"Essay"

       "Count no [one] a music lover who has not essayed an instrument"--said the brilliant and acerbic 20th century American writer H. L. Mencken.

       I periodically reactivate my classical guitar playing and "essay" it again, not nimbly or musically but laboriously, and yet essay it, which means "try" it. 

       An essay is a trial, whether trying an idea or subject in words, or practicing play of a musical composition.  My "essaying" is a "trial" in another sense, it occurs to me, the trial I'm putting a listener through.