THE WRITING OF ESSAYS
By CHARLES S. BROOKS
(1878—). After some years of business life, following his graduation from Yale, Mr. Brooks turned entirely to literary work. He has writtenA Journey to Bagdad; Three Pippins and Cheese to Come; Chimney-Pot Papers.During the World War he served with the Department of State in Washington.
(1878—). After some years of business life, following his graduation from Yale, Mr. Brooks turned entirely to literary work. He has writtenA Journey to Bagdad; Three Pippins and Cheese to Come; Chimney-Pot Papers.During the World War he served with the Department of State in Washington.
Here is a delightful, easy-going essay that presents most effectively the ideals and the methods of essay writing.An essayist, Mr. Brooks says, has no great literary purpose to accomplish: he is a reader, a thinker, a person who is interested in all sorts of subjects just because they are interesting. He writes of the little things in life because he loves them. He is essentially a lover of books and of libraries; one who dwells in the companionship of pleasant thoughts; one who gives us a sort of happy gossip that comes across the years, redolent with the charm of personality.
Here is a delightful, easy-going essay that presents most effectively the ideals and the methods of essay writing.
An essayist, Mr. Brooks says, has no great literary purpose to accomplish: he is a reader, a thinker, a person who is interested in all sorts of subjects just because they are interesting. He writes of the little things in life because he loves them. He is essentially a lover of books and of libraries; one who dwells in the companionship of pleasant thoughts; one who gives us a sort of happy gossip that comes across the years, redolent with the charm of personality.
An essayist needs a desk and a library near at hand, because an essay is a kind of back-stove cookery. A novel needs a hot fire, so to speak. A dozen chapters bubble in their turn above the reddest coals, while an essay simmers over a little flame. Pieces of this and that, an odd carrot, as it were, a left-over potato, a pithy bone, discarded trifles, are tossed in from time to time to feed the composition. Raw paragraphs, when they have stewed all night, at last become tender to the fork. An essay, therefore, cannot be written hurriedly on the knee. Essayists, as a rule, chew their pencils. Their desks are large and are always in disorder. There is a stack of books on the clock-shelf; others are pushed under the bed. Matches, pencils, and bits of paper mark a hundred references. When an essayist goes out from his lodging he wears the kind of overcoat that holds a book in every pocket; his sagging pockets proclaim him. He is a bulging person, so stuffed even in his dress with the ideas of others that his own leanness is concealed. An essayist keeps a note-book and hethumbs it for forgotten thoughts. Nobody is safe from him, for he steals from every one he meets. Like the man in the old poem, he relies on his memory for his wit.
An essayist is not a mighty traveler. He does not run to grapple with a roaring lion. He desires neither typhoon nor tempest. He is content in his harbor to listen to the storm upon the rocks, if now and then by a lucky chance he can shelter some one from the wreck. His hands are not red with revolt against the world. He has glanced upon the thoughts of many men, and as opposite philosophies point upon the truth, he is modest with his own and tolerant of others. He looks at the stars and, knowing in what a dim immensity we travel, he writes of little things beyond dispute. There are enough to weep upon the shadows; he, like a dial, marks the light. The small clatter of the city beneath his window, the cry of peddlers, children chalking their games upon the pavement, laundry dancing on the roofs, and smoke in the winter's wind—these are the things he weaves into the fabric of his thoughts. Or sheep upon the hillside, if his window is so lucky, or a sunny meadow is a profitable speculation. And so, while the novelist is struggling up a dizzy mountain, straining through the tempest to see the kingdoms of the world, behold the essayist, snug at home, content with little sights! He is a kind of poet—a poet whose wings are clipped. He flaps to no great heights, and sees neither the devil nor the seven oceans nor the twelve apostles. He paints old thoughts in shiny varnish and, as he is able, he mends small habits here and there.
And therefore, as essayists stay at home, they are precise, almost amorous, in the posture and outlook of their writing. Leigh Hunt[114]wished a great library next his study. “But for the study itself,†he writes, “give me a small snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it, looking on trees.†How the precious fellow scorns the mountains and the ocean! He has no love, itseems, for typhoons and roaring lions. “I entrench myself in my books,†he continues, “equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes down the passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables.†And by movables he means his books. These were his screen against cold and trouble. But Leigh Hunt had been in prison for his political beliefs. He had grappled with his lion. So perhaps, after all, my argument fails.
