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Excerpt from Essays, English and American
The term essay is used loosely of many different kinds of literature, but almost always means a relatively short prose composition of an expository character. It may exist for some useful purpose, and resemble a brief treatise; or, at the opposite extreme, it may be wholly concerned with pleasurable talk about personal or even trivial things. Upon its subject matter, then, there are practically no limits at all. For the purposes of knowledge, we are likely to value most highly the essay which is most impersonal or objective, - that is, which emphasizes the subject under consideration and not the one con sidering it; for the purposes of pure literature, that essay is usually best which shows most of the writer's personality.
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