SOURCE: "The First English Essayist: Walter Map," Poet-Lore, Vol. V, No. 11, November, 1893, pp. 537-50.

In the following essay, Colton examines several of Map's writings and remarks on the uncertain or "shadowy" connection that can be drawn between Map and the essays he may or may not have written. He concludes that this uncertainty is appropriate since Map considered his own life as a courtier a vain and shadowy one.

Since the publications of the Camden Society in 1850 and 1851, the name of Walter Map has been tolerably familiar to students of literature, and the De Nugis Curialium has taken a certain rank among historical documents. The Reports of the German Imperial Academy for 1853 contained a paper by Phillips in which Map's life and relations to Henry, Becket, Gilbert Foliot, the Cistercians, and other men and affairs of his time were thoroughly worked out: his birth between 1133 and 1138; the services...