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Excerpt from Essays, English and American
I'he term essay is used loosely Of many dill'erent kinds of arature, but almost always means a relatively short prose nposition of an expository character. It may exist for He useful purpose, and resemble a brief treatise; or, at the posite extreme, it may be wholly concerned with pleasurable k about personal or even trivial things. Upon its subject itter, then, there are practically no limits at all. For the rposes of knowledge, we are likely to value most highly the say which is most impersonal or objective, - that is, which [phasizes the subject under consideration and not the one con lering it; for the purposi�s of pure literature, that essay is ually best which shows most of the writer's personality. Essays may be conveniently classified in three groups: (1) gno_mic or aphoristic, (2) the personal or familiar, and the didactic or critical. Those Of the first type are chie�y e up of wise sayings or aphorisms. To see how an essay this character naturally comes into existence, one has only look at the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. The greater srtion of that book is made up of detached aphorisms, or uall groups of them dealing with a single subject; but at nes something like a connected essay is developed, as in the count of the Virtuous Woman in the last chapter. Essays the second type are accounts of a subject from the dis letive standpoint of the writer, - representing, it may be, his ~re likes and dislikes, or some passing mood to which he Shes to give expression. As has already been suggested, this the kind likely to be valued most highly from the literary lint of View. Essays Of the third type undertake to discuss subject with critical judgment, representing not merely the.
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