ON BEGINNING AN ESSAY.

NOTHING is harder than to begin an essay. Indeed, there are those who will tell you that the whole art of essay-writing lies in the neat construction of the first half- dozen sentences. That perhaps is an extreme view, but the dictum is none the worse for a little heightened colouring. For it is true that a fair beginning may carry off even a weak sssay; and the best of essays finds it hard to live down a flumsy beginning. For better or worse, its fate is settled by As opening sentences. You can tell from the first puff of your pipe if it will smoke cleanly and coolly to the end. So with an essay, you know at once whether or no it will take your fancy. Nor is the success of the first sentences less important to the writer than to the reader, as all who have essayed know well. If those sentences are neatly put upon paper, if they run smoothly and have caught the writer's meaning, he will pursue his way with that zest which is the great secret of essay-writing. You may plod your way through a longer work, but an essay, if it is to give any pleasure in the reading, must carry the manifest appearance of having given pleasure in the writing.

There are essayists—Mr. Chesterton is the most notable example among modern writers—who believe in startling their readers at the outset with some smashing paradox or other extravagance. As it were, they hustle him into the essay. But these are the methods of the controversialist. The true essay-writer is more gentle. He tempts his reader forward. He will give him something a little whimsical for a start to catch his fancy, and so lead him on. If he is well

advised, he will make his opening sentences as crisp and

simple as may be. The essay should be clear and tranquil. and flow smoothly for a start ; Liter on, when the reader is

well upon his voyage, it may tumble and riot a little if it will.

Hazlitt, the prince among essay-writers, knew well how to

begin an essay. Some famous examples of the art may be gathered from him. The beginning of "The Indian Jugglers" is the best known and most quoted, but "On Going a Journey" is that which comes nearest perfection :— " One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey , but I like to go by myself ; I can enjoy society in a room ; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

' The fields his study, nature was big book.'

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time ; when I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it."

Indeed, that is not near perfection. It is perfect. It is clear and simple as could be. Of the first dozen sentences, not one is two lines in length. Yet they run smoothly. They tempt

the reader forward. He could not stop even if he would. They pleasantly stimulate him ; they set him anticipating what is to come. For they lie in perfect balance between what might offend by being commonplace, or startle by being extravagant. An essay which begins like that may do what it likes with its reader.

Another essay which opens in the same perfect fashion is Stevenson's " Walking Tours." It was written very much under the influence of Hazlitt, indeed clearly with an eye upon this essay of his, "On Going a Journey," from which it quotes. Much of it might have been written by Hazlitt, or

by a younger and more elfish Hazlitt than Hazlitt ever was :-

"It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. Ile who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours—of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the evening's rest."

To have read that is to be in a jolly humour at once. If there is anything in it to which exception can be taken, it is the phrase " canting dilettantes." There is an irritable quality in that which is out of place. Setting out upon a walking tour in a jolly humour, one should find it impossible to be annoyed even with the wicked people who do not share one's opinions. Each of these beginnings has this supreme quality, that it gives you at once the writer's point of view. From the start you and he are on a complete understanding. There is no need for more explanation. If you agree, you go on comfort- ably together. If you disagree, you may part company. But you cannot accuse him later on of having inveigled you into the essay on false pretences.

Lamb is above the rules which guide lesser men. None could

write a complex sentence as sweetly and lightly as he. He can use parentheses as freely as other men use epithets. There is no one of his essays which begins more charmingly than the "Praise of Chimney-Sweepers," yet its first sentence

runs to a lengthy paragraph of itself. It, too, is perfection in its way, but a perfection which other essayists may well hesitate to attempt.

One does not, at first thought, turn to the Edinburgh Reviewers in search of examples. For the works of these portentous essayists do not so much begin as have " intro- ductory paragraphs." Macaulay, for example, is not con- spicuously successful in the beginning of his essays. He starts more than once with the uninteresting statement that the book under review has given him pleasure. But reading Macaulay is like swinging a very heavy pendulum. It is difficult until the pendulum is moving by its own momentum.

There are two, and only two, " openings " in Macaulay's essays worth the quoting :—

" The work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdingnag and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface; the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book ; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library."

In its way that is perfectly written, well calculated to tickle the fancy of the reader. The other, the beginning of the essay on the ill-fated Montgomery, is no less admirable:—

" The wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the cover of apologize; and though this practice is generally thought childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay."

It is worth noting that Macaulay and Macvey Napier, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, had some discussion upon

that paragraph. Napier, apparently, would have had it omitted, and have plunged straight into the fable. Macaulay ruled that this would have " had rather too flippant a look," and wisely kept his first sentences as they stood. A more

successful beginner of an essay among the Edinburgh Reviewers was Lord Jeffrey. He dashed into his subjects in

a very spirited fashion. His " This will never do !" addressed to Wordsworth, has become famous ; but it must yield to the essay on Byron's " Sardanapalus." The whole of the opening passage of that essay is admirable, and it begins very happily thus:—

"It must be a more difficult thing to write a good play, or even a good dramatic poem, than we had imagined."

After that no one would hesitate to read on.

Among Thackeray's lesser sketches there are two delightful examples in the light and whimsical manner, though Thackeray for the most part runs to too great length in his opening sentences :—

"It has been said, dear Bob, that I have seen the mahogany of many men, and it is with no small feeling of pride and gratitude that I am enabled to declare also that I hardly remember in my life to have had a bad dinner."

So " Great and Little Dinners." But better still is the beginning of that amusing little satire—in Thackeray's perfect manner of extravagance—" A Brighton Night Entertainment " :- " I have always had a taste for the second-rate in life. Second- rate poetry, for instance, is an uncommon deal pleasanter to my fancy than your great thundering first-rate epic poems."

And from the moderns let us take two :- " Having spent an hour in the company of a book entitled `Picture Paragraphs : Things Seen in Everyday Life Explained and Illustrated,' I am one of the best informed men in England, capable of taking my place with distinction at any dinner-table and devilish well worth sitting by. For I know if not all, very nearly all."

It might be Lamb; as a matter of fact, it is Mr. Lucas. And then one from that pleasant essayist, Mr. G. S. Street:—

"It is all very well to denounce superior people, but I am inclined to think that inferior people are, on the whole, a more serious inconvenience."

All these have the pleasant tempting quality which the opening of an essay should have. Each at once puts the reader on good terms with himself and with the writer. For the reader will feel certain that the writer, having set it down, has paused to read it over with an approving chuckle, and then has hurried on with added zest. And that is the spirit in which essays should be both written and read.