Introduction.--Anticipations of the essay.--The aphoristic essayists.--The character-writers.--Miscellaneous essayists of the seventeenth century.--The Queen Anne essayists.--The imitators of Steele and Addison.--The transition from the eighteenth century.--The early reviewers of the nineteenth century: some of their victims, and others.--The early magazines of the nineteenth century.--The historian-essayists.--The latter half of the nineteenth century.--Some essayists of yesterday.--Index.