2. Titles indicating the spirit of a work. Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson's "A Century of Dishonor" is a history of the United States government's dealings with the Indians, and the title reveals its animus. In Charles Reade's "Put Yourself in his Place" the title embraces the moral lesson taught throughout the story.

2. As a published work must be not only made but sold, and as people must have some inducement to take up a new work, the title needs to have an attractiveness and interest in itself.

This requisite often makes the choice of a title, especially in more purely literary productions, a matter of much difficulty; and with all the pains taken, the fate of a title not infrequently seems like mere chance. No one can calculate unerringly just what will strike the public taste. The endeavor to attract readers leads often to the choice of figurative titles, alliterative and epigrammatic titles, scraps of quotation, proverbs, and the like; which reveal, more or less pleasurably, the writer's fancy and taste.

EXAMPLES..-1. A figurative title should of course suggest, and not obscurely, the literal idea that justly characterizes the work. Johnson's "Rambler" has been mentioned as faulty in this respect. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus " (The Tailor Re-fitted) is founded throughout on an extended metaphor, which the title sufficiently suggests. "Mosses from an Old Manse" is the graceful name that Hawthorne gives to a volume of short stories written in the old manse, his residence in Concord. 66 Suspiria de Profundis" contains some of De Quincey's confessions regarding his deplorable opium habit, with the strange and often exceedingly sad visions induced thereby.

2. Examples of gracefully or quaintly worded titles are, "Sights and Insights," a volume of travels by Mrs. Whitney; "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands," a similar work by Mrs. Stowe; "Buds and Bird-voices," a volume of nature sketches by John Burroughs; "Aftermath" is the name given by Longfellow to one of the later volumes of his poems.

3. "All's Well that Ends Well" is a popular proverb used for a title; so is Charles Reade's "Never too Late to Mend." "Far from the Madding Crowd," "Airy Fairy Lilian," "The Wooing o't," "A Counterfeit Presentment," are titles of popular stories, all scraps of quotation.

3. While the title may well arouse pleasurable anticipations of the interest of the work, it should not promise more than the work can fulfill. A modest claim makes a better impression.

EXAMPLES. One of Burke's great political works bears the modest title, "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents"; another is entitled “Reflections on the Revolution in France." An important essay of Carlyle's is entitled simply, "Characteristics."

4. When the title is not sufficiently suggestive, or when it is desirable to combine some of the above-named requisites, a second or sub-title is often added to the main one. The same office is sometimes filled by a motto.

EXAMPLES. "The Unseen Universe; or, Physical Speculations on a Future State." In the introduction to Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since," is a very interesting discussion of the suggestiveness of both members of the title. In Jevons's "Principles of Science; a Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method," the second part of the title is necessary to the right suggestiveness of the first.

SECTION SECOND.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE PLAN.

In the process of determining his theme, if for this purpose he has analyzed his material carefully, the writer has obtained a tolerably definite idea of the general course of his thought; he is at least aware of its inclusion and manner of treatment, and sometimes of the main stages of its progress. As yet, however, it remains for the most part unclassified. The next step, therefore, is to examine anew the various hints and shades of suggestion that lie involved in the theme, and systematize these into a plan of discourse, in which the accumulated material shall appear in properly subordinated, proportioned, and progressive sequence.

In all the art of composition there is perhaps no more frequent source of misapprehension, on the part of young writers, than this matter of the plan. The structure of a finished literary work, as it lies before them for perusal, seems so natural, so inevitable, that they easily get the idea that it never was made, but sprang mature from the author's brain, as Pallas sprang from the brain of Jove.

And so they imagine they have only to surrender their thinking to its own unguided vagaries, trusting that earnestness and enthusiasm will make everything come out right.

But thought does not shape itself spontaneously. Nor will it find its natural order without the trained and vigorous working of the writer's best calculating powers. This is 'he universal testimony of those who have achieved eminence in writing. And rigid analysis of any literary work that leaves a definite and rememberable impression on the reader's mind reveals the invariable fact of a skillfully laid plan; that is, it is found that both main and minor thoughts follow one another according to natural laws of association, and bear the marks of intentional and studious arrangement.

