SUBSTANCE OF EXPRESSION-INVENTION. Examine well, ye writers, weigh with care What suits your genius, what your strength will bear.-HORACE. Never read till you have thought yourself empty; never write till you have read yourself full.-RICHTER. Invention, though it can be cultivated, cannot be reduced to rule; there is no science which will enable a man to bethink himself of that which will suit his purpose. But when he has thought of something, science will tell him whether that which he has thought of will suit his purpose or not.-J. S. MILL. HE word invention is derived from the Latin invenire, THE come language from the literal to the metaphorical, it came in process of time to signify discovery. Rhetorically, it consists in the faculty of finding whatsoever is proper to be said, and of devising suitable forms for the purpose of discourse. Absolutely, it is the whole talent, presenting itself at every point in the art. The invention of the ideas, or of the matter, however, is invention in the highest sense of the term. Choice of Subject. The subject may be furnished, and invention will then be taxed only in treating it; as in courts of law, in legislative debates, in prize essays, in many academical exercises: or it may be left to your choice; as in pulpit eloquence, in occasional addresses, and in most kinds of composition. If the latter, let it be level to the capacity of your audience. Let it be chosen with reference to the occasion and your design, whether to instruct, to convince, to persuade, to please, or all of these. Find one that is appropriate to your age and attainments, one to which you have felt or will feel attracted. The attempt to discuss a subject not fairly within your power must issue in vagary, frigidity, and failure. A wise distrust is better than an overweening confidence or a false pride. To do anything excellently, should do it from conviction. Unless you are yourself interested, you cannot expect to interest others. The words that are 'half battles' are never spoken but in sincerity. Nothing is more easily detected, or more repellent, than a lukewarm earnestness or a counterfeit enthu you Remember, too, that the humblest subject may be lifted into the region of literature. Cowper produced a great poem on 'The Sofa,' and called it The Task. A stolen lock of hair inspired Pope's brilliant mock-heroic poem, The Rape of the Lock. A London linen-draper, Izaak Walton, won an honorable place among British authors by a treatise on Angling, written, perhaps, to teach the angler's lowly craft, yet in such sweet and serious diction, with such infusion of rational loyalty to things human and Divine, of simple, child-like love for the beauties of earth and sky, that his little book on fishing has outlived many a more ambitious work. Determination of Subject.-Having chosen your subject, contemplate it from a particular point of view, and neglect all that is irrelevant. If you decide, for example, to limit your attention to the religious aspects of Wealth, ignore its economical and its social aspects. If you are to write on Youth, restrict yourself to one of the many possible conceptions of it,-Hopefulness of Youth, or Youth is the Time for Education, or Pleasures of Youth, or How should Youth be Spent? The general subject (or title) adopted by an essayist might be Dreams, but with this, in any single article, essay, chapter, or section, he would combine some limitary notion; as, Dreams and Realities; Dreams and Sleep; Dreams and their Causes; Crimes in Dreams; Extraordinary Dreams; Laws of Dreams; Literature of Dreams; Strangely Fulfilled Dreams; Warnings in Dreams, etc. So much of the subject as you intend to develop, is, whether implied or formally stated, technically known as the status. It is sometimes distinguished as the thesis, or theme. Other names are commonly applied, as position, standpoint, central thought, proposition. Thus the ground, main idea, point of view, central thought, or status of Burke's speech on Conciliation with America is, that the people of the American colonies should be admitted into an interest in the constitution, and be allowed the rights of Englishmen. The status of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, as of Dante's Divina Commedia, is the trials of the soul in its stages from conversion to glory, or from the probation of earth to the rewards of heaven; of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, denunciation of shams; of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, the eternal and illimitable consequences of human action. The status is evidently at the threshold of all good writing, and is the germ of the entire discourse. If properly conceived and expressed, it should be the fruit of prolonged reflection. It should have unity; should be clear; should be comprehensive rather than extensive. Not otherwise is it possible for any work, literary or artistic, to be well done. A great deal of the discomfort and difficulty of writing compositions arises from the want of a well-defined subject, or nucleus of thought. When the young confess that they do not know what to write about, it will often be found that they have been dissipating their energies in the endeavor to cover too wide a range. In all probability, they have formed no status. Honesty or The Ideal is not a status, but a term. To treat of either, the writer should begin by asking what he believes to be true of it— that is, by framing some proposition respecting it: as, Honesty is the best policy; Love of the ideal [is] an evidence of the soul's immortality; The instinct which prompts man to form and pursue an ideal of character or condition is the mainspring of human progress; or, The effort to realize something better and higher than the present actual is the law of the world. The importance of a status kept steadily in view is well illustrated by Dr. J. H. Newman, who supposes a young Mr. Brown to have written a composition which has been sent by his admiring father to a tutor (Mr. Black) at the University: FORTES FORTUNA ADJUVAT.1 Of all the uncertain and capricious powers which rule our earthly destiny, Fortune is the chief. Who has not heard of the poor being raised up, and the rich being laid low? Alexander the Great said he envied Diogenes in his tub, because Diogenes could have nothing less. We need not go far for an instance of fortune. Who was so great as Nicholas, the Czar of all the Russians, a year ago, and now he is fallen, fallen from his high estate, without a friend to grace his obsequies.' The Turks are the finest specimen of the human race, yet they too have experienced the vicissitudes of fortune. Horace says that we should wrap ourselves in our virtue when fortune changes. Napoleon, too, shows us how little we can rely on fortune; but his faults, great as they were, are being redeemed by his nephew, Louis Napoleon, who has shown himself very different from what we expected, though he has never explained how he came to swear to the Constitution, and then mounted the imperial throne. From all this it appears that we should rely on fortune only while it remains,— recollecting the words of the thesis, Fortes fortuna adjuvat'; and that, above all, we should ever cultivate those virtues which will never fail us, and which are a sure basis of respectability, and will profit us here and hereafter. 'Not one word of this,' says Mr. Black, to whom the boy's father has submitted the composition for criticism, 'is upon the thesis. . . . "Fortes fortuna adjuvat” is a proposition; it states a certain gene 1 Fortune assists the brave. ral principle; and this is just what an ordinary boy would be sure to miss, and Robert does miss it. He goes off at once on the word "fortuna." 'Fortuna” was not his subject; the thesis was intended to guide him, for his own good; he refuses to be put into leading strings; he breaks loose, and runs off in his own fashion on the broad field and in wild chase of "fortune" instead of closing with the subject, which, as being definite, would have supported him. 66 '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 -you see them all in the Gradus, 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; Robert prefers to write upon all. . . Now, I will prophesy one thing of Robert, unless this fault is knocked out of him,' continued merciless Mr. Black: When he grows up, and has to make a speech, or write a letter for the papers, he will look out for flowers, full-blown flowers, figures, smart expressions, trite quotations, hackneyed beginnings and endings, pompous circumlocutions, and so on; but the meaning, the sense, the solid sense, the foundation, you may hunt the slipper long enough before you catch it.' Accumulation of Material.-After the choice and determination of your subject, the next step is to take account of what you know or think, to recall and evolve, by patient reflection, all that can be made useful in exhibiting and enforcing your views. Thought must be continuous and concentrated, directed to a definite object, not allowed to wander from one thing to another. It is possible to look your subject into shape. As troops, to achieve a glorious victory, must be marshaled upon the same plain, obey the same commander, fight the same foe; so the faculties, to effect anything important, must act in concert, sieze their purpose with vigor, and pursue it with perseverance. The poet's soul, like the maniac's eye, may roll in fine frenzy; but to the student, steadiness of gaze is indispensable. Only this can revive the |