ESSAY. The term essay is used in various loosely defined ways, but usually describes a brief prose composition of an expository character. Originally and properly, the word implies a tentative and suggestive, as distin guished from a formal and complete, discus sion ; and this use is applicable to the °familiar') essay, the most purely literary of all the types. Dr. Samuel Johnson, from the same standpoint, defined the essay as "a loose sally of the mind, an irregular, indigested piece." On the other hand, the term is equally applicable, in modern use, to formal expository compositions, and has even been extended to cover treatises of an extensive character, as Locke's 'Essay Con cerning Human Understanding) (1690). In the 18th century it was also extended to comnosi tions in verse, notably Pope's 'Essay on Man) 1734. Essays arc sometimes classified, for con venience, as (1) gnomic or aphoristic, (2) per sonal or familiar, and (3) critical or didactic. The first type, which may be regarded as the original or primitive, represents the making of an essay by the process of bringing together gnomic sayings or aphorisms having to do with the same subject,— a process well exemplified by certain portions of the biblical book of Proverbs. Thus, while the greater part of that book is made up of brief separate proverbs or epigrams, these are developed into what may well be called essays in such passages as the account of Wisdom (chap. 1, verses 20-33) or of the Virtuous Woman (chap. 31, 10-31). The second type represents the treatment of a particular subject from a distinctively in dividual standpoint, and at times reaches a point of development closely analogous to the personal lyric in poetry. The third type rep resents a more utilitarian purpose, and has been most fruitfully developed in the pursuit of literary criticism. But the several types are not infrequently blended, and others might well enough be added if the classification were made complete.
In ancient classical literature the essay was not a recognized literary form; its functions may be said to have been accomplished largely by the epistle and the dialogue. Thus Bacon
said that uSeneca's epistles to Lucifius, if one mark them well, are but essays)); and one might say that certain of Plato's Dialogues mark the highest reach of the method of the essay in any language. To a later philosopher, Theophrastus, were attributed the °Ethical Characters," descriptive of various character types, which we shall see gave rise in mcd?rn times to a kind of essay form. The closest approach in antiquity, however, to what we now call the essay is to be found in the late Greek period, when the biographer and philos opher Plutarch (1st century A.n.) wrote a num ber of compositions, traditionally called Opera Moralia (Moral Works), on such subjects as °The Right Way of Listening," °How a Flat terer may be Distinguished from a Friend," l'On Chance,' °On Superstition," and °On Exile." Analogous to these writings, in Latin literature, arc the partly philosophic, partly personal 'Tusculan Disputations' of Cicero, the epistles and other moral disquisi tions of Seneca, and—closest to the essay in their informal discursiveness—the 'Medita tions) of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Some influence on later types of essay literature may also be traced to the miscellanies—anecdotal and otherwise—of Valerius Maximus and Aulus Genius; the work of the former is called 'Books of Memorable Deeds and Utterances,' that of the lattcr 'Attic Nights.) In the medixval period the essay cannot be recognized as a separate type; some approxima tion to it may be noted in the successors of the miscellanies just mentioned, and in various collections of wise sayings (usententie or sen tences). In particular, writers in the service of the Church made a practice of bringing to gether incidents and utterances illustrative of particular virtues, vices and spiritual truths, which, though they were more likely to de velop into homily or sermon than into essay, sometimes furnished method or materials for later essayists. In France the form called Moral Lesson (lecon morale) has been thought to form a link between these mediaval writings and the essays of Montaigne.