EARLIER American essayists have been so completely eclipsed by Washington Irving that, with one or two notable exceptions, they are hardly remembered even by name. It is almost, if not quite, true that the American prose which is entitled to rank as “literature,” because of strong individuality and grace of style, begins with Irving. But he was an evolution, rather than a sudden, isolated, and miraculous phenomenon. The school of Addison, in which he was the first American “honor-graduate,” had many pupils in the Colonies as well as after the Revolution. Among the more influential of the post-colonial periodical essayists was Joseph Dennie, born in Boston, August 30th, 1768; died in Philadelphia, January 7th, 1812. In 1795 he published his first book, “The Farrago.” From 1796 to 1798 he edited the Farmers’ Weekly Museum, at Walpole, New Hampshire, and began in it the publication of a series of essays from “The Lay Preacher.” At about the same time he published a collection in book form under the same title, and a second collection appeared in 1817. In 1801 he founded the Portfolio in Philadelphia. He was a man of vigorous intellect, and his failure to perpetuate himself as one of the permanent forces of American literature is explained by combative habits which, as they influence his essays, make them valuable chiefly to antiquarians and students of history-making prejudices.