Excerpt from Essays of Our Times At its most typical, which is its most personal, the essay is a lively document out of the thought and experience of a man's life, and gives free entry not merely to casual acquaint ance with its author but often to such immediate and intimate understanding of his opinions, fancies, and emotions as the closest friendship can scarce afi'ord. For the essay is, as Christopher Morley has excellently Observed, a mood rather than a form. In essence It IS something between a lyric and a conversation: it has the lyric's clairvoyant power to reveal the truth in a flash of insight, and it has the mellow human quality of all good talk. As it tends away from these traits it tends toward the informational article in which the element of personality is suppressed. But unless the piece in question is an encyclopedia article, or a technical exposition, or a thesis, the stamp of the author's personality is discernible. Huxley, Ruskin, and Thoreau all wrote informing essays about nature, but with what wide differences! Carlyle and Newman both wrote formal reflective essays, but their books are as different as the two men. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.