EXAMPLE. - In the article on Invention and Imagination, already quoted from, the argument is thus concluded and summed up by apologue: "Are we, then, to conclude, from these considerations, that invention is to be despised? Far from it. In its own domain it is a power. We owe the Arabian Nights almost to it alone. Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, could not have been produced without its active aid; nor, indeed, could some far mightier works, Paradise Lost or The Inferno. But when it comes to making men and women, Centaurs and archangels, breathe and live, invention either stands aside in modesty, or toils and fails. "Solomon (so runs the apologue) was one day musing in his garden, at the fifth hour of the day, when there appeared to him two Spirits, who bowed down before him, and besought him to judge, by his wisdom, which of them was the most powerful. Solomon consented, and commanded the first Spirit to display his might. The Spirit took a piece of rock, and smote with it upon a larger block; again, and yet again, the blows fell; and slowly, as the Spirit toiled, the block assumed the figure of a man. And the man sat motionless and moved not; because he was of rock. Then Solomon signed with his finger to the other Spirit. And he stepped towards the man of rock, and breathed upon his eyes, and upon his feet, and upon his heart. And the man rose up as if from sleep, and moved, and bowed down at the feet of Solomon; for he had become a living thing. Then the first Spirit drooped and trembled; but the eyes of the other shone like light, and he laughed so gloriously with triumph, that at the sound of his laughter Solomon awoke; and behold, it was a dream."1 IV. Accessories of Amplification. Besides the direct means of amplification, there are to be noted certain accessories that, rightly employed, do much to give fulness and interest to the thought. Quotation. For corroborating one's own statements, or for giving them the pointedness of felicitous phrase, quotation 'may be made a valuable accessory to amplification.2 The right use of it, however, is an art, which modern habits of 1 Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. lvi, p. 278. 2" He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; he that uses that of his superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates." —Remark quoted from Burke, by EMERSON, Works, Vol. viii, p. 170. thought in literature have made somewhat exacting. One or two features of the art we may here note. 1. To be rightly employed a quoted thought must be thoroughly assimilated in one's own thinking, and lie in the direct line of it. If it is a little aside, or looks toward a different conclusion — and all the more if only a little out of the way it confuses the unity and impairs the tissue of the work. EXAMPLE OF THE FAULT. -The following quotations, especially the one in verse, which occur in the midst of a passage inculcating painstaking in composition, turn the thought aside and confuse it :— "Our best poets have been equally painstaking. Ben Jonson declared, contrary to the popular opinion, ' that a good poet's made, as well as born.' So, also, Wordsworth : 'O many are the poets that are sown By nature, men endowed with highest gifts, From this point onward the subject of painstaking, which has waited for these irrelevant quotations, is resumed. 2. The modern sense of honesty in composition demands that a quotation be given in the exact words, grammatical construction, and punctuation of the author quoted; the quotation marks guarantee that. To this end, if any construction must be modified to suit the quotation, it must be the writer's own. EXAMPLES OF THE FAULT. The following, from a student essay, involves the writer in an impossible grammatical construction: "Not very far from my home the Charles, the 'River! that in silence wendest,' flows onward, pursuing its course to the sea." The following, from a similar source, compels the quoted expression to use the wrong grammatical case: "Yet he did know that 'Christ and Him crucified' was now his all in all; and this knowledge thrilled every fibre of his body." If he had written, "Yet he did know that his all in all was summed up in Christ and Him crucified,'" etc., the clash in grammar would have been avoided without invading the accuracy of the quotation. 3. As to manner of quoting. If a quoted passage is a paragraph by itself it should occupy a paragraph in the citation; if only a sentence or a phrase, it may be run into the text. Poetry should be quoted in lines, if more than one line is quoted; if only one line, or part of a line, the writer should judge whether from its closer or looser connection, it will better appear in the body of his own thought or in a line by itself. – It is a pretty general and commendable custom nowadays not to put quotation marks to well-known passages and phrases, as from the Bible and Shakespeare; they may be treated as common stock of language. NOTE. In one case of quoting Matthew Arnold runs verse into prose, in part, it would seem, to express his silent contempt for it as poetry: "He may disobey such indications of the real law of our being, in other spheres besides the sphere of conduct. He does disobey them, when he sings a hymn like: My Jesus to know, and feel his blood flow, or, indeed, like nine-tenths of our hymns, or when he frames and maintains a blundering and miserable constitution of society, as well as when he commits some plain breach of the moral law." 1 To quote the italicized passage as poetry would be to dignify it unduly. Allusion and Suggestion. The amount of thought actually conveyed through literature is not to be measured by what is said, but by what the reader is made to think and feel. And so beyond the definite impartations of language there is a whole realm of vaguer elements: allusions, turns of phrase, colorings of figure, subtleties of rhythm and assonance, which have their effect in enriching both the thought and the emotional power of the discourse. Sometimes an abrupt leavingoff, or a silence about something that the reader may be left 1 ARNOLD, Literature and Dogma, p. 39. to think for himself, may amplify better than expression. All these vague elements are beyond the sphere of rules or even discipline; they must be left to the native literary sense using the powers of a full-stocked mind. Under various topics of style they have already been sufficiently exemplified. NOTE. For Implicatory Words and Coloring, see above, pp. 87-94; for Animus of Word and Figure, pp. 102-106; for the suggestion of sound in language, pp. 153–162; for picturing power of language, pp. 146-153. A suggestive article on this subject is, The Vague Elements in Language, BURTON, Yale Lectures, p. 222. BOOK V. THE LITERARY TYPES. In our study of inventive processes hitherto, we have contemplated the laws of invention as they avail for any and every kind of material. But material, as it is of widely varied kinds, must apply these laws variously. Each kind has its own handling of theme, its own ordering or movement of main ideas, its own natural current of amplification. Each kind of material, therefore, according to its prevailing inventive attitude, conforms to a specific literary type, by which the whole composition is known and classified. Four leading types thus take their rise; named from the processes concerned respectively in the production of them. These, with the kinds of material with which they deal, are as follows: Description; invention dealing with observed objects. Exposition; invention dealing with generalized ideas. Argumentation; invention dealing with truths, and with issues of conviction. To the study of these the coming four chapters will be devoted. Though, as above said, a finished literary work is known and classified under some one type, yet it is to be noted that these types are combined in a great many ways, one helping and reinforcing another. Some of the most important of |