tives, whether poetry or prose, where the writer lacks originality. Roman writers are conspicuous for this. Plautus and Terence adapted Greek plays, or translated them. Virgil did not create the materials for the Æneid, but took them from existing sources, and presented them with but little change.

Accumulative invention is found, first, in narratives made up of facts of actual occurrence, with which the writer has become acquainted in any way; secondly, in all works of the imagination, where the incidents have not been originated by the writer, but drawn from other sources.

Accumulative invention may also be seen in expository subject-matter.

Ist. In writing intended to instruct, where the subject-matter is the result of research, as in Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory. 2d. Where the reasoning is based upon facts of actual occurrence, as in Burke's speech on the Nabob of Arcot, or Sheridan's speech on Warren Hastings.

In accumulative invention the subject-matter may be immediately furnished by the memory, so that no preliminary labor may be needed; but it is evident that this labor has already. taken place in some way from the existence of those very things with which the memory has been supplied.

In accumulative invention the faculties of the mind chiefly employed are reason and memory.

$320. CREATIVE INVENTION.

By this is meant the finding of subject-matter by means of the inventive powers of the mind. The writer does not gather his material from external sources, but supplies it from within.

In narrative, creative invention is found in all works of the imagination where the things described have been produced by the author's own conception. For example, Dante's Divina Commedia describes a vast succession of scenes, with a multitude of characters, all of which have been created by the powerful genius of the author. In Milton's Paradise Lost we are introduced to supernatural scenes and superhuman characters, with mould and temper transcending anything that has ever existed in real life. Homer intermingles the natural with the supernatural, and blends his own creations with history or legend. Creative invention may also be shown where real

facts and the characters of real life are represented, but where the particular characters are actual creations, or are endowed with a life and individuality of their own. This is illustrated in modern novels.

In exposition, creative invention may be seen where the writer sets forth to establish theories, to reason from new combinations of principles, or to reach new conclusions. Here facts may, and, indeed, must form the foundation; but the creative invention of the writer is seen in his power of combination, analysis, synthesis, and generalization, and in his ability to pass from the known to the unknown. This is ex

emplified in Burke's speech on Conciliation with America, or in Erskine's speech on Hardy.

The faculties of the mind employed in creative invention are chiefly imagination and reason.

$321. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL.

The chief field of creative invention is fiction, which has three distinct modes of presentation-poetry, prose, and the drama. Among these two classes are to be noted-the real and the ideal.

The Real.--Where the writer represents the scenes and delineates the characters of real life.

The Ideal.-Where the writer describes characters and scenes that are elevated beyond real life. The ideal must rise from the real. The writer takes striking circumstances, as in human life, and builds up an ideal world therefrom.

The same thing may be observed in art. A portrait represents the real, and may be compared with an original conception of the artist—a bust of Julius Cæsar with the Apollo Belvedere. The one is imitation, the other creation; the former is fact, the latter imagination.

$322. POETIC FICTION.

The ideal enters largely into poetic fiction. Realistic poetry, as a distinct class, is quite modern, and is found exemplified by Cowper, Crabbe, and Wordsworth. Passages of this sort may, however, be found in all poetry, and not the least in Homer. Dante in conception is intensely ideal, yet, in execution, is intensely real. Like Swedenborg, he combines

the most amazing grandeur and subtlety of design with microscropic minuteness of detail.

In the drama the real is chiefly found in comedy, and the ideal in tragedy; the nearest approach to the real being in such historical plays as those of Shakespeare; yet this is only apparent, for the poet idealizes all his characters, and, like the portraits of Vandyke, these living historical personages have the stamp of the artist upon them. The highest examples of the ideal in dramatic writing are the Prometheus Bound, of Æschylus; Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, Tempest, and Hamlet; Shelley's Prometheus Unbound; and Goethe's Faust.

8323. PROSE FICTION.

The modern novel comprises both the real and the ideal. Fielding, Thackeray, and Dickens aim after the real, but in this they are surpassed by Trollope and others, who go so far as to produce what has been called "photographic fiction," from their attention to the pettiest facts of real life, and their exact reproduction of commonplace.

