2. Care for the appearance of one's work,—its punctuation and capitalization, its chirography and general mechanism, is closely connected with care for a clear and satisfying style. We may truly say all is of one. Not that the good author must necessarily be a good penman, that were too much to assert; but in the passion for accuracy, which is the author's true attitude, the hand should so answer to the mind that no minute feature may be neglected or despised. The desire to make every word and letter plain consorts naturally with the desire to make thoughts plain; and slovenliness in the one begets slovenliness in the other.

3. In this day of type-writers, stylographic pens, and various devices for increasing rapidity in writing, a word may profitably be said on the other side. It is quite possible to write too fast. Indeed, in any work higher than mere transcribing or taking notes mere rapidity should not be aimed at. The first conception of a thought seldom exists in the form it ought finally to take; it must be pondered and tested and rounded until the form answers fully to the idea; and this the writer can best do by compelling himself to write so slowly that all questions of accuracy, clearness, consistency, fulness, and euphony may be settled in the interval between the first mental conception and its final form on paper. To write both well and rapidly is a desirable accomplishment; but let the writer at all events seek to write well, never letting any ill-considered or careless work escape him, and then if by practice and experience rapidity also comes, it is worth something. The motto of the late George Ripley, who, it is said, made his use of the English language a matter of conscience, ought to be always in the writer's heart: "He who does not write as well as he can on every occasion will soon form the habit of not writing well at all."

"Remember always, you have two characters in which all greatness of art consists: First, the earnest and intense seizing of natural facts; then the ordering those facts by strength of human intellect, so as to make them, for all who look upon them, to the utmost serviceable, memorable, and beautiful. And thus great art is nothing else than the type of strong and noble life; for, as the ignoble person, in his dealings with all that occurs in the world about him, first sees nothing clearly, - looks nothing fairly in the face, and then allows himself to be swept away by the trampling torrent, and unescapable force, of the things that he would not foresee, and could not understand: so the noble person, looking the facts of the world full in the face, and fathoming them with deep faculty, then deals with them in unalarmed intelligence and unhurried strength, and becomes, with his human intellect and will, no unconscious nor insignificant agent, in consummating their good, and restraining their evil.” — Ruskin.

INVENTION.

Scope of Invention. - Invention, as applied to literary undertakings, comprehends the various procedures involved in finding, sifting, and ordering the material of discourse.

These three processes, which may be regarded as the three logical stages of the inventive act, it is important briefly to deline and discriminate.

1. The first stage, the finding of material by thought r observation, is the fundamental and inclusive office of invention, the distinctive power that we designate in the popular use of the term. Herein lies obviously the heart and centre of literary production; it is what the writer finds, in his subject or in the world of thought, that gauges his distinction as an author. Yet this is, of all processes, the one least to be invaded by the rules of the text-book. It is a work so individual, so dependent on the peculiar aptitude and direction of the writer's mind, that each one must be left for the most part to find his way alone, according to the impulse that is in him. This is but saying that each man must be left to his own way of thinking, whether it be spiritless and lean, or vigorous and suggestive. Such invention is incommunicable by teaching. Something of real value may be done for it indirectly, however, by general precepts for self-culture, and by inculcation of the mental habits that arouse the latent creative powers, and give them steadiness and self-consistency.

2. But a moment's thought makes it evident that the inventive act is by no means exhausted with the mere finding of material. Indeed, the material is not properly found, or at least ascertained to be what is needed, until it has been subjected to a rigorous process of testing, choosing, and rejecting. At every step it has

to be held up in the light of an unspoken standard in the writer's mind: the standard mainly of his own sense of fitness and proportion, but also conditioned largely by extraneous considerations, such as the character of the audience or public, the allotted time or scope of the production, the circumstances of utterance, the exactions of the literary form adopted. This stage of invention is only to a limited extent within the teacher's province. It belongs rather to the writer's native tact and logical sense, and to the demands of the individual occasion.

3. Even yet we discern an important step involved in the work of finding; for until the material has been carefully ordered, with its parts skillfully adjusted to each other and to the whole, the question of retention or rejection, and therefore of discovering, is still open. The discourse is to be not a mere agglomeration of statements, but an organism, fitted to move as one thought, and be incorporated into the reader's mind. "In a good composition," says Ruskin,1" every idea is presented in just that order, and with just that force, which will perfectly connect it with all the other thoughts in the work, and will illustrate the others as well as receive illustration from them; so that the entire chain of thoughts offered to the beholder's mind shall be received by him with as much delight and with as little effort as is possible. And thus you see design, properly so called, is human invention, consulting human capacity. Out of the infinite heap of things around us in the world, it chooses a certain number which it can thoroughly grasp, and presents this group to the spectator in the form best calculated to enable him to grasp it also, and to grasp it with delight."

The ordering of discourse is the inventive process most susceptible to treatment in a text-book. To be sure, in the individual case the writer must still be left to his own ideas of the progress and proportion that he sees fitting to his work; but also there are definite and ascertainable laws underlying the construction of any form of discourse, which no writer can afford to ignore. Accord

1 Ruskin, "Two Paths," p. 44.