442 Mr. Anthony Hope Haiohins [May 7, 



say that the aim of romance is to exhibit in action a strong, simple, 

 confident emotion, either in exclusive domination, or in conflict with 

 and ultimately triumphing over one or more emotions possessing the 

 same qualities, but proving in the end either less persistent or less 

 fortunate. No particular class of incidents is essential, no special 

 scenes, no special surroundings. Neither is any particular sort of 

 emotion essential : to take our old illustration, a sublime miserliness 

 might struggle with a keen parental affection, and a good romance 

 describe the conflict. But whatever the incidents, the scene or the 

 emotion, the qualities will remain. Some strong, simple and con- 

 fident emotion will dominate the persons, shape the events, and deter- 

 mine the character of the story. The task of incidents and scene is 

 simply to aiford a stage and to enhance the effectiveness of the drama. 

 Let me illustrate what I mean by a glance at one or two sorts of 

 novels which are not romances, l^emember, I am not saying that 

 they are not — or may not be — good novels, only that they have not 

 the marks of romance. I will take the emotion of Love — Love 

 between man and woman. This is treated in novels of all sorts, and 

 in many forms of literature besides ; that is due to its universality, 

 to the fact that it appeals to most writers and the certainty that it 

 will appeal to most readers. But it is a favourite of romance not 

 only for its universality, but even more because it lends itself most 

 readily to the characteristically romantic treatment. Above all other 

 emotions it is strong and resents control, it is simjile and rises above 

 circumstances, it is confident and self approved. But every novel 

 which deals with love is not romance. For example, there is a large 

 class of novels which give pictures of the life that is about us every 

 day, and in which love plays a part, perhaps, so far as the incidents 

 go, a leading part. But the love is not a subject, it is rather a datum, 

 it happens, it is not felt ; it occurs at a certain point because it is the 

 proper thing to occur, the natural feature of the young man's twenty- 

 fifth and the young lady's twentieth year, the suitable winding up of 

 the series of social sketches of which the novel consists, the suitable 

 recognition of what our national customs in regard to matrimony 

 happen to be. All this is not of necessity untrue to life, nor of 

 necessity uninteresting or unamusing or uninforming ; it may be 

 almost anything in the world except romance. We are told indeed 

 that Mr. A. and Mi-s B. are in love. Even so did Stage Managers in 

 old times stick up a board and write on it " This is Verona." Well, 

 we take your word for it, but otherwise it might as well have been 

 the Arctic regions. In this sort of book love is merely a premiss 

 from which we draw the conclusion — marriage — but what the emotion 

 of love itself is remains undiscussed, undescribed, to all appearance 

 uncomprehended. And it may be noticed that not a few of the 

 novels which have love for their theme, and are generally called, and 

 perhaps call themselves, romances, fail in this respect. The love- 

 making is itself mechanical ; it does not rule the book, and we are 

 forced to suspect the writer either of failing to understand his theme, 



