450 Mr. Anthony Hope Hawhins [May 7, 



share the emotions which it displays before your eyes. It will make 

 terms with humour, but it does not love ridicule. In spite of the 

 deep truths with which romance deals, the romantic temper is, in a 

 sense, innocent, unsophisticated, primitive ; it throws itself into life 

 rather than analyses it ; it sympathises and shares, it does not stand 

 aloof and smile. Intricacy baffles it ; it retreats in fear from the bite 

 of the acid of irony. It is conversant with great sorrows, yet in the 

 end it is a cheerful thing. It trusts life, it loves life ; even for its 

 deepest woes there are the consolations of love or the hallowing pride 

 of memory — for when romance kills, she kills becomingly. It does 

 not ask whence we come and whither we go, it does not cry, " Vanity 

 of Vanities ! " But a temper like this, while it has its virtues, and 

 possesses about it much that is attractive, has its obvious limitations 

 and is subject to great disabilities. It is not a full expression of the 

 human mind ; it is not final, exhaustive, nor perhaps even particularly 

 heljpful in regard to the great problems which occupy the intellect ; 

 there are large fields of emotion which it leaves untouched, complica- 

 tions that it does not unravel, varieties that it cannot note, moods 

 with which it cannot enter into sympathy and which it seems rather 

 to delude than satisfy. So sometimes men and women turn away 

 from it in a sort of impatience, and they are especially apt to do this 

 when they are members of a society which is highly civilised, highly 

 cultivated, and much interested in the puzzles and difficulties that 

 beset the life of the community and the individual — a society that 

 takes a critical and perhaps not a very hopeful view of itself, that has 

 its intellect fully developed, its conscience very acute, and ( perhaps I 

 may add) its nervous system in a state of some irritation. Romance 

 seems then rather a childish thing — yes, like a child laughing in the 

 garden while a man lies dead in the house. Even if it were no more, 

 yet let the child laugh : his laughter is a part of the truth about the 

 world. But, as a matter of fact, this impatience may be understood 

 and excused as a mood, but is not to be justified as a criticism ; and 

 those who are guilty of it fail in catholicity of judgment. Because 

 romance cannot fill the place and discharge the function of other 

 writings inspired by difierent tempers and employing different means, 

 they are hasty to deny the value of its proper office and the import- 

 ance of the position it holds as one of the many forms which must be 

 assumed by that interpretation of human life which is the great oc- 

 cupation of all imaginative literature, and the title by which it com- 

 mands the attention of human minds. They are all at the task — the 

 careful chronicler, the keen analyst, the patient student, the smiling 

 comedian, the indignant satirist, the theoriser, the visionary, and the 

 wit. It is enough for the romancer to claim and take his place in 

 the rank, being sure that, if he pursues his own task faithfully and 

 performs it with ability, there are many who will find in him not the 

 worst companion, and few to whom he will not (at some moments, 

 at least) seem to speak words both of gladness and of truth. For 

 romance is, in the end, an assertion, constantly and confidently re- 



