1897.] on Bomance. 447 



and the compllcatioris of common feelings. Romance does not claim 

 to reflect all life, but certain aspects of life to which it gives pro- 

 minence. These are not the aspects with which the physician or 

 the statistician, or even the logician, is primarily concerned, but they 

 are true and important aspects. Eomance comes to be false only 

 when it allows itself to forget its own true nature and its own true 

 function. But for every form of literature the same penalty waits 

 on the same sin. What is called the realistic novel becomes false 

 when through an intemperate adoration of mere fact it forgets 

 that its business is with the minds of men, and that, given a certain 

 number of characters in the story, that only is essential which in 

 some way acts on the minds of those characters, and is, so to say, a 

 differentia of them as compared with the rest of the world ; what 

 they have for breakfast is of no matter unless it should give them 

 indigestion, and indigestion should i^roduce irritation or otherwise 

 affect the course of their thoughts and emotions. In like manner 

 romance becomes false when it forgets what its true theme is, lets 

 itself be carried away by the incidents, thinks only of them, and 

 instead of representing people influencing and being influenced by 

 events, gives us a series of mechanical stage effects happening to a 

 number of no less mechanical stage puppets. This sin is indeed 

 common ; perhaps no writer could show quite a clean sheet in regard 

 to it. But no cleverness, no inventiveness, no accomplishment in 

 mere technique, compensate for an error so fatal — ^just as no minute- 

 ness of observation or diligence in collecting what are called " docu- 

 ments," compensates for the corresponding sin of the writer whose 

 watchword is reality. In both sorts of books the thing in the end 

 is — the one thing in the end is, the temper of the characters. To 

 that we come back with a persistence only to be excused because 

 here lies the foundation of the whole matter. In romance the thing 

 is always the love of the woman, not the machinations of the villain 

 — the high mind of ambition, not the means it seeks or the prize 

 it aims at — the spirit of adventure, not the adventures — the joy in 

 action, not the precise actions by which the impulse seeks and finds 

 satisfaction. I have a notion that if we could know the order in 

 which the writer evolved his book, whether the man came first or 

 the incidents, whether he fitted his scene to his characters or con- 

 trived characters to put on his scene, we should in most cases be 

 able to say whether his book would be a good book or not a good 

 book in the most essential point. When a lady said to Sir Walter 

 Scott that she never knew what was going to happen on the next 

 page of his books. Sir Walter is reported to have replied, " Nor I 

 neither, madam." The story may well embody a truth ; he may 

 very likely not have known what was going to happen to his char- 

 acters, but depend upon it Sir Walter knew very well what was 

 happening and what was about to happen in them ; he knew where 

 he was going, though he might not have decided exactly what road 

 to take. 



