Excerpt from A Book of English Essays The Essay, as a distinct literary form, may be defined as a prose composition of moderate length, dealing with one subject, and in such a way as to give free expression to the personality of the writer. The term has, indeed, been loosely applied to a wide variety of prose works, e such as the philosophical treatise, the historical or bio graphical monograph, and the brief anonymous article of the newspaper. But the essay, in'the' stricter sense in which the word is employed in this volume, is always personal, always in some degree autobiographical. The essayist is, in some special sense, writing Of himself. The essay thus, in this respect, corresponds in prose with the lyric in verse. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.