated, and has commonly been put in the year 1824—thus working grave injury to our pipe-dream—we have the opinion of Mr. Lucas (Vol. VI, p. 545) to support a feeling that one cannot separate this delightful letter and the essay of December, 1820.
31 Many of Lamb's essays are in the form of letters, either to his friends as here, or to the editor of the magazine in which he happened to be publishing.
32 December 1. 1824; and the London Magazine of April, 1825.
33 In the essay, this paragraph preceded the one opening, “See him in the dish ….,” and curiously this is the same as the relative position of the first mention of crackling in the letter. “You had all some of the crackling—” writes Lamb, “and brain sauce.”
34 No. II, 1811.
35 Vol. I, cols. 425-26, 1827.