2. The second grade, which is perhaps the most widely useful, may be called the reproductive invention. Not aiming at strict origination, this inventive activity is exerted to put common ideas into new shapes and combinations, to reștate abstruse thought in popular form, to make clear what is obscure, to make interesting what is dry and commonplace, to make definite what is scattered or hinted, to put into order and system what is vague. The products of this mode of invention appear in oratory, in popular treatises and text-books, and in the numerous essays, critiques, and discussions with which periodical literature abounds. Writers of this class are in an honorable sense the middle-men between the deeply originative thinkers and the common mind; taking as they do the masterpieces of thought, and by simplification and illustration giving it currency among ordinary people.

3. The third and lowliest grade may be called the methodizing invention. Under this head comes what Matthew Arnold calls the "journeyman work" of literature; such work as compiling and translating, editing and annotating, arranging and adapting information in books of reference, tabular views, and the like. Work of this kind, though but moderately inventive, has very real usefulness, and contributes incalculably to the wider extension of general knowledge.

These grades represent degrees of greatness in work, not degrees of honorableness. Any grade of work, well done, not only has the distinction of excellence in its class, but may receive such a masterly touch as will give to the class itself a new dignity. All grades are susceptible to genius. "It not infrequently happens, especially in philosophy and science, that the man of talent may confer a lustre on the original invention; he takes it up a nugget and lays it down a coin." 1

Finding One's Sphere in Authorship.—Since the field of useful literature is so large, and the scope of invention so varied, it is precarious for the student to conclude hastily that authorship is beyond him. This may indeed be the case; but also it may be 1 George Henry Lewes, in Fortnightly Review, Vol. I. p. 196.

that his peculiar powers are merely latent, awaiting the occasion that is to call them forth. Many writers, beginning in some prescribed or beaten track of composition, wherein their interest languishes and their work is but commonplace, give little evidence and are as little aware, of what is in them; but when they find the work they are best endowed to do, they leap at once to naturalness and enthusiasm, striking out a new and congenial line and finding it productive. It is generally when they are brought face to face with responsibility that men truly discover themselves; when they are brought to feel that living and important issues depend upon their work, and when they can throw their whole nature into utterance. At such time their inventive powers receive their deepest impulse to development.

But though every writer must find in himself powers peculiar to himself, and though these powers oftenest awake at the call of real experience, the discovery is best made through training and guidance. What at the beginning exists crude and unapt must and may be raised to fine issues and abilities; and the sooner this preliminary stage is provided for, the better. There may be much in the man, but running wild and useless for lack of discipline. And the more there is, the more kindly he takes to the rules and precepts of the literary art, -the more he thrives on the sober, severe canons already formulated for his guidance. It is only the conceited that despise counsel.

II. THE MENTAL HABITS THAT PROMOTE INVENTION.

Gifted as the writer may be, his native endowments are of little

solid use, and may indeed be a positive snare, unless they are brought by discipline to the point where they may be infallibly relied upon, and not be the sport of mood and chance. This point is reached only by conscientious self-culture. The writer needs to form regular habits of observation, reading, and thought congenial to the peculiar bent of his mind, and thus a second nature in the determination of his literary activities. Such habits,

rightly formed, not only train and steady the suggestive faculty, but do much to call it out when latent.

Under the heads of observation, thought, and reading, we will here discuss the chief of these desirable mental habits, and endeavor to trace their influence on the writer's powers of invention.

I.

Habits of Observation. The most potent stimulus and aid to original production is the keen and intelligent use of the eyes and ears. In a sense all the activities of authorship are reducible to this. It is as applicable to the work of gathering results by reading and thought as to the work of noting facts of nature. For just as one person may be listless and insensible to what is in the world about him while another is keenly alive to every sight and sound, so one in the same manner gathers little or nothing from a printed page, while to another it is luminous with suggestion. It is not the eye, but the mind behind the eye, the observing faculty and tendency, that makes the difference. This observing faculty it is, "the harvest of a quiet eye," that makes the world worth infinitely more to its possessor than it is to the listless. Whatever, therefore, quickens and develops this faculty has signal value for all the operations of literary invention.

