210 ROMA 
however, that any such undue partiality existed in hfs time, 
and if it had been so, the author, who had already so far 
yielded to prevailing tastes as to compose the long and 
tedious Galatea, would have been the last to have resisted the 
torrent of opinion. It seems much more probable that, in 
Cervantes’ day, the hyperbolical romance was getting fast out 
of fashion, and that our author adopted the primary cha¬ 
racter of Quixote as a pleasant weapon for deriding follies 
already neglected; and, in this respect, he rather followed 
than led the impulse that plunged into irrecoverable con¬ 
tempt the grave romances. It is a most remarkable feature 
in this astonishing work, that it seized and incorporated, and 
refined all the beauties of the very works it professed to 
ridicule. It is in itself in the highest degree romantic, 
possesses oftentimes a deep interest, and the natural shadows 
and lights of human life are so exquisitely blended or art¬ 
fully contrasted in it, that the smile it excites is of a cast that 
almost melts into a tear, while the tide of hearty laughter into 
which we are betrayed by the follies of La Mancha’s hero, is 
often checked by the serious respect we are tempted to feel 
for his exalted and honourable disposition. Though he owed 
much to the unaffected beauty of his style, and his dis¬ 
crimination of character, yet it was chiefly to this union of the 
comic and the serious that Cervantes’ immortality may be 
traced. Previous to his romance, the fabliaux of the trou- 
veurs and the tales of Boccaccio had found their way into 
Spain, andhad excited that gusto piscaresco which delighted 
to see human nature as unnaturally debased by carica¬ 
ture, as in romance it was upheld by hyperbole. The 
coarseness of these works become disgusting when contrasted 
\yith chaste and refined satire; and it is not, perhaps, too 
much to say, that the best romances of the present day owe 
much of their excellence to the careful mixture of the lofty 
and ludicrous which has been borrowed from Cervantes. 
There is a tedious class of works extant, entitled “ The 
Heroic Romance of the Seventeenth CenturySir W. Scott 
gives this excellent account of it. 
.. « A man of fantastic imagination, Honore d’Urfe, led the 
way in this style of composition. Being willing to record 
certain love intrigues of a complicated nature which had 
taken place in his own family, and amongst his friends, he 
imagined to himself a species of Arcadia on the banks of 
the Lignon, who live for love and for love alone. There 
are two principal stories, said to represent the family history 
of d’Urfe and his brother, with about thirty episodes, in 
which the gallantries and intrigues of Henry IV.’s court are 
presented under borrowed names. Considered by itself, this 
is but an example of the pastoral romance; but it was so 
popular that three celebrated French authors, Gomberville, 
Calprenede, and Madame Scuderi, seized the pen, and com¬ 
posed in emulation many interminable folios of heroic 
romance. In these insipid performances, a conventional 
character, and a set of family manners and features, are 
ascribed to ihe heroes and heroines, although selected from 
distant ages and various quarters of the world. The heroines 
are, without exception, models of beauty and perfection; 
and, so well persuaded of it themselves, that to approach 
them with the most humble declaration of love, is a crime 
sufficient to deserve the penalty of banishment from their 
presence; and it is well if it is softened to the audacious 
lover, by permission, or command to live, without which, 
absence and death are accounted synonimous. On the other 
hand, the heroes, whatsoever kingdoms they have to govern, 
or other earthly duties to perform, live through these folios 
for love alone ; and the most extraordinary revolutions which 
can agitate the world are ascribed to the charms of a Man- 
dana or a Statira acting upon the crazy understanding of 
their lovers. Nothing can be so uninteresting as the frigid 
extravagance with which these lovers express their passion; 
or, in their own phrase, nothing can be more freezing than 
their flames, more creeping than their flights of passion. 
