189?.] on Romance. 445 



ordinary minutes I mean — in his own mind identifies romance with 

 a particular framework of story or description of incident. We took 

 leave to call this a mistake, and we must call it one still, but now we 

 are in a position to see how it comes about. The presence or absence 

 of romance as the dominating character of the book is determined 

 fey the quality and treatment of the emotions exhibited in it. The 

 function of the incidents is to exhibit the emotions in action, and there 

 are certain classes of incidents which perform this office, if not more 

 perfectly than others, yet at all events more easily and more obviously. 

 Thus they tend to suggest themselves to the writer of romance ; 

 they are the line of least resistance along which his mind travels ; 

 thuy strike him at once as supplying the most effective stage for his 

 drama of emotion. Suppose, once more, that the passion of love is 

 the writer's theme. It is to be strong, persistent, not to be turned 

 aside. The readiest way to display these qualities is to confront it 

 with great obstacles, to demand of it great sacrifices and efforts, to 

 face the man who feels it with the peril of death. There may be 

 sacrifices as great as that of life, or greater ; but life is very obviously 

 a very great sacrifice, and appeals as such to everybody, even to those 

 who might miss the poignancy of some not less great but less obvious 

 act of self-devotion. Again, a mark of love is that it takes joy in 

 serving the object of love, and perhaps we may add, takes an especial 

 pride in the applause of the object of love. How better show this 

 mark of love, and thereby reinforce the impression of the love's 

 strength, than by causing the lover to preserve his mistress who in 

 her turn has come into great distress ? We see at once how fighting, 

 and perils, and all sorts of adventures, come to be so common in 

 romances as to have been mistaken for the essence of that of which they 

 are only accidental concdmitants, and to seem to be the theme where 

 they are only particularly handy and convenient auxiliaries ; for you 

 might reverse the parts and make the theme patriotism or courage, 

 using love as an auxiliaiy ; the same incidents would serve, only you 

 would have, so to say, to shift the centre of gravity ; or you might 

 have a struggle between the two, using still the same framework of 

 incident. 



Again, from the point of view of the simplicity and confidence of 

 the emotion, it is naturally felt that these qualities are most readily 

 exhibited in hours of action, and are at their prime in moments of 

 strong excitement, such as arise in view of imminent danger or of 

 the necessity for rapid action. Thus it comes about that analysis 

 falls into the background, that the characters, being in fact reduced 

 to embodiments of one or two simple emotions which alone are of 

 service to the theme, require less detailed description, and that the 

 incidents acquire a greater relative importance and occupy more of 

 the writer's pen and of the reader's attention. And as a certain 

 startlingness in the incidents and a certain strangeness in the scene 

 afford a good stage for the emotions of the actor, so they predispose 

 the mind of the reader to sympathise with them, and, to use a common 



