I'm relishing the time to read at whim through a series of volumes. It's all by way of preparation for teaching Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows - the essay on its own will seem somehow isolated, bereft of contexts.

I'm also keen to suggest other ways of writing and conceiving of essays as well as finding ways of reading the more established exhibits differently.

So this morning I started with Bacon ('Of Beauty'), moving on to selections from The Tatler and The Spectator plus Johnson in The Rambler ('The necessity and danger of looking into futurity'). On then to Lamb ('Old China') and a quick riffle through a Penguin selected Orwell. A search on the Internet threw up some useful interviews with d'Agata and his co-authored manifesto of the Lyric Essay at the Seneca Review site.

This afternoon I've just finished the first essay in his Halls of Fame collection - 'Round Trip' - a pretty good introduction to his concerns and methods. Clever stuff.

*

Three sentences:

Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and, for the most part, it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine and blush. (1)

It was almost Eight of the Clock before I could leave that Variety of Objects. (2)

That the mind of man is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity; and that we forget the proper use of the time now in our power, to provide for the enjoyment of that which, perhaps, may never be granted us, has been frequently remarked; and as this practice is a commodious subject of raillery to the gay, and of the declamation to the serious, it has been ridiculed with all the pleasantry of wit, and exaggerated with all the amplifications of rhetoric. (3)

And one more:

I say, "Wow." (4)

Anyone out there with further suggestions of interesting essays/ essayists please let me know.
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1 Bacon 1612

2 Steele 1712

3 Johnson 1750

4 d'Agata 2001