Mr. Edmund Gosse[115]had a different method to the same purpose. He “was so anxious to fly all outward noise†that he wished for a library apart from the house. Maybe he had had some experience with Annie and her clattering broomstick. “In my sleep,†he writes, “'when dreams are multitude,' I sometimes fancy that one day I shall have a library in a garden. The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man.... It sounds like having a castle in Spain, or a sheep-walk in Arcadia.â€[116]
Montaigne's[117]study was a tower, walled all about with books. At his table in the midst he was the general focus of their wisdom. Hazlitt[118]wrote much at an inn at Winterslow, with Salisbury Plain around the corner of his view. Except for ill health, and a love of the South Seas (here was the novelist showing itself), Stevenson[119]would probably have preferred a windy perch overlooking Edinburgh.
It does seem as if rather a richer flavor were given to a book by knowing the circumstance of its composition. Consequently readers, as they grow older, turn more and moreto biography. It is not chiefly the biographies that deal with great crises and events, but rather the biographies that are concerned with small circumstance and agreeable gossip.
Lately in a book-shop at the foot of Cornhill[120]I fell in with an old scholar who told me that it was his practice to recommend four books, which, taken end on end, furnished the general history of English writing from the Restoration[121]to a time within his own memory. These books were Pepy's “Diary,â€[122]Boswell's “Johnson,â€[123]the “Letters and Diaries†of Madame D'Arblay,[124]and the “Diary†of Crabbe Robinson.[125]
Beginning almost with the days of Cromwell, here is a chain of pleasant gossip the space of more than two hundred years. Perhaps at the first there were old fellows still alive who could remember Shakespeare; who still sat in chimney-corners and babbled through their toothless gums of Blackfriars and the Globe.[126]And at the end we find a reference to President Lincoln and his freeing of the slaves.
Here are a hundred authors, perhaps a thousand, tucking up their cuffs, looking out from their familiar windows, scribbling their masterpieces.
1. The Writing of School Compositions11. A Clerk in a Store2. The Preparation of a Debate12. A Teacher of Chemistry3. The Writing of Letters13. Preparing an Experiment4. A Pupil in School14. The Work of a Book Agent5. The Work of a Blacksmith15. Buying a Dress6. The Leader of an Orchestra16. Selecting a New Hat7. The Cheer-Leader at a Game17. Being Photographed8. Memorizing a Speech18. The Senior9. The Janitor of a School19. The Freshman10. The Editor of a Paper20. The Alumnus
1. The Writing of School Compositions11. A Clerk in a Store2. The Preparation of a Debate12. A Teacher of Chemistry3. The Writing of Letters13. Preparing an Experiment4. A Pupil in School14. The Work of a Book Agent5. The Work of a Blacksmith15. Buying a Dress6. The Leader of an Orchestra16. Selecting a New Hat7. The Cheer-Leader at a Game17. Being Photographed8. Memorizing a Speech18. The Senior9. The Janitor of a School19. The Freshman10. The Editor of a Paper20. The Alumnus
Your aim is to write an essay in imitation of the one written by Mr. Brooks. Read Mr. Brooks' essay so carefully that you will know just what to imitate.
Notice how easily and how pleasantly Mr. Brooks writes, and especially how he makes use of figurative language rather than of direct statement. Then, too, he uses some very striking expressions, such as “He desires neither typhoon nor tempest,†and “He paints old thoughts in shiny varnish.†At the same time he uses common expressions now and then, as if to give a touch of familiarity or of humor,—“He flaps to no great heights,†“He mends small habits,â€â€œWho still sat in chimney corners and babbled through their toothless gums.†With it all, he gives a clear conception of the essayist and his work.
Try to imitate all this in your own writing. Avoid being stiff and formal, and try to write easily, familiarly, originally, and with dignity. Remember that your aim is to give pleasure rather than information.