These touring essayists are usually more interested in living people than in monuments of the dead; and they take more pleasure in their own opinions and experiences than in encyclopedic facts. They are good traveling companions because they are stored with wisdom and sympathy before they set sail, and in the presence of strange sights and scenes they give play to their fancy. So they are akin not so much to the professional traveler, the geographer and student of social conditions, as to the essayist who is good company at home. That is what the essayist must be, above all other writers--unfailing good company. He may be philosopher, historian, or critic, but if he is to be numbered among the choice company of essayists, his pages must be lighted by the glow of friendliness, enlivened by the voice of comradeship. Sometimes this friendliness takes terribly unfriendly forms, as in the stinging irony of Swift or the hot thunder and lightning of Carlyle; these preachers seem not to love their audience, but at heart they have sympathy even for us whom they browbeat, and it is not we, but the heavy thoughts with which their souls are burdened, that have banished the smile from their faces. LIST OF ESSAYS _Supplementary to Chapter VIII_ JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719). _Selections from the Spectator._ Edited by Thomas Arnold in the _Clarendon Press Series_. There are many school editions of the De Coverley papers. A sense of unity rather than of excellence has singled out the De Coverley papers for school reading and has made them, consequently, the best known of Addison’s (and Steele’s) work. But only about a third of the De Coverley papers are among the fifty best essays from the _Spectator_. Owing to the weight of eighteenth-century tradition, under which criticism is still laboring, Addison’s reputation is greater among professional writers about literature than many modern readers, coming with fresh mind to the _Spectator_, can quite sincerely feel is justified. Only the mature reader who has some historical understanding of Addison’s time can appreciate his cool wit and somewhat pallid humor, and feel how nearly perfect is the adaptation of his style to his purpose and his limited thoughts. MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-88). _Essays in Criticism._ _Culture and Anarchy._ Arnold’s essays on books and writers are among the very best, for he combines deep knowledge of literature with the charm of the true essayist. His essays on “Culture,” like many of the literary sermons of Carlyle and Ruskin, propound with great earnestness what every well-bred person takes more or less for granted. But one reason we take the need of culture for granted, one reason that such sermons are becoming obsolete, is because Carlyle and Ruskin and Arnold made their ideas, through their writings and the hosts of writers they influenced, part of the common current thought of our time.