'My Best Consolation for the Future'

If pushed to choose my favorite literary form, I would reluctantly reject novels and aphorisms and settle on the essay which, in the right hands, can boast the generosity of the former and the pithy tartness of the latter. Essays are elastic and an essayist can confidently take on any subject if he possesses sufficient learning and experience because one of his shadow-subjects is himself. Don’t confuse that with straight autobiography. A good essayist melts into the matter at hand. Consider William Hazlitt’s “A Farewell to Essay-Writing,” dating from 1828, two years before his death. Hazlitt recalls a walk with Charles and Mary Lamb, admiring the “Claude Lorraine skies” and picking mushrooms “to throw into our hashed mutton at supper.” A pleasant memory, rather conventional, not life-changing. Hazlitt, for once, doesn’t inflate the importance of the recollection. He shares an observation known to many writers, if not always so well-articulated: “It is in looking back to such scenes…