How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat,
And the stark and staring eyes
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;

And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul's strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.

620

630

"Now leave the chair upon the grass:

And with tears of blood he cleansed the Bring hound and huntsman here,

hand,

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

In silence let him lie:

No need to waste the foolish tear,

Or heave the windy sigh:

And I on this strange road will pass,
Fill full of ancient cheer."

His eyelids droop, his head falls low,
His old eyes cloud with dreams;
The sun upon all things that grow
Pours round in sleepy streams.

Brown Dermot treads upon the lawn,
And to the armchair goes,

10

And now the old man's dreams are gone,
He smooths the long brown nose.

20

And now moves many a pleasant tongue
Upon his wasted hands,

For leading aged hounds and young
The huntsman near him stands.

"My huntsman, Rody, blow the horn, And make the hills reply."

The man had killed the thing he loved, The huntsman loosens on the morn

The servants round his cushioned place The blind hound with a mournful din

40

THE CONTEMPORARY ESSAY

The essay today is the product of all previous varieties of the type in English literature. Each of its important kinds has been fully illustrated in this volume: the moral and didactic essay of Bacon, presenting compact observations on topics which it is interesting to speculate upon, the periodical essay of Addison and Steele in which the scope is extended to include descriptive sketches of men and manners, narrative episodes in which a thoughtful, or amusing, or satirical quality is present, and discussions of many matters; the formal essay in which literary, historical, scientific, and social questions are treated with stylistic finish, as in the examples from Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, and Pater; and the familiar essay of Charles Lamb and many others in which the author converses pleasantly at his ease with the reader in a very intimate and personal way. The essay as found in contemporary literature may be any of these things, or various combinations of them.

W. H. Hudson was a naturalist and one of the greatest of recent essayists. "How I Became An Idler," from Idle Days in Patagonia, illustrates the out-of-door essay at its best. John Galsworthy is best known as a playwright and novelist. With a singularly judicial attitude he attacks class prejudice and the stupidity of struggles between labor and capital. He is ever the reformer. His essay called "A Commentary" is naturally cast in narrative and conversational form. Max Beerbohm is a writer with a subtle humor and a gift of caricature. The essay here printed is an amusing imitation of one of his contemporaries. G. K. Chesterton is characterized by a journalistic style and a love of paradox. He has genuine critical power. The discussion of Martin Chuzzlewit is a very interesting comment by one whom a certain community of spirit renders especially fitted to interpret Dickens. Lord Dunsany is the author of plays and sketches full of Celtic fancy and strange power. The essays included here are brief but vivid pictures of war at the front. W. H. Tomlinson passed from reporter to war correspondent to member of the editorial board of the London Nation. The Sea and the Jungle, a narrative of a South American voyage; Old Junk, a collection of essays on miscellaneous subjects; and London River, a series of essays on scenes and characters along the water-front, are his most important volumes. They reveal a distinctive note in English prose style.

It would be possible to adopt a more rigorous definition of the essay which would exclude one or more of the pieces named, but it seemed better and more in accord with present tendencies to indicate by the diversity of the following specimens the wide range and varied form of the essay of today.