The Writing of Essays

The art of the essayist is so simple, so entirely free from canons of
criticism, and withal so delightful, that one must needs wonder why all
men are not essayists. Perhaps people do not know how easy it is. Or
perhaps beginners are misled. Rightly taught it may be learnt in a brief
ten minutes or so, what art there is in it. And all the rest is as easy
as wandering among woodlands on a bright morning in the spring.

Then sit you down if you would join us, taking paper, pens, and ink; and
mark this, your pen is a matter of vital moment. For every pen writes
its own sort of essay, and pencils also after their kind. The ink
perhaps may have its influence too, and the paper; but paramount is the
pen. This, indeed, is the fundamental secret of essay-writing. Wed any
man to his proper pen, and the delights of composition and the birth of
an essay are assured. Only many of us wander through the earth and never
meet with her--futile and lonely men.

And, of all pens, your quill for essays that are literature. There is a
subtle informality, a delightful easiness, perhaps even a faint
immorality essentially literary, about the quill. The quill is rich in
suggestion and quotation. There are quills that would quote you
Montaigne and Horace in the hands of a trades-union delegate. And those
quirky, idle noises this pen makes are delightful, and would break your
easy fluency with wit. All the classical essayists wrote with a quill,
and Addison used the most expensive kind the Government purchased. And
the beginning of the inferior essay was the dawn of the cheap steel
pen.

The quill nibs they sell to fit into ordinary pen-holders are no true
quills at all, lacking dignity, and may even lead you into the New
Humour if you trust overmuch to their use. After a proper quill commend
me to a stumpy BB pencil; you get less polish and broader effects, but
you are still doing good literature. Sometimes the work is close--Mr.
George Meredith, for instance, is suspected of a soft pencil--and always
it is blunter than quill work and more terse. With a hard pencil no man
can write anything but a graceless style--a kind of east wind air it
gives--and smile you cannot. So that it is often used for serious
articles in the half-crown reviews.

There follows the host of steel pens. That bald, clear, scientific
style, all set about with words like "evolution" and "environment,"
which aims at expressing its meaning with precision and an exemplary
economy of words, is done with fine steel nibs--twelve a penny at any
stationer's. The J pen to the lady novelist, and the stylograph to the
devil--your essayist must not touch the things. So much for the pen. If
you cannot write essays easily, that is where the