48. Invention in general is the combination of the possible, the
probable, or the known, in a mode that strikes with novelty.
_Coroll._--Invention has been said to mean no more than the moment of
any fact chosen by the artist.
To say that the painter's invention is not to find or to combine its own
subject, is to confine it to the poet's or historian's alms--is to
annihilate its essence; it says in other words, that Macbeth or Ugolino
would be no subjects for the pencil, if they had not been prepared by
history and borrowed from Shakspeare and Dante.
49. Ask not--Where is fancy bred? in the heart? in the head? how begot?
how nourished?
_Coroll._--The critic who inquires whether in the madness of Lear, grief
for the loss of empire, or the resentment of filial ingratitude
preponderated--and he who doubts whether it be within the limits of art
to embody beings of fancy, agitate different questions, but of equal
futility.