The quality is variable, but the best of the essays are very good indeed. (I say "essays" because it is the title of the book, but some of them are not proper essays in format.) I got a number of good laughs out of "The Authorship of 'In Memoriam'" in particular, and the Sherlock Holmes essay is justly famous. The jabs at liberal Protestants are all too relevant today--one imagines Knox could've had great fun with all the politically correct idiocy that lot continue to churn out. Unfortunately, a number of the essays are simply variations on the same joke (but as modern critical philosophies tend to be something of a joke anyway, I suppose it's acceptable to milk it for all it's worth). The enjoyment of many of them is dependent on one already being familiar with the source material.