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.

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.

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

It re

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. solves, 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.

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. Nor 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

helpers or as goals to other facts or ideas. To such a mind no thought is inert or unrelated; small or great it is a vitalizing element in a system, is on its way to a sum of effect. So the story is told or the speech made, crudely it may be and lacking in the artificial touches of craftsmanship, but with the masterlines already plotted out, and with a movement under command. This is not the same as deep thinking or industrious research, though it may use these; rather it is the active genius which shapes their results from a dead aggregation into a living organic work.

2. But a spontaneous constructive faculty is only one half of natural invention. The other half is equally significant, its implicit recognition of the mind of others, and conformity to their mental ways. The ingeniously arranged body of thought may after all suit itself to no one but the maker; for others it may be eccentric or abstruse. The man whose utterance rouses attention and interest has a tact to find and evoke their thinking; he looks from their point of view, uses their capacity, becomes as it were their mouthpiece in saying what they feel but lack ability to put in words. The inventive mind recognizes instinctively that it takes two to effect an interchange of thought and feeling; and his care, while clear in his own thinking, is to make sure of the other.1

1 In the following passage this trait of natural invention is described. “I spoke to him [Peter Stirling] once of a rather curious line of argument, as it seemed to me, which he was taking in a case, and he said: 'Ogden, I take that course because it is the way Judge Potter's mind acts. If you want to convince yourself, take the arguments which do that best, but when you have to deal with judges or juries, take the lines which fit their capacities. People talk about my unusual success in winning cases. It's simply because I am not certain that my way and my argument are the only way and the only argument. I've studied the judges closely, so that I know what lines to take, and I always notice what seems to interest the jury most, in each case. But, more important than this study, is the fact that I can comprehend about how the average man will look at a certain thing. You see I am the son of plain people. Then I am meeting all grades of mankind, and hearing what they say, and getting their points of view. I have never sat in a closet out of touch with the world and decided what is right for others, and then spent time trying to prove it to them.'” -FORD, Peter Stirling, p. 406,

The Superinduced Discipline. As thus described, this natural inventive bent, with its outcome in luminous form and tactful adaptation, would seem to be a very fair outfit for authorship.

By many it is so taken. It is a very prevalent idea that a

person so endowed has only to let himself be borne on, as cleverness and fluency dictate; and discipline is very commonly disparaged, as if its tendency were to congeal native genius into the conventional and academic. What is the truth of the matter? The inventive impulse is indeed the cardinal element, and it must be a law to itself. But at this initial point it is only an instinct, not yet in the steady leading of judgment, critical insight, wisdom. It is uneven and unbalanced; with no governing power to guarantee against crudeness or extravagance or dulness. Its strong flights are an accident; so also are its failures. It is not yet established by habit in the equable movements of the mind, but has to wait upon moods and moments of inspiration. And if it goes on untrained, it runs into froth or antics of treatment, and soon its vein runs out altogether.

This is no more of an indictment than may be brought against every native aptitude or talent. It holds in painting, in music, in popular games, in handicraft. From a run-wild affluence of nature the talent has to be developed by attention to itself into a mastered self-respecting art,1 the more of an art as it more unerringly realizes the obscure aim of the original inventive impulse.

'Here, then, is suggested the office of discipline. It is not to supersede, or artificialize, or sophisticate the native powers. Its effect is to obviate such tendencies rather; and, while the powers remain a law to themselves, to make them acquit them

1 "Art, indeed, in the sense in which we are now using it, that is, to denote the pains bestowed by the artist on his work, is merely nature giving attention to itself. It is nature in a mood of self-consciousness. Thus, to speak like a mathematician, it is limited to yield a higher power of nature." — WILKINSON, A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters, p. 200.