The ideal has many followers, the chief of whom are Richardson, Miss Burney, Sir Walter Scott, Fouqué, George Sand, and Victor Hugo.

The modern novel has attained to the largest place in the literature of the imagination, being to us what epic poetry was to the ancient Greeks or the drama to the Elizabethan age. Its sphere is of the broadest possible kind, and its character illimitable, ranging all the way from the lowest to the highest. In modern prose fiction there are three things to be considered:

1. The plot.

2. The characters.

3. The scenery.

1. The Plot.-This will be considered elsewhere in connection with the subject of order of thought.

2. Character.-According to a recent writer in Blackwood's Magazine, this is the dominant force in fiction, and influences not only the plot, but also the scenery. The leading characters should always receive the most careful attention, and stand as studies of human nature. The minor ones serve chiefly to set off the greater. Original creations cannot be expected except

from writers of the highest genius; yet common characters may be placed in novel situations, and thereby acquire much interest. Some authors love to delineate a leading character of ideal perfection, to whom is opposed another of commensurate baseness. The former is popularly termed the "hero" or "heroine," and the latter the "villain." Thackeray professed to disbelieve in "heroes ;" but even in Vanity Fair he introduces the true and noble-hearted though somewhat stupid Dobbin, and in the Newcomes he has portrayed one of the most striking and best-beloved characters in modern fiction.

3. Scenery. This may be either subjective or objective; the former referring to the display of human emotion, as in the banquet of Macbeth or the ghost-scene of Hamlet, the latter to natural objects. In the one case the description is generally in close connection with the progress of the story-rising out of it and flowing along with it; but in the other this connection is by no means so frequent. And yet in material scenes, no less than in moral, a close relation to the subject should be maintained; and all that which may be called the "scenery" should have its own meaning, which should assist the action.

$324. THE TWO KINDS OF INVENTION INTERMINGLED.

Although for the sake of convenience these two kinds of invention have been considered separately, yet in literature they are generally intermingled; for the creative sort is never found separated from a basis of real occurrence, except perhaps in such rare instances as Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, or Mrs. Browning's Drama of Exile. Thus Homer had the Trojan traditions; the Greek dramatists those of Troy or Thebes. Legends which form the substratum of epic or dramatic poetry are called epopeia, the chief of which are in ancient times the Trojan and the Theban; in modern times the Carlovingian and the Arthurian. The Elizabethan dramatists based their works upon legends, tales, and history; Chaucer upon stories which were current in his day; Spenser upon the Arthurian epopeia; Milton upon that mythology which had grown up outside of the Bible; Scott upon national tradition; and the Idylls of the King rose from the same source as the Faërie Queene.

$325. OF THE TWO KINDS, THE CREATIVE IS THE GREATER. Of the two kinds of invention, the creative is the greater.

It may, indeed, be considered as the highest power which is possessed by the human mind. This creative faculty has been regarded in all ages as the distinguishing mark of the greatest poets, and constitutes the chief difference between them and their lesser brethren. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton are the supreme lords of literature. It is in this respect that Virgil is inferior to Homer; Tasso to Dante; Ben Jonson to Shakespeare; Spenser to Milton. For this reason the greatest works of creative invention are regarded as superior to the greatest works of accumulative invention-Homer to Thucydides; Milton to Gibbon; Dickens and Thackeray to Macaulay and Froude; Tennyson to Grote; Longfellow and Bryant to Prescott and Motley. In short, the very best history does not offer so broad a field for the exercise of genius as the very best fiction. In history the materials are accumulated, the multitudinous details are acquired by study, treasured up in the memory, and then narrated. In fiction these are all created; the portrayals of characters, their passions, words, acts; the scenery and surroundings. Sometimes beings full of life are brought before us, unlike anything in common experience, speaking words that last forever; and the speaker and the words are all created by the author's own mind.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STATUS.

§ 326. ARRANGEMENT OF SUBJECT-MATTER.

HAVING thus far treated of the finding of subject-matter, we have now to consider its arrangement, and under this head the following topics are included:

1. Status.

2. Classification.

3. Order of thought.

4. Argument.

5. Introduction.

6. Conclusion.