ROMANCE. 



3R1 



heroic poetry was so unrivalled in excellence, and its 

 ||, nparalively speaking, so near to them; 



and their drama was so admirably calculated to satisfy 

 all the Wight's of a clover people, who, as a people, 

 could not read ; that it is any thing but wonderful they 

 should have left at least one great department of ima- 

 ginative literature to be opened and cultivated by the 

 moderns. Their domestic manners, moreover, were 

 always barbarous the hearth had with them but a 

 narrow circle. What wonder that they should have 

 clung exclusively to the literature of character and of 

 action, as contradistinguished from that of sentiment 

 and feeling? Lastly, they knew no manners but their 

 own, therefore, they did not understand their own 

 manners. Upon what other principle can we account 

 for the real ignorance of their domestic life, under 

 which, with so much of their beautiful literature before 

 us, we unquestionably feel ourselves to be left, unless 

 upon the very same principle which we have mention- 

 ed as accounting for their having no literature of the 

 kind we are now discussing ; none, at least, that can be 

 talked of as worthy of their genius none that has, in 

 point of fact, been found worthy or capable of com- 

 nunding our elsewhere willing imitation ? 



It does not, we must confess, appear to us, that this 

 matter has ever, in any of its really essential points, 

 obtained any thing like the attention to which it is en- 

 titled. Above all, it does not appear to us, that the 

 philosophical criticism of modern Europe has been in 

 any effectual manner directed to the consideration of a 

 fact, which one might have supposed to be of a nature 

 sufficiently distinct and obvious, as well as important 

 the fact, namely, that to all intents and purposes the 

 literature of romance has supplanted, in modern Eu- 

 rope, the literature of the drama. "Lope de Vega 

 was the contemporary of Cervantes; and Calderon 

 flourished immediately after him. Lope was a greater 

 man in his own day than Cervantes, and Calderon was 

 as great a one in his : but what are their plays to 

 Spain now ? What have they been to Spain, compared 

 with the author of Don Quixote ? What characters of 

 theirs are known at all, when compared with his? Are 

 their books, or have they been, like his, the staple 

 food of the Spanish mind ? It is absolutely im- 

 possible that if they had been so, they should have 

 remained so completely unknown out of Spain as 

 they have done. Looking to England, again, Shake- 

 speare was exactly contemporary with Cervantes ; he 

 alone created the drama of England did not that 

 drama also (to all serious intents and purposes,) termi- 

 nate with him ? Is it not the fact that the genius exerted 

 on our drama, subsequent to his time, is totally un- 

 worthy of being named in the same day with the ge- 

 nius exerted on our romance, since the masterpiece of 

 Cervantes was made known amongst us ? Is it not 

 the fact, that but few even of Shakespeare's plays are in 

 possession of the British stage ? Is it not the fact, 

 that the stage has ceased to be to any extent worth 

 mentioning an entertainment of the more refined 

 classes of British society ? Is it not the fact, that 

 Shakespeare is studied and enjoyed by us in the closet? 

 --Is it not a fact, that Lear and Macbeth are read 

 rather than seen ? In France the play-house is more 

 popular than with us the French are a more frivo- 

 lous people than we ; and are more easy to be pleased 

 as to amusements. But what has been the case as to 

 the real talent of France? What has been the course 

 of her literature ? Their drama has certainly made no 

 progress since the time of Louis XI ^ .their imagi- 



native literature hat been the literature of romance, 

 not of the drama. What are all their comedies sub*c- 

 quent to Moliere, compared with a single volume of Le 

 Sage ? What literature ha exerted that sort of influ- 

 ence over them which the Greek drama did over the 

 old Greeks? Not their drama certainly but their 

 exquisite romances. Rousseau's Emilius, Voltaire's 

 Candide, Madame de Stael's Delphine and Corinne 

 what plays of the last century can they compare as to 

 real influence with such works as these ? Germany 

 is the on!y other country worth mentioning. Her mo- 

 dern imaginative literature, however, is essentially no- 

 thing but an imitation of the literature of England, of 

 recent growth too, and grown among a nation highly 

 refined and educated ere it began to appear among 

 them. Their stage, in particular, is a mere child of 

 oura, and so U their romance. In spite of all the ex- 

 ertions of courts and patrons, what has been the fate of 

 these ? Have not Werther and William Meister pro- 

 duced ten times more effect in Germany, than the dra- 

 matic works of Goethe? excepting, perhaps, the Faus- 

 tus, which ia a dramatic poem, not a drama. And is not 

 the only tragedy of Schiller's that an be said to sus- 

 tain his fame in the altitude for which his genius was 

 born his Wallenstein is not that tragedy a complete 

 romance, thrown merely into a dramatic form ? A 

 tragedy in three long plays ; a complete history, in the 

 form of scenes ! The drama has been found incapable 

 of contending in the great race of influence with the 

 romance. The latter species of composition has almost 

 supplanted the former, even among the nations richest 

 in them both. And why ? It is a species of litera- 

 ture, the peculiar growth of the modern mind, and pe- 

 culiarly calculated to keep pace with that mind, by 

 turns leading and led, reflected and reflecting. 



The very popularity of this new literature will form 

 the best of all apologies for not detaining our readers romanc* 

 with much farther disquisition upon it here. What literature, 

 readers are not as well acquainted as we can be with 

 Le Sage, Rousseau, Mariveaux, Marmontel, De Stael, 

 De Foe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Gold- 

 smith, Radcliffe, &c. at least with those works of theirs 

 which deserve to be placed in the first class of romantic 

 literature ? 



The first thing that must strike every one, consider- lu eompre- 

 ing the matter in a broad light, is the extraordinary ben 

 range which this species of literature opens for the ex- 

 ertion of talent. What beings can we conceive of, as 

 more diametrically opposed to each other than almost 

 any two that could be selected even from the small 

 number of names we have just been repeating? What 

 is that peculiar vein of thought, what is that variety of 

 passion, what is that field of manners, what that sphere 

 of philosophical purpose, what that satire, what that 

 sentiment, that may not find its easy and adequate re- 

 presentation within this earth-wide walk ? 



Perhaps the very greatest charm of this form of com- 

 position, is the facility with which it permits the most 

 various elements of interest to be blended and inter- 

 fused together within one work ; and perhaps the very 

 best of its productions are those, in which the greatest 

 variety of these elements are found in combination. j u 

 The very first romance writers have indeed been men 

 of that highest order of intellect, which excludes the 

 notion of the possessor being distinguished by the 

 greatness of one class of his powers alone. The very 

 greatest have been both wise men and wits, both poets 

 and orators, both humorists and satirists, great both 

 in the conception and development of character, great 



