"The essayist is an amateur, a Virginia Woolf who has merely done a little reading up; he is not out for profit (even when paid), or promotion (even if it occurs); but is interested solely in the essay’s special art. Meditation is the essence of it; it measures meanings; makes maps; exfoliates. The essay is unhurried (although Bacon’s aren’t); it browses among books; it enjoys an idea like a fine wine; it thumbs through things. It turns round and round upon its topic, exposing this aspect and then that; proposing possibilities, reciting opinions, disposing of prejudice and even of the simple truth itself - as too undeveloped, not yet of an interesting age."
—
William Gass, from Emerson and the Essay, found in the forthcoming Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time, edited by Carl H. Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French, forthcoming in March from University of Iowa Press.
(Gass is going to use the semicolon, and to hell with the haters.)
