SOURCE: "E. V. Lucas: Prince of Essayists," in Calcutta Review, Vol. 1ll , No. 4, April-June, 1972, pp. 315-20.

In the following essay, Chatterjee describes Lucas's style as an essayist

As Virginia Woolf truly says, the essayist must know—that is the first essential—how to write. 'There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay. Somehow or other, by dint of labour or bounty of nature, or both combined, the essay must be pure—pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter.' ('The Modern Essay', The Common Reader, First Series). The essays of E. V. Lucas have this purity about them, for he knows, if any-body does, how to write.

'Essay' comes from the French word for 'attempt' and is, by its very nature, tentative. It has a certain kind of incompleteness about it. But what it...