temperament that nothing Some read and meditate stores of information in

preserved, is so largely a matter of whatever can be prescribed for all. for immediate use, and carry their more or less digested form in memory. Others trust much to accumulated materials and to systematic storing. As in style and planning, so here, every one must evolve his own best way, from his powers and habits of mind.

Some practical remarks may, however, here be given, especially to indicate the relation of these customs to invention. Taking Notes. Two objects, in the main, are had in view in the taking of notes: the recording of suggestions that come to one's own mind at times when finished composition is not practicable; and the securing, in abstract or in particular data, of material read or heard. This latter material may best be cared for in the same system as are references and citations, to be mentioned presently; it belongs like them to the unworked data of the writer's mind. The former, the record of one's own thoughts, is of special value as a stimulus and practical support to one's processes of thought; a tangible means of developing the habit of seeking clearness and order. A note-book may thus be a workshop, where lines of thought have their germination and first shaping, and where currents of obscure meditation run themselves clear. Of course one is continually outgrowing such a record; but this is one great element of its value, the inventive mind is thus kept in a state of growth, and has something to outgrow.

An important feature of utility in the taking of notes is this notes should not be heedlessly taken, or consist merely of catchwords. They should have all the finish that the time permits. Then if they are referred to afterward, they will be formed enough to yield their original flavor without painful and doubtful supplementing from memory; and further, the very putting of them down will have marked a step forward in composition. It is doubtful if an original note which does

not represent the author's best is worth preserving; doubtful, too, if the inventive ardor will continue to attend it if the note-taking evinces less than the high water mark of his thinking at the time.

References and Citations. The keeping of some kind of index rerum, for fugitive notes, references, and citations, is sure to commend itself at some time in a writer's career; and not unlikely many starts and failures may be made before the writer finds his most practicable method. This perhaps cannot well be avoided, nor is it necessarily a reproach. It will probably be found, however, that the method that works best at last is the simplest. To plan for as little machinery as possible has the best promise of success; even though the plan adopted may be very imperfect, as compared with others advocated.

Whatever the system, the success of it depends mainly on the writer's closeness of touch with it. For this reason the kind of material preserved is most fitly such as belongs to the writer's most specialized sphere of study, the kind of fact and truth with which his mind is most constantly occupied.

Commonplace books, on account of the labor of transcribing passages, are much more liable than any other undertaking

to be discontinued. The same value attaches to them as to indices rerum; there is the necessity also of keeping in touch with them, in fact, more good comes, probably from the making of them than from their contents when they are made. For this reason no one can make a commonplace book for another; it must have something of the personal quality of a journal intime. Like a note-book, a commonplace book is speedily outgrown; but likewise it may when wisely used be made a practical instrument. Its value consists in keeping one's readings vital; and this is undeniably great.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COMPOSITION AS A WHOLE.

BEFORE entering upon the discussion of the specific forms that invention may adopt in literary discourse, we need to note the typical framework, or inventive system, that, with whatever modifications, exists under all forms. The principle of this has already been anticipated on the smaller scale of the single paragraph1; it remains here to consider the problems and procedures that come into view when the field of operations is broader.

in

In two opposite directions invention, as a devising act, works to bring its design to pass. It is first concentrative; it thinks its material inward to one controlling, comprehensive proposition, which we call the theme. Then, secondly, it is distributive: from this theme as a centre it thinks outward along the various lines and radiations of the thought, other words, it makes the outline or plan. So much for the inventive process in its severe narrow sense. But, having proceeded thus far, this same devising activity, still at the work of rounding its design, takes to its aid imagination, emotional glow, and the sense of style, in the finishing process called amplification. Here at last the artistic enterprise is complete; invention and style, no longer separate, have united in one vital yet ordered product.

These three stages of work determine the articulation of the present chapter.

1 See The Paragraph in Structure, pp. 364 sqq., above.

I. THE THEME.

Definition. The theme, or thesis, which in some form underlies the structure of every literary work, may be briefly defined as the working-idea of the discourse.

As a working-idea, that is, as something to serve for point of departure and nucleus of organism, the theme is not a thing caught up arbitrarily; it gets its status as the result of a vigorous mental process of concentration and packing, reducing what at first was vague and diffused from nebulous to orbic form. When, therefore, it is thus determined, it has derived suggestion from a large tract of thought; it is, in fact, the whole discourse reduced to one comprehensive proposition. When the body of thought has been called in from its diffused state to this organic centre, and not before, it is in condition for working.1

I.

As related to the Subject. What is thus concentrated must begin somewhere, must have something to condense. This something from which the theme is derived presents itself to the mind first in that large and unshaped mass of material which we call the subject.

The subject, then, may be defined as the material of discourse before meditation; the theme as the phrase or proposition that represents the material after the first stage of meditation, when the range and bounds of treatment are determined. Subject and theme stand to each other much in the relation of class and individual. The theme is not

1" To give the phrase, the sentence, the structural member, the entire composition, song, or essay, a similar unity with its subject and with itself:- style is in the right way when it tends toward that. All depends upon the original unity, the vital wholeness and identity, of the initiatory apprehension or view." - Pater, Appreciations, p. 19.

a part of the subject, because as an individual it retains all the traits of its class; rather it is the whole subject turned in a certain determinate direction.

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NOTE. In Cardinal Newman's lecture on Elementary Studies (Idea of a University, pp. 355-361), there is a very lucid distinction made between what are here called subject and theme. It occurs in a discussion of a student essay on Fortes Fortuna Adjuvat (Fortune favors the brave). "Now look here, the subject [theme] is Fortes fortuna adjuvat'; now this is a proposition; it states a certain general principle. . 'Fortuna' was not his subject [theme]; the thesis was intended to guide him, for his own good. . . It would have been very cruel to have told a boy to write on 'fortune'; it would have been like asking him his opinion of things in general.' Fortune is 'good,' 'bad,' 'capricious,' 'unexpected,' ten thousand things all at once, . . . and one of them as much as the other. Ten thousand things may be said of it; give me one of them, and I will write upon it; I cannot write on more than one."

What this direction, this working thrust of the subject shall be, may depend on a variety of considerations: its timeliness, for instance; its adaptedness to the public for which it is designed and to the occasion and limitations of treatment; the literary form in which the writer chooses to work, —essay, oration, story, or treatise. Most of all, however, it depends on the special discovery which the writer has made concerning the subject. He has come to view it in a certain light, or from a certain point of view; and the theme is just the accurate formulation, for his own guidance in treatment, of the way the subject looks thus viewed. He recognizes, in other words, that not everything, not every important thing, can be said about any subject. What is said must be rigorously selected, both for the occasion and in view of the particulars that belong together. The theme is the principle of 7 selection, put into such form that the writer can use it as a point of departure and mental reference.

Thus the theme becomes a point of outlook toward all the divisions of the discourse, and has the life of it all in crystalliza