...was "a creative faculty" rather than just "discovery, or finding out," he then explained how it was "a quick and sagacious penetration into the true essence of all the objects of our contemplation." Homer was naturally among those instanced.75 By the time of Lessing's Laocoön or of Montagu's Essay,...

...teach them that "by Invention is really meant no more, (and so the Word signifies) than Discovery, or finding out; or to explain it at large, a quick and...true Essence of all the Objects of our Contemplation" (1:491). Fielding's special meaning for "invention" derives from the Latin verb, invenio. "To find...

...diagnostic features as are necessary for the task. Such was his conception of ' invention ' or 'creation': 'a quick and sagacious penetration into the true essence of all the objects of our contemplation'.1 This meant in practice that once the individual had been appropriately labelled the...

...Invention, properly understood, does not imply making things up. Rather, it means finding things out: "a quick and sagacious penetration into the true essence of all the objects of our contemplation" (424). This quality pairs well with judgment, which discerns the differences between one thing and...

...creative faculty, which would indeed prove most romance writers to have the highest pretensions to it ; whereas by invention is meant no more, and the word...exist without the concomitancy of judgment, for how can we be said to have discovered the true essence of two things, without discovering their difference...