Let us here notice the elements of the observing activity most to be cherished and developed as a habit.

Mental Alertness. "A faculty of wise interrogating," says Lord Bacon,1 "is half a knowledge. For as Plato saith, 'Whosoever seeketh, knoweth that which he seeketh for in a general notion: else how shall he know it when he hath found it?' And therefore the larger your anticipation is, the more direct and compendious is your search." By mental alertness is meant this "large anticipation": it is simply keeping the mind ready to receive ideas, directed actively to what is around us and before us, in the attitude of constant interrogation.

1 Bacon, "Advancement of Learning," Book II.

Every man's calling contributes in its one direction to mental alertness. The objects that enter his daily work and calculation become the centre of his observing capacity, so that he has keenness of vision and sense preëminently for such things. The artist, for instance, has a quick eye for color and outline; the mechanic is prompt to detect marks of ingenuity and skillful contrivance; the farmer sees with interest what pertains to crops and soil. Consider how differently the same scene would affect these three men, and how much more acute each is in his own line than any person outside his calling. Minutiæ that are invisible to others are to him of cardinal significance. Each has come to have mental alertness in his particular realm of ideas; his manner of life has developed in him a special sense.

It is the privilege and advantage of the writer to educate himself into a kind of universal special sense. For the truth he is seeking he can lay every realm of thought and activity under contribution, and be sure that no minuteness of attention can be amiss. Such liveliness of interest, such ready response to whatever is significant in nature and life, brings surprising harvests of suggestion and illustration to the inventive faculty; so that much of the rudimentary work of invention gets itself done without effort; and especially that important initial step, finding the germs of new ideas, becomes more and more spontaneous, no longer a drudgery but a delight.

Catholicity of Taste and Interest. The author is the true cosmopolitan in thought. Seeking to make ideas plain and interesting to all kinds of men, he must be able in some sense to look at the world through each man's eyes, to find what aspect of truth is most living from each man's point of view. It is important, therefore, not only that his observing faculty be alert, but that it approach with interest a wide and varied range of subjects. The value of such catholicity of interest lies both in subject and in method. In subject: for the various regions of life and fact yield all of them suggestive ranges of view; in method, too: for each single object of thought or observation may be variously significant

according to the view, matter-of-fact, or scientific, or poetic. It is for the writer's complete furnishing not to insulate himself in one narrow outlook, but to welcome all phases of contemplation, so far as he can educate his nature thereto. And the value of a general education in many things, as distinguished from a mere specialist's training, is here evident; for each subject, though but outlined, opens a new region of ideas.1

The cultivation of such varied ways of looking at things brings good to the writer in several important respects.

In the first place, it makes any view of truth more satisfying and conclusive to combine it, whether implicitly or avowedly, with other views. No object's significance can be exhausted from a single direction or angle. Just as in viewing natural objects, our judgment of their solidity and distance is due to the fact that our two eyes are directed upon them from slightly different angles; so in contemplating objects of the mind, Iwe need to see more than one side in order rightly to see one side.

Secondly, such catholicity of interest renders an important service to the writer in freeing him from the mere standard of likes and dislikes. He learns to like men for what is likeable in them; to judge facts and systems from their own intrinsic points of view. Not that he thereby becomes less positive in his judgments of right and wrong; nor need he become insincere and weakly tolerant of everything. But he learns to form judgments and reach conclusions unwarped by prejudices. Tolerant and charitable he indeed becomes, but wisely so; and at the same time he is ever in readiness to correct himself when he finds himself in error.

Thirdly, such acquaintance with various sides is a potent influence against what is recognized as a deplorable tendency in men of every profession, the tendency, as it is called, to "talk shop." By this is meant adhering in everything only to the narrow and technical dialect of one's own calling. Many a clergyman or lawyer or business man is as unapt at accommodating his mind to what lies outside of his narrow beat as was the gardener who

1 See Bulwer, "Hints on Mental Culture," Caxtoniana, Essay X,