A selection from the best English essays, illustrative of the history of English prose style; chosen and arranged with historical & critical introductions.
General introduction: English essay and the English prose style -- 1. Bacon: master of condensation -- 2. Swift: the greatest English satirist -- 3. Addison: first of the humorists -- 4. Lamb: greatest of the humorists -- 5. De Quincey: inventor of modern "impassioned prose" -- 6. Carlyle: the latter-day prophet -- 7. Emerson: the lecturer -- 8. Macaulay: the rhetorician -- 9. Ruskin: the impassioned critic -- 10. Matthew Arnold: the intellectual critic.
