438 Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins [May 7, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 7, 1897. 



Sir James Crichton-Browne, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. Treasurer and 

 Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Anthony Hope Hawkins, Esq. 



Romance. 



My object in the remarks which I am to have the honour of addressing 

 to you to-night is to attempt to define in some degree the meaning and 

 function of romance as a quality in literature ; and although romance 

 is to be found in many kinds of literature, I think you will not only 

 forgive, but will also approve, if I discuss it from the point of view 

 of the species on which alone even your indulgence could seem to 

 give me any right to speak — that of prose fiction. As regards nomen- 

 clature, there is at the present time a tendency in some quarters to 

 distinguish between novels and romances ; but I think that the older 

 and more authoritative usage in English is to employ novel as the 

 generic, romance as the specific term. In this latter way I shall use 

 the words to-night ; and I shall ask, to put my questions broadly, 

 What are the characteristics whose presence in a novel leads us to 

 call that novel a romance ; and what is the share of romance, as a 

 quality, in the work that novels have to do ? The terms which are 

 popularly opposed to romance — realism and the realistic — I shall not 

 deal with further than in so far as they may occur incidentally in the 

 course of my proper inquiry. It may be doubted whether the anti- 

 thesis, admittedly rough and ready, is not in fact so partial and so 

 clumsy as to be devoid of any merit as a guide in thinking, though it 

 may by familiarity have acquired some convenience as a catchword. 

 Speaking in a place mainly devoted to the study of exact sciences, 

 I would add that I must beg for some allowance if, in treating of a 

 subject of an inexact nature, and of an art not very amenable to strict 

 rules, my conclusions are affected by a certain degree of vagueness 

 and tentativeness. The true meaning which underlies ordinary 

 phraseology is not always easy to discover, and rigid dogmatism of 

 statement would befit neither the topic nor the speaker. At the same 

 time I may here and there, owing to a desire for brevity, seem to 

 assert, where my real intent is only to suggest matter for your con- 

 sideration. 



Romance, then, being a certain quality in literature, and literature 

 being (so far, anyhow, as novels represent it) a picture of some side 

 or aspect of life — for these two preliminary steps in the argument it 

 seems safe to assume — the presence or absence of romance must be 



