A History and Study of the Critical Essay

The Essay as a form in literary practice found its origin in the sixteenth century in the writings of Michel Montaigne. As Montaigne used it, the essay was a personal, chatty, intimate discourse between the author and the reader. John Richard Green described it very nicely when he wrote that the essayist (Montaigne) is a gentleman who chats to a world of gentle men and whose chat is shaped and coloured by a sense of what he owes to his company and what he owes to his subject. This while it characterizes the essay of Montaigne, hardly covers the scope of the essay as it appears in English Literature. We might rather accept the definition that the essay is an attempt, within certain limits, to elucidate the most important facts and thoughts concerning a chosen subject, and to place these thoughts in an attractive shape and a clear light before the reader Perceived in this light, the. essay is usu ally either comprehensive in time nor exhaustive in treatment. It is, rather, a view of some phase of the subject with the style of thought and treatment dependent upon both the mood and the angle of vision of the writer. It is the opportunity of the reader to look upon a subject through the eye-glass of the genius