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"The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the true literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other art, structure is all-important, felt, or painfully missed, everywhere? — that architectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the beginning and never loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does but, with undiminished vigor, unfold and justify the first a condition of literary art, which I shall call the necessity of mind in style.” — Walter Pater.

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BOOK IV. INVENTION IN ITS
ELEMENTS.

As soon as the foregoing study of style had reached beyond the consideration of mere processes to the stage of completed products, a new aspect of the work came into view; rudimentarily in the sentence, in much more palpable guise, though still subordinate, in the paragraph. To the problem of manner, the inquiry how to word, or color, or emphasize the thought already in hand, we began to add the inquiry what new thought we must supply in order rightly to set off, or round out, or push on to its conclusion, the thought we had; we were thinking of such things as added clauses, and explanatory details, and contrasts. This was the problem of matter asserting itself; the question of gathering thoughts as related thoughts, and not merely as the verbal clothing of thoughts. Thus with the first finished expression of thought there began in its essential principle the endeavor to find and systematize thought, that is, invention.

This inventive effort, subordinate thus far and as it were under the surface, is henceforth to take the lead. We are to work from the starting-point of matter rather than of manner. This it is, mainly, that, distinguishes the coming from the preceding study; we are approaching not so much a different thing as the same thing from a different point of view. Our inquiry will lead on to a broader scale of working; but its germinal principles are already in hand, waiting merely for further application. Questions of style, therefore, are not

yet and never can be out of the account; they come up continually, though in ancillary rank, because a work of invention can never make itself complete without the support of style. Definition of Invention. In its rhetorical or literary application, invention is the organization of thought, according to its nature and object, into a coherent and inter-related form of discourse.

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NOTE. -The initial act of invention, the original discovery of the thought, is too individual to be within the scope of a text-book or a course of instruction; besides, we can hardly regard real invention as beginning until to the original conception there is applied a process of organization, that is, of verifying, sifting, and selecting for ulterior disposal. It is in the various stages of organization, of working up thought to a completed form and effect, that invention centres.

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This definition may be practically elucidated from the analogue that most readily comes to mind, mechanical invention; speaking in whose terms we may say, invention, in rhetoric, is the devising of a literary apparatus to do certain determinate work; employing thereto whatever enginery of form descriptive, narrative, expository, argumentative will most fitly effect its purpose, and making it ready for whatever motive power of style will give it vigor and result. It calls for all the founding and framing, all the accurate adjustment and interworking of parts, all the skilled calculation of instrumentalities and effects, which characterize a well-designed working tool or machine. This is its ideal, as workmanship.

On this, as a kind of vertebrate structure, is moulded all the higher artistry of literature. Whether it appear as plot or as plan, as order inductive or deductive, in the baldness of logic or in the splendor of poetic portrayal, the invention of a work determines its solid substance, its permanent value, its basis of consistency and power.1

1" Whether in poem or novel, invention, broadly speaking, makes the plot. It makes the outline of the story: it thinks out the course of the events: it sets the scenes. It resolves, in short, on what shall happen." — Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. Ivi, p. 275.

CHAPTER XII.

APPROACHES TO INVENTION.

INVENTION has just been described as if it were a kind of handicraft, an affair of practical design and workmanship. This it eminently is, to one who is actually engaged in it. It has become so. The writer has subdued his vague and fugitive meditations to the dictates of order and proportion. While still the literary artist, and all the more such for this, he has as it were put on workday clothes and become an artisan. In so doing he has but done what all artists, however inspired their genius, must do. It is necessary that the art of letters be pursued in this workmanlike way: its integrity as an art, and the fulness and steadiness of the artist's powers, depend upon it.

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What is true of other arts is true of invention in this respect also it has its apprenticeship, a perpetual apprenticeship we may indeed call it, in which the workman is learning the secrets and mastering the processes of his craft. is this all. Further back it looks, to that initial point when the artist, prompted by native bent, chose this calling rather than some other, and found that the primal aptitude, the most vital element of all, was already in his blood and brain. Of these things we must take account in rhetorical study, because important deductions flow from them; especially for those, as for instance journalists and clergymen, who are called on statedly for some form of literary activity.

These approaches to invention, as seen in natural abilities, and as provided for in the helps and habits that go to call forth and promote it, the present chapter will discuss.

I. THE SENSE OF LITERARY FORM.

There is a certain way of looking at one's work in the large, of realizing it, even before it is ciphered out, as a rounded and articulate whole, which the writer ought to note and take advantage of. The perfected result, in fact, follows lines already in the writer's mind, the inventive process being mainly to disentangle these from irrelevancies and give them free individual course. A trait this, hard to describe, but its presence or absence is the deepest thing we feel in contemplating a piece of literary art; as an endowment of the author we call it, somewhat vaguely, a sense of literary form, and illustrate it from the analogy of the sculptor who sees the statue in the stone.

The Starting-Point in Natural Bent. The native sense of literary form is as common, and as quickly recognized, perhaps, as is mechanical inventiveness; though not so generally do men realize what it means. In every community may be found men who can relate an adventure with such choice of telling points, or make a public speech with such force and clearness of plea, that hearers are tempted to think a mere stenographic report would suffice to make it literature. Such ability is the initial point of authorship; whatever achievement it attains is built on this. Individual it is, and therefore of various kinds and degrees. The only way to legislate for it is to tell a man to be himself, a duty, indeed, which in its demands on self-discipline, gives a man enough to do in a lifetime of training.

But below what is individual there are traits of natural inventiveness that we need to recognize as common to all who in any way are endowed with it. Two such traits may

here be mentioned.

1. First of all, it is a natural ability to grasp facts and ideas not as isolated or vagabond but in combination, as

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