Selected Essays

Mr. Benson is a facile writer, and more than a score of volumes · already stand to his credit. Chief among them are several collections of charming essays, including The Upton Letters (1905), From a College Window (1906), Beside Still Waters (1907), At Large (1908), and The Silent Isle (1910), and others no less important. Mr. Benson treats many subjects, and always with suggestiveness and interest. His style is smooth and harmonious, combining some of the characteristics of Walter Pater with some of those of Stevenson. He is always urbane, unruffled, and fluent. His point of view is that of the cultivated scholar and polished gentleman, and accordingly his appeal is mainly to persons with a background of culture.

Books (page 144)

Books is taken from the volume entitled From a College Window. The collegiate atmosphere so noticeable in much of Mr. Benson's work is evident here from the very start. The perfect clearness and admirable structure of this essay make it a model for students to follow. It is worth observing how the author proceeds from the material to the idealistic elements of his subject, even concluding with a kind of discussion of life itself. The last few paragraphs are fine examples of a rich and eloquent prose style, passionless, it is true, but still decidedly impressive.

SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS (Page 158)

MR. SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS is probably the best-known of contemporary American essayists. Born in Oswego, Illinois, on June 7, 1857, he studied for the ministry, and has been, since 1894, pastor of the First Unitarian Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been for some years a regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, and his essays have been collected in several volumes, including The Gentle Reader, Among Friends, and others.

As an essayist Mr. Crothers belongs to the same literary family as Oliver Wendell Holmes. His work is genial and witty, often whimsical and paradoxical. His style is allusive, abounding in apt metaphors and illuminating, if unexpected, turns of expression. More, perhaps, than any living writer he has succeeded in reproducing the manner of the classic masters of the Familiar Essay; but he has done this, not through imitation, but through a method entirely his own.

The Evolution of the Gentleman (page 158)

The essay is reprinted from the volume entitled The Gentle Reader, published October, 1903.

1. Wat Tyler: an English peasant who raised an insurrection in 1381, and was slain by William Walworth, Mayor of London.

2. Plutarch: a Greek philosopher and moralist (A.D. 46?-120?), who wrote the lives of many famous Greeks and Romans. 3. Morte Darthur: a prose romance published in 1485 by William Caxton and written by Sir Thomas Malory.

4. Night Thoughts: a gloomy philosophical poem published in 1742-44 by Edward Young (1681–1765).

5. Course of Time: an exceedingly dull poem in blank verse written in 1727 by Robert Pollok.

6. Benvenuto Cellini: a Florentine artist (1500–71), who wrote a fascinating Autobiography.

7. Beau Nash: a notorious fop and dandy of the eighteenth century.

8. Lord Chesterfield: a statesman and writer (1694-1773) distinguished principally for his fine manners. His Letters were sent to his natural son, Philip Stanhope.

9. Roger de Coverley: the old Tory knight in Addison and Steele's Spectator.

AGNES REPPLIER (Page 176)

MISS AGNES REPPLIER, the well-known lecturer and essayist, was born in 1857 in Philadelphia and educated at the Sacred Heart Convent, Torresdale, Pennsylvania. Since 1885 she has devoted her attention mainly to literary work, contributing to magazines, especially to the Atlantic Monthly, and publishing at intervals volumes of collected essays. Among her best books are Books and Men (1888), Points of View (1891), Essays in Idleness (1893), Compromises (1904), and Americans and Others (1912).

Miss Repplier's most conspicuous characteristic is a delightful and delicate vein of humor, which underlies all her work. Her essays are generally of a literary type, either about books or authors, or else with a bookish flavor, due to many references to writers and their productions. Her style is remarkably even.

The titles of her essays are usually well chosen, being often in the form of paradoxes or epigrams.

The Mission of Humour (page 176)

The Mission of Humour is taken from Americans and Others, Miss Repplier's latest volume. The subject is a difficult one, but it has been a favorite with essayists; Hazlitt and Mr. Crothers, among others, have written delightfully on humor. This particular essay illustrates Miss Repplier's gentle and subtle irony, her trenchant satire, and her apt method of bringing quotations and allusions to bear on her topic. A work of such recent date should be sufficiently clear without annotation.

LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS (Page 192)

LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS was born in Salem, Massachusetts, April 1, 1857, and was educated at Harvard University, to which place he returned as Instructor in English. Since 1902 he has been Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. Dean Briggs, who has written and lectured frequently on school and college problems, exerts a wide influence among educators to-day, and is recognized as speaking with wisdom and authority on matters connected with university life.

The Transition from School to College (page 192)

This essay, reprinted from School, College, and Character (1901) is included here because it illustrates the usefulness of the Essay as a means of talking informally to young men. It must be added also that Dean Briggs's work has a real literary value, apart from the sane advice which it contains.

Modern English Prose and Poetry for Secondary
Schools. Edited by MARGARET ASHMUN.

Prose Literature for Secondary Schools. With some suggestions for correlation with composition. Edited by MARGARET Ashmun. With an introduction by WILLARD G. BLEYER.

American and English Classics for Grammar Grades.

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Selections from the Riverside Literature Series for

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Selections from the Riverside Literature Series for
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