Formerly the essay was the recreation of the learned and
vfas not without its whimsies and oddities of style or thought. To-day the essayist serves a wider public and expresses not to much his own point of view as that of the ordinary man hurrying along the street or pottering about the garden. Geniality and a common-sense philosophy are requisite : eccentricity is to be avoided. Articles may provoke or con- tradict us : the essay must please us. The kindly exercise of the essay form might well be recommended to dramatic critics and all writers who hold angry views. Mr. Priestley
iS a careful craftsman the form. Whether he writes on Punch and Judy, residential hotels, the country circus, or motor cars, he can always express in a happy way just what• we would say, had we, all, the power of expressing ourselves. AttaY of his essays in The Balconinny and Other Essays thuen, huen, 584 or " middles," are topical, but none lacks quiet avmour, restrained fancy and genuine touches of observation-
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