I. GENERAL MECHANISM OF THE PLAN.

Every writer must find his own plan, and his own natural way of planning; this is as necessary as that he should find his own thought. A treatise on invention cannot, therefore, legislate for any individual case. It can, however, point out those general laws of arrangement which are found to underlie every coherent literary production; laws which cannot be transgressed without throwing the composition into crudeness and confusion. So much can be done, though the application of them must be left to the writer himself. How Material, of Different Kinds, lends itself to Planning.— Some kinds of material fall into order more naturally than others, and consequently require less pains in planning, or rather require pains in solving problems of a different kind; for no kind of material is exempt from the utmost carefulness in planning. As related to facility of arrangement material may be roughly divided into two classes.

1. Such as contains naturally suggested its own method. Under this head comes first of all narrative material,1 which generally has

1 "Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdröckh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little.” — Carlyle, “Sartor Resartus.”

merely to follow the order of time; then in less degree descriptive material, which, when it deals with objects of sight, may generally be guided as to method by the order of objects in space. It is to be noted that where the order suggests itself the difficulties of arrangement, released from the problem of sequence, lie more in problems of proportion and perspective.

2. Such as, originating in human thought, must submit itself to the laws of thought; whose method, therefore, is not so much found as made by the writer's logical sense and power of perspicuous arrangement. Under this head comes expository, argumentative, and hortatory material; of all which the leading problem is, how to find a sequence that shall lead the reader naturally forward and be easily retained in his memory.

The difficulties of planning belong mostly to material of this second class. They are simply the difficulties of finding, so to say, common ground between human minds; that is, of inventing a logical order in which the author may be sure he has successfully consulted the thinking and retaining powers of his readers.

1

Requisites of Construction. It would be precarious to say that every course of thought has an ideally best order, to which each individual writer approximates more or less closely. Dr. Johnson thinks, indeed, that the steps of a logically ordered thought are commonly interchangeable. He says, "Of all homogeneous truths at least, of all truths respecting the same general end, in whatever series they may be produced, a concatenation by intermediate ideas may be formed, such as, when it is once shewn, shall appear natural; but if this order be reversed, another mode of connection equally specious may be found or made." And again, "As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is sufficiently regular that avoids obscurity; and where there is no obscurity it will not be difficult to discover method."

There are, however, some requisites of construction necessary to keep the stages of the plan, however ordered, from obscurity.

1 Johnson, Life of Pope.

The three most important of these may here be defined and exemplified.

1. The first requisite is distinction. This requires that the important thoughts of a production be well discriminated, and that they be distinguished from each other by expression whose strikingness corresponds to the significance of the thought so marked. By brief definitive sentences, which may be heightened by antithesis and epigram, the cardinal ideas should be made to stand out from their surroundings, as landmarks in the course of thought, thus keeping the reader aware what are to be the principal objects of his attention.

NOTE. — Some writers are more particular about this requisite than others; and in proportion to their care in observing it is the reader's satisfaction in the plan and articulation of their thought. Among those who have an eminent sense of form in this respect may be mentioned Macaulay and Ruskin.

2. The second requisite is sequence. This requires that the successive thoughts of a production should, as far as possible, grow out of each other, each suggested and prepared for by its preceding, without breaks and dislocations. The ideal is to make such a thread of continuity extend through the whole as will give it somewhat the movement of a story, with a like obviousness of cause and effect or other associative affinities between the thoughts. See below, page 273.

NOTE. The narrative which, tracing events from cause to effect and from point to point in time, contains the most natural and easy means of sequence, is the ideal and norm of sequence in every discourse. The nearer we can come to such continuity of movement the less the main thoughts will appear like a catalogue and the more like an organism.

3. The third requisite is climax. This requires that the thought as it advances should rise in interest and evident importance with each successive step, until the culmination concentrates in itself in some sense the significance of all that has gone before. Such a requisite is involved in the idea that true discourse is a growth.