THE ANTIQUITY OF THE ESSAY
“The thing is ancient”; there is no doubt of that. Analogies to the mood of the modern essay and to its urbane, free, flexible methods of discussion, may be found in the “Dialogues” of Plato,〖See, for example, H. C., ii, 5ff.〗 in the “Lives”〖H. C., xii, 5ff.〗 and “Morals” of Plutarch, in the letters of Cicero,〖H. C., ix, 9ff.〗 Horace, and the younger Pliny,〖H. C., ix. 187.〗 in the gossipy “Attic Nights” of Aulus Gellius, in the talks of Epictetus,〖H. C., ii, 117ff.〗 and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.〖H. C., ii, 193ff.〗 There is nothing new under the sun; and there were Greek and Roman gentlemen quite as capable as Montaigne of writing with frankness, ease, quaintness, and an open-minded attitude of skeptical inquiry. But though they often revealed the spirit of the modern essayist, they were groping uncertainly after the appropriate literary form. Montaigne’s great achievement was to hazard his fortunes in an unsurpassed series of “sallies,” “assaults,” “assays” upon a hundred entrenched topics, and always to come bravely off—so that his tactics became the model for all literary skirmishes. To think and feel and write like Montaigne was to produce the modern essay. Without his example, it is doubtful if we should have had the essays of Lamb, of Emerson, and of Stevenson.