382 



ROMANCE. 



Its real and 



distinctive 



excellence. 



Romance or 

 novel. 



llomance. in dialogue, in narrative, and in reflection. The great- 

 -y ^ est of them, however, have as certainly exerted these 

 variety of powers, under the guidance of some one 

 leading aim and purpose. The free and unfettered 

 character of the form of composition, has, in other 

 words, allowed and encouraged each individual mind 

 to stamp upon it the broad and indelible traces of its 

 own favourite energies. Here genius paints full lengths 

 of itself, as well as of its creations. Who does not feel 

 as if the elegant wit of Fielding, the irresistible hu- 

 mour and sarcasm of Smollett, the precise hair-pencil 

 description of Richardson, the capricious flights of 

 Sterne,the sharp and all but demoniacal satire of Le Sage, 

 the profound pathos of Goethe, the easy gentlemanlike 

 humour (to mention nothing else at present) of the au- 

 thor of Waverley who does not feel as if these had 

 been the most distinguishing elements of the fireside 

 conversation of some of his own most intimate asso- 

 ciates ? 



No mode of composition was ever invented, in which 

 it is so easy to lay bare the inmost mysteries of the na- 

 ture of man ; and for that reason, the nature of man 

 becoming the favourite object of attention exactly in 

 proportion as civilization is extended, we have no hesi- 

 tation in expressing our opinion, that this branch of 

 imaginative literature has the fairest prospect of con- 

 tinuing to be, as it unquestionably has been during the 

 last century, the most popular and successful of all. 



A distinguished contemporary, (alluded to at the be- 

 ginning of this paper) seems to consider the novel and 

 the romance as forming two essentially distinct classes 

 of modern literature, drawing his distinction from the 

 presence or absence of the marvellous. We have al- 

 ready ventured to express our dissent from this view of 

 the matter ; but it may be proper to say a few words 

 more on the subject ere we close our article. 



To us, then, it seems that, from the date of Cervantes' 

 masterpiece, the mere marvellous has ceased to form 

 the essential merit, and therefore we cannot consider it 

 as forming the essential distinction, of any successful 

 cla"ss of fictitious narrative. From that time actual na- 

 ture was and is imperatively demanded from every one, 

 who hopes to fix attention on his compositions in this 

 great department of literature ; and we venture to 

 doubt, whether even the highest genius could now give 

 any thing more than a mere ephemeral popularity to 

 any lengthened work of fiction, in which possibi- 

 lity should be absolutely set at naught, for any pur- 

 pose other than a merely satirical one. Gulliver is the 

 only work of first-rate genius of last century, the sub- 

 stratum of which is an actual impossibility; and even 

 there we have only to grant one postulate (a startling 

 one we admit) at the outset, and from that moment we 

 are reading an admirable narrative of actual nature. 

 The day of the castle of Otranto, and of all similar 

 works, is but a short one, and moreover, such works 

 are, even in their own day, admired only as elegant mo- 

 dernizations of the genuine old romance of the middle 

 ages. They have nothing to do with that literature 

 which derives its power and its charm from its express- 

 ing the movements of living mind, and the picturesque 

 of real manners. 



It would be totally ridiculous to deny that the mar- 

 vellous, (even taking the term in its strictest sense,) 

 has ceased to be a great element of interest. Super- 

 stition is not yet eradicated from the human mind : 

 fear and terror never will be so. Schiller, in his Gho^i- 

 seer, Radcliffe in her admirable works, Godwin in his 

 St. Leon, and some others, have produced a powerful 



The mar- 

 vellous. 



effect by their use of supernatural machinery ; but Romance, 

 how ? only by presupposing, as Swift did in Gul- T~ 

 liver, the possibility of one or two absurdities, and 

 then proceeding to write a narrative, it is no matter 

 whether one calls it a romance or a novel, of what 

 might have occurred these preliminaries being grant- 

 ed. The whole charm with them lies in the super- 

 structure of actual feeling and manners. In the old 

 romance the marvellous stood per se the grand bauble 

 of a young and unthinking age, totally and radically 

 distinct from the worthy delight of a highly refined, 

 a profoundly curious, and a profoundly reflective state 

 of society. 



This literature is the reflection of actual life that is Actual life 

 its essential character and its peculiar merit. Different now de " 

 authors will of course tinge their compositions accord- mani ^ e "- 

 ing to the turn of their own minds ; a Defoe will al- 

 ways describe incidents with a more prosaic, yet a more 

 satisfactory fulness than a Sterne ; a Godwin will al- 

 ways sound the depths of passion plummet and plum^ 

 met below the reach of a Fielding ; a Fielding again 

 will always represent more of the bright side of human 

 existence than a Smollett, and a Smollett will always 

 paint mere absurdities more strongly than a Fielding ; 

 a Rousseau will always skim the surface of manners, 

 and plunge into the world of sentiment. A Cervantes 

 alone, or an Author of Waverley, will have the compre- 

 hension and the grasp to unite in his picture, all, or 

 nearly all the elements of human life and sources of 

 human interest. 



It is impossible for us to guess to what purposes this Future pro- 

 branch of literature may be hereafter converted. One perty of 

 remark we may hazard, and this is, that as the external this l'ta- 

 manners of the different nations of Europe as nations, ture> 

 of the different classes of society as classes within each 

 nation, and of the members of each class of society 

 within itself, are daily becoming more closely assimi- 

 lated, that department of this art which concerns itself 

 with manners chiefly, must of necessity be the first ex - 

 hausted. You may teach men to behave like each 

 other, but you never can teach them to feel and to 

 think so ; and there is the really inexhaustible province. 



In our own time, no doubt, the painting of mere Author of 

 manners has been considered as forming one of the Waverley, 

 principal sources of attraction in the most popular &c- 

 works of this kind that have appeared. We attribute 

 this circumstance, however, to mere secondary causes, 

 and to causes which are not likely to operate again ; 

 and, besides, we cannot doubt that the best and most 

 lasting charm of the works to which we allude, will 

 be found to consist in elements of a much higher or- 

 der in the universal nature of character, and the pro- 

 found feeling for truth and beauty by which the Au- 

 thor of Waverley is throughout distinguished. To say 

 truth, we think the solemn, formal, and elaborate way 

 in which even that unrivalled writer describes mere 

 manners, is of itself a sufficient proof that the day of 

 such description is near its close TJ^MJ ov *.w6eutit. The 

 admirable antiquarian knowledge possessed by this au- 

 thor, and the peculiar circumstances of the country in 

 which he was born, have, in short, enabled him to open 

 and to adorn a field on which we do not apprehend he 

 is likely to have any very successful successors. But 

 there are two higher elements in his fame his Shake- 

 spearian range of character, and his happy expression 

 of the peculiar spirit and tone of thought and sentiment 

 impressed on the character of his own age, so directly 

 the reverse of that of the age immediately preceding ; and 

 there are excellencies in which, though we cannot sup- 

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