...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,...

...assume they have plenty of the former, but a little Latin would teach them that "by Invention is really meant no more, (and so the Word signifies) than Discovery,...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...

...pretensions to it ; whereas by invention is meant no more, and the word so signifies, than discovery in finding out ; or, to explain it at large, a quick...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...