Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > The Familiar Essay - The Cockneys: Hazlitt, Lamb, And Hunt

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THE COCKNEYS: HAZLITT, LAMB, AND HUNT

Orlo Williams

SOURCE: "III" and "IV," in The Essay, Martin Secker, 1915, pp. 36-47, 48-63.

[In the following excerpt, Williams discusses the accomplishment of the major nineteenth-century English essayists and posits the defining characteristics of the true essayist.]

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, by some miracle that has been variously explained, the civilized world, which had been modern before, suddenly became modern again after some eighty years of being old-fashioned. There is no need to recall the astounding wonders of that time—the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon, the mortal convulsions of Europe, the Romantic movement, the new fountain of English poetry, the beginning of industrialism and so forth. It is enough for our purpose to notice that, among other marvels, the English essay reached a perfection to be found neither before nor afterwards. This is not to say...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Definitions And Origins
4. Overview Of The Genre
5. Elements Of Form And Style
6. Elements Of Content
7. The Cockneys: Hazlitt, Lamb, And Hunt
8. Status Of The Genre
9. Further Reading
10. Copyright

1. Essay