Or any more think it strange that the last act of the life of Socrates[8] should have been to purify himself from the sin of having negligently listened to the voice within him, which, through all his past life, had bid him "labor, and make harmony." FOOTNOTES: [1] The word composition has been so much abused, and is in itself so inexpressive, that when I wrote the first part of this work I intended always to use, in this final section of it, the word "invention," and to reserve the term "composition" for that false composition which can be taught on principles; as I have already so employed the term in the chapter on "Imagination Associative," in the second volume. But, in arranging this section, I find it is not conveniently possible to avoid the ordinary modes of parlance; I therefore only head the section as I intended (and as is, indeed, best), using in the text the ordinarily accepted term; only, the reader must be careful to note that what I spoke of shortly as "composition" in the chapters on "Imagination," I here always call, distinctly, "false composition;" using here, as I find most convenient, the words "invention" or "composition" indifferently for the true faculty. [2] "The cries of them which have reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth (of all the creatures of the earth)." You will find a wonderful clearness come into many texts by reading, habitually, "helpful" and "helpfulness" for "holy" and "holiness," or else "living," as in Rom. xi. 16. The sense "dedicated" (the Latin _sanctus_), being, of course, inapplicable to the Supreme Being, is an entirely secondary and accidental one. [3] By diligent study of good compositions it is possible to put work together so that the parts shall help each other, a little, or at all events do no harm; and when some tact and taste are associated with this diligence, semblances of real invention are often produced, which, being the results of great labor, the artist is always proud of; and which, being capable of learned explanation and imitation, the spectator naturally takes interest in. The common precepts about composition all produce and teach this false kind, which, as true composition is the noblest, being the corruption of it, is the ignoblest condition of art. [4] We may, perhaps, expediently recollect as much of our botany as to teach us that there may be sharp and rough persons, like spines, who yet have good in them, and are essentially branches, and can bud. But the true thorny person is no spine, only an excrescence; rootless evermore,--leafless evermore. No crown made of such can ever meet glory of Angel's hand. (In Memoriam, lxviii.)