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MODERN ESSAYS
SELECTED BY
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT. 1921, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY
QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC.
RAHWAY, N. J.
PREFACE
IT had been my habit, I am now aware, to speak somewhat lightly of thelabors of anthologists: to insinuate that they led lives of blandsedentary ease. I shall not do so again. When the publisher suggested acollection of representative contemporary essays, I thought it would bethe most lenient of tasks. But experience is a fine aperitive to themind.
Indeed the pangs of the anthologist, if he has conscience, areburdensome. There are so many considerations to be tenderly weighed;personal taste must sometimes be set aside in view of the general plan;for every item chosen half a dozen will have been affectionately connedand sifted; and perhaps some favorite pieces will be denied because theauthors have reasons for withholding permission. It would be enjoyable(for me, at any rate) to write an essay on the things I have lingeredover with intent to include them in this little book, but have finallysacrificed for one reason or another. How many times—twenty at least—Ihave taken down from my shelf Mr. Chesterton's The Victorian Age inLiterature to reconsider whether his ten pages on Dickens, or hisglorious summing-up of Decadents and Æsthetes, were not absolutelyessential. How many times I have palpitated upon certain passages inThe Education of Henry Adams and in Mr. Wells's Outline of History,which, I assured myself, would legitimately stand as essays if shrewdlyexcerpted.
But I usually concluded that would not be quite fair. I have not beenoverscrupulous in this matter, for the essay is a mood rather than aform; the frontier between the essay and the short story is asimperceptible as is at present the once famous Mason and Dixon line.Indeed, in that pleasant lowland country between the two empires lie (tomy way of thinking) some of the most fertile fields of prose—fictionthat expresses feeling and character and setting rather than action andplot; fiction beautifully ripened by the lingering mild sunshine of theessayist's mood. This is fiction, I might add, extremely unlikely to getinto the movies. I think of short stories such as George Gissing's, inthat too little known volume The House of Cobwebs, which I read againand again at midnight with unfailing delight; fall asleep over; forget;and again re-read with undiminished satisfaction. They have nobrilliance of phrase, no smart surprises, no worked-up 'situations'which have to be taken at high speed to pass without breakdown overtheir brittle bridgework of credibility. They have only the modest andfaintly melancholy savor of life itself.
Yet it is a mere quibble to pretend that the essay does not have easilyrecognizable manners. It may be severely planned, or it may ramble inungirdled mood, but it has its own point of view that marks it from theshort story proper, or the merely personal memoir. That distinction,easily felt by the sensitive reader, is not readily expressible. Perhapsthe true meaning of the word essay—an attempt—gives a clue. Nomatter how persona