ntaigne talks endlessly on the most trivial subjects without ever
becoming trivial. To those who really love reading and have some
sympathy with humanity, Montaigne's _Essays_ are a "perpetual refuge
and delight," and it is interesting to reflect how far in literary
fame this man, who talked about his meals, his horse, and his cat,
outshines thousands of scholarly and talented writers, who discussed
only the most serious themes in politics and religion. The great
English prose writers in the field of the personal essay during the
seventeenth century were Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, and Abraham
Cowley, though Walton's _Compleat Angler_ is a kindred work. Browne's
_Religio Medici_, and his delightful _Garden of Cyrus_, old Tom
Fuller's quaint _Good Thoughts in Bad Times_ and Cowley's charming
_Essays_ are admirable examples of this school of composition.
Burton's wonderful _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is a colossal personal
essay. Some of the papers of Steele and Addison in the _Tatler_,
_Guardian,_ and the _Spectator_ are of course notable; but it was not
until the appearance of Charles Lamb that the personal essay reached
its climax in English literature. Over the pages of the _Essays of
Elia_ hovers an immortal charm--the charm of a nature inexhaustible in
its humour and kindly sympathy for humanity. Thackeray was another
great master of the literary easy-chair, and is to some readers more
attractive in this attitude than as a novelist. In America we have had
a few writers who have reached eminence in this form, beginning with
Washington Irving, and including Donald G. Mitchell, whose _Reveries
of a Bachelor_ has been read by thousands of people for over fifty
years.

As a personal essayist Stevenson seems already to belong to the first
rank. He is both eclectic and individual. He brought to his pen the
reminiscences of varied reading, and a wholly original touch of
fantasy. He was literally steeped in the gorgeous Gothic diction of
the seventeenth century, but he realised that such a prose style as
illumines the pages of William Drummond's _Cypress Grove_ and Browne's
_Urn Burial_ was a lost art. He attempted to imitate such writing only
in his youthful exercises, for his own genius was forced to express
itself in an original way. All of his personal essays have that air of
distinction which attracts and holds one's attention as powerfully in
a book as it does in social intercourse. Everything that he has to say
see