Yet the line of metaphysical gallantry which they exhibited 
had its fashion, and a long one, both in France and Eng¬ 
land. In the latter country they continued to be read by our 
N C E. 
grandmothers during the Augustan age of English, and while 
Addison was amusing the world with its wit, and Pope by 
its poetry. The fashion did not decay till about the reign of 
George I.; and even more lately, Mrs. Lennox, patronized 
by Dr. Johnson, wrote a very good imitation of Cervantes, 
entitled * The Female Quixote,' which had those works for 
its basis. They are now totally forgotten.” 
There is another numerous and dull class of compositions, 
extending to some hundred volumes, with which we pre¬ 
sume most persons who have inspected the old circulating 
libraries are sufficiently familiar; they might conveniently 
be called the horrible romances. They are distinguished by 
perfect inattention to style, and considerable dependance on 
former publications:—A dark and wicked man, usually a 
knight, pursues with amorous ardour a lady, whose purity 
and trascendental virtue are continually displayed by her 
aversion to ravishment. The knight has dungeons deep, 
fortified castles, assassins, bandits, and sometimes a treache¬ 
rous priest, at command. The lady is assisted by some lover 
as virtuous as herself, and, in the last emergencies, by a ghost. 
Mystery and horror are the ingredients of interest in these 
romances; and as these are the stimuli which most strongly 
affect the uninstructed, they have commonly had great popu¬ 
larity with young persons. Certainly the best ot this terrific 
school are those of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose occasionally pow¬ 
erful language, and deep feeling, gave them an excellence 
her predecessors were unacquainted with. In our time this 
species has taken a new turn. The peculiar horrors of the 
German school has given it a novel aspect by the assimilation 
of modern characters and supernatural agents, and this pre¬ 
posterous union has not deprived them of interest. Witness 
the Vampires, Frankenstein, Sfc. 
We turn with pleasure from this dull field to contemplate 
the growth of the novel. For the elements of this class of 
works we are probably indebted to the Italians. The 
sprightly tales of Boccacio raised many imitators in his coun¬ 
try, in Spain, and at length in France. Under the hand of 
Le Sage this composition manifested variety, vigour, histo¬ 
rical and moral portraitures- It served Voltaire with a vehicle 
for the attacks on decency and morals contained in Candide. 
Rousseau used it to pour forth the glowing descriptions of his 
own wild imaginations. In this country it furnished Fielding 
and Smollet with a medium for their accurate pictures of 
English society;—pictures, the more amusing, because the 
drama had neglected, in the pursuit of fashionable charac¬ 
ters, the rich harvest of vulgar life. The popularity of these 
authors lasts even now, but it cannot be concealed from a 
scrutinizing eye, that many of their portraits are overcharged, 
much of their wit forced, and their incidents improbable. 
Another serious charge is their extreme coarseness. Who 
can read, in the present day, that favourite of our fathers, 
“ Tom Jones,” without disgust. The picture of female 
society drawn in that piece, was never to be found, we are 
certain, in any civilized country, far less in England. Never¬ 
theless, these - authors certainly far outstripped all their pre¬ 
decessors, and, with the glorious exception of that faultless 
little tale, “ The Vicar of Wakefield,” all their successors but 
one. 
This one, our readers of course anticipate, is the “ Author 
of Waverley.” This author has effected a revolution among 
the world of romance readers, as great, ahd far more sudden 
than Cervantes himself. We had before his appearance been 
gradually much improving. Several female Writers, amongst 
whom Burney and Edgeworth deserve high and honourable 
mention, had given us examples of a pure and elegant style 
of writing, combined with much sprightliness, and 
purity of thinking, and shrewd observation of manners, 
The success of “ Thaddeus of Warsaw” and the “Scottish 
Chiefs,” had shewn how greedily the public caught 
at a skilful clothing of historical truth in romantic 
fiction. But though these works were admired by the refined 
and well educated, they were caviare to the multitude; the 
old trash of the circulating libraries still continued to be read, 
and perhaps the excellence of the new novels only served to 
excuse 
