ROM 
excuse the reading' of a class of productions which otherwise 
most sensible persons denounced. But the Author of Wa- 
verley appeared, and annihilated all his opponents. He 
united the playful and humourous with the chivalrous and 
romantic, the historical and political with domestic life and 
pathetic feelings. He painted manners; he sculptured cha¬ 
racter. Every body took up his works, and perused them 
with breathless interest; but when they were laid down, the 
mind of the reader was changed: the appetite for trashy 
sentiment and hyperbolical valour was gone: a taste for 
nature and truth was created. The light-minded public 
turned from the incitements of fiction to the fair field of 
history, and many were seduced into knowledge by a class of 
compositions, which a few years before were justly contemned 
as drawbacks to education and enervators of the mind. The 
appetite. the romancer had created, he fed, fed so assidu¬ 
ously that he for ever destroyed what, had his exertions been 
confined to the first blow, might have failed. 
It is of course unnecessary that we should enter into so 
trite a subject as a review of the Scotch novels. It is suf¬ 
ficient for us to remark, that our admiration of this author 
goes far beyond that of our contemporary critics. Willing to 
allow that some of his present fame is owing to the ereth¬ 
ism of fashion, and unable to shut our eyes to the fact, that 
his later productions betray exhaustion; yet we venture to 
predict, that in the line he has chosen, he will never be 
equalled. The number of competitors he has stirred up, 
only seems to shew his strength, and, though to superficial 
observers the close imitations attempted in the “ Secondary 
Scottish Novels” might seem successful rivalry, it is plain 
that public opinion has, even in this short space of time, 
decided that the laurels of the great unknown still remain 
untouched. 
There is one remarkable merit he has, which gives him a 
superiority over his female rivals. We mean his power of 
drawing the characters of women. It has often been re¬ 
marked, that the fair sex alone paint themselves in hideous 
colours; it is almost universally true. If women pourtray 
women, it is almost always as it were with censoriousness 
and malignity. If they would draw a virtuous and exalted 
heroine, they make her mad or foolish. Witness the Co- 
rinna of that powerful writer Madame de Stael. The fact is, 
the real perfections of woman’s conduct are of so delicate a 
nature, that they skrink from the rudeness of straightforward 
description and open praise. He who would draw her fairly, 
must sketch sijmply, must leave the imagination to fill 
up those excellences which only by the imagination can be 
filled. How completely the object of our criticism possesses 
this tact every one of his readers must be aware. 
Before closing this subject, we have a few words to say 
on the end or purpose of romantic fiction. Ever since 
Cervantes attacked the hyperbole of chivalry, various authors 
have attempted to use the same means as an attack on vice 
or error, or as a recommendation of some particular virtue. 
Thus Voltaire wrote Candide against optimism, and Fenelon, 
exalting romance to an almost epic dignity, laid down the 
laws of kingly government to the giddy court of France. 
While we write, fresh attempts at this didactic novel havebeen 
made, as in Tremaine, Owen, and some others. We men¬ 
tion them only to depreciate their unfairness, and to point 
out their inutility. We think them unfair, because the im¬ 
portant questions of religion and politics are of too sacred 
an interest to be dealt with otherwise than by straightfor¬ 
ward argument, and the artifice of captivating youth by a 
fictitious picture of the effect of certain opinions, is any thing 
but rational. The inutility of this practice is shewn by 
experience: by the inefficacy of all the works of this kind 
that have been penned. To the romancer, belongs the task of 
exciting virtuous emotions, and inspiring pure feelings, but 
in the analysis of duties, and the thorny paths of doctrinal 
controversy, we surely ought not to be cheated into consent. 
Conviction should rest on fair and manly argument; if it 
does not, it is but frangible. 
. At present, romances are so numerous, that they may be 
ROM 211 
said to be the fashion of the day, and to supersede every 
other branch of fiction. The ease with which they may be 
written, the great fund of materials for their composition, 
pointed out by the author of Waverley to exist in history, 
may account for the supply. The highly finished pictures 
of manners they display, the variety of matters they contain* 
on account of their adapting themselves by turns to de¬ 
scription, sentiment, or to dramatic dialogue, may account 
for the demand. But we cannot believe, as a contempo¬ 
rary has averred, that the modern romances will supersede 
the drama. The scarcity of the latter production does not 
arise from any coldness on the part of the public towards it, 
but from the much greater and, therefore, rarer talent that is 
required to produce it. 
. The reader, desirous of entering more deeply into the 
pleasing study of romance literature, may consult the works 
of Percy, Ritson, and Warton; Ellis’s Metrical Romances, Sir 
W. Scott’s edition of Tristram, Dunlop’s History of Fiction, 
Bouterwek’s Literature of the Middle Ages, Lays of the 
German Minnesingers, &c. 
ROMA'NCE, s. A lie ; a fiction. 
A staple of romance and lies. 
False tears and real perjuries, 
Where sighs and looks are bought and sold. 
And love is made but to be told. Prior. 
To ROMA'NCE, v. n. To lie; to forge.—This is 
strange romancing. Richardson. 
ROMA'NCER, s. A writer of romances.—That the 
French romancers borrowed some things from the English, 
appears from the word “ termagnant,” which they took up 
from our minstrels, and corrupted into “ tervagaunte.” 
Percy. —This poem (le Roman de la Rose) is far beyond the 
rude efforts of all their preceding romancers. Warton .— 
A liar ; a forger of tales.—The allusion of the daw extends to 
all impostors, vain pretenders, and romancers. L'Estrange. 
ROMA'NCY, adj. Roman tick ; full of wild scenery. 
Not in use. —The house is an old house, situated in a 
romancy place; and a man, that is given to devotion 
and learning, cannot find out a better place. Life of A. 
Wood. 
ROMANEGNO, a small town of Austrian Italy, in the 
Milanese, delegation of Cremona. 
ROMANELLI (Giovan-francesco), an eminent painter, 
was born in 1617 at Viterbo. He was a pupil of Pietro da 
Cortona, whose style he imitated with no inferiority in in¬ 
vention and composition, and with more correctness, but in 
a colder tone of colouring. Being sent by his father for 
improvement to Rome, he employed himself assiduously in 
drawing after the works of the great masters, and attracted 
the notice of Cardinal Barberini, who became his patron, 
and procured him apartments in the chancery palace. 
Romanelli married in that capital, and became head of the 
academy of St. Luke. The Cardinal sent some of his pic¬ 
tures to England to Charles I. by whom they were much 
approved; and when he himself retired to France, he recom¬ 
mended Romanelli to Cardinal Mazarin, who engaged him 
to come to Paris. He there painted several pieces for the 
Cardinal, and for Louis XIV., who recompensed him 
liberally, and created him a knight of St. Michael. After 
two different residences in France, he finally returned to 
Italy, and died at Viterbo in 1662, at the age of 45. This 
painter was much admired for his facility of invention, his 
correctness of design, the graceful airs of his heads, and the 
elevation of his conceptions; he was also estimable for the 
amenity of his disposition and his social virtues. Many of 
his best works were in fresco, and were decorations of palaces, 
churches, and halls. He painted few easel pieces. The 
palaces at Rome and in France contain the principal monu* 
ments of his labours. About. 30 of his designs have been 
engraved. D' Argenvillc. Pi/kington. 
ROMANIA, Rumelia, or Rum Ili, a very extensive 
province or rather portion of European Turkey, comprising, 
with the exception of Bosnia, Moldavia, and Walachia, all 
the 
