Of seeming arms to make a short essay, Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day.

-Dryden,John
  Cymon and Iphigenia, l.407^8.

Meanwhile, you will write an essay on'self-indulgence'. There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.

-Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn
  Decline and Fall, pt.1, ch.5.

A good essay must have this permanent qualityabout it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

-Woolf, (Adeline) Virginia ne¤  e Stephen
  The Common Reader,'The Modern Essay'.