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Some of Lamb's Essays of Elia, especially the Dream Children, introduce a delicate fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement into the story. At the close of this century German romanticism began to seep into English thought and prepare the way for things new in literary thought and treatment. The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
In winter, when the meetings were held regularly every fortnight, a fire of peat, sod, and dross lit up the curious company who sat round the table shaking their heads over Shelley's mysticism, or requiring to be called to order because they would not wait their turn to deny an essayist's assertion, that Berkeley's style was superior to David Hume's. Davit Hume, they said, and Watty Scott.
It is not the essayist's duty to inform, to build pathways through metaphysical morasses, to cancel abuses, any more than it is the duty of the poet to do these things. Incidentally he may do something in that way, just as the poet may, but it is not his duty, and should not be expected of him.
This is not a sociological treatise, it is just an essay; and I claim an essayist's privilege of not groping through the library of the British Museum on the chance of mastering all the details. I confess that I did go there yesterday, thinking I should find in Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's 'History of Trade Unionism' the means of appearing to know much. But I drew blank.
Swancourt. 'She does not seem very well. Cousin Knight, what were you thinking of? her tender brain won't bear cudgelling like your great head. You should have strictly forbidden her to play again. In truth, the essayist's experience of the nature of young women was far less extensive than his abstract knowledge of them led himself and others to believe.
You walk through the whole nature of him, as you walk through the streets of Pompeii, looking into the interior of stately mansions, reading the satirical scribblings on the walls. And the essayist's habit of not only giving you his thoughts, but telling you how he came by them, is interesting, because it shows you by what alchemy the ruder world becomes transmuted into the finer.
His instinct was that a preacher's concern was with his text, but not an essayist's or a reviewer's, and he was right enough. The essayist certainly has no such obligation or necessity. His reader can leave him at any moment, unless he is very interesting, and it does not matter where they part company.
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