a). No classification can be
rigid or exact, for one may blend into the other. At the same time in
any one may be found the four forms, description, narration, exposition
and argument. For our purposes, however, the following definitions will
answer: _Fiction_ is a term covering those narratives which are either
wholly or in part events that never happened and acts of individuals
that never lived. Fiction is the work of the imagination, based upon the
facts of life and observation. It appears as stories, in narrative poems
or epics, and in novels.

_Essays_ deal with all subjects and in such a variety of ways that any
attempt to classify them meets with difficulty. Originally an essay was
an attempt, a mere outline or plan intended to be filled out at greater
length or to be used in different form. It is in this sense that Bacon
uses the word and his essays are condensed to the highest degree. In
later years essays have come to be of the most highly finished type of
literature and some of the most beautiful passages, the noblest
thoughts, the most inspiring utterances, are to be found in them.
Almost every conceivable topic is treated: there are biographical essays
which do little more than narrate the facts of a man's life; there are
descriptive essays whose only function is to make their readers see
something as the author saw it; there are argumentative and didactic
essays and essays on science, art, religion, and literary criticism.
Some writers have given their whole time and attention to this form of
composition, and the modern magazine has become their distributing
agency. Much of the deepest, of the brightest, of the best of recent
work has come to its readers through this medium.

The essay shows more of the author's self than any other form of
literature. It is apt to be sincere, to be the deliberate expression of
the writer's own views formulated with the desire to convince another.
In the purely literary type this last characteristic is not so
strikingly prominent, though it appears rather under the surface. In no
form of literature is the artistic element more manifest. The prose
writer makes of his essay what the poet does of his lyric--the most
finished and beautiful expression of his thought. The thought is the
writer's chief concern, but upon his manner of expressing it depend the
force and value of his work. Accordingly he gives to his style his most
careful attention and fits and polishes it with all