Romance | Page 2

themselves were a sufficient explanation of all that they
include. So an imperfect terminology is used to gain esteem for an
artificial and rigid conception of things which were as fluid as life itself.
The Renaissance, for instance, in its strict original meaning, is the name
for that renewed study of the classical literatures which manifested
itself throughout the chief countries of Europe in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In Italy, where the movement had its origin, no
single conspicuous event can be used to date it. The traditions inherited
from Greece and Rome had never lost their authority; but with the
increase of wealth and leisure in the city republics they were renewed
and strengthened. From being remnants and memories they became live
models; Latin poetry was revived, and Italian poetry was disciplined by
the ancient masters. But the Renaissance, when it reached the shores of
England, so far from giving new life to the literature it found there, at
first degraded it. It killed the splendid prose school of Malory and
Berners, and prose did not run clear again for a century. It bewildered
and confused the minds of poets, and blending itself with the national
tradition, produced the rich lawlessness of the English sixteenth century.
It was a strong tributary to the stream of our national literature; but the
popular usage, which assigns all that is good in the English literature of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to a mysterious event called the
Renaissance, is merely absurd. Modern scholars, if they are forced to
find a beginning for modern literature, would prefer to date it from the
wonderful outburst of vernacular poetry in the latter part of the twelfth
century, and, if they must name a birthplace, would claim attention for
the Court of King Henry II.
In some of its aspects, the Romantic revival may be exhibited as a
natural consequence of the Renaissance. Classical scholarship at first

scorned the vernacular literatures, and did all its work of criticism and
imitation in the Latin tongue. By degrees the lesson was widened, and
applied to the modern languages. Study; imitation in Latin; extension
of classical usages and principles to modern literature,--these were the
regular stages in the progress of the classical influence. When the poets
of France and England, to name no others, had learned as much as they
were able and willing to learn from the masters of Greece and Rome,
the work of the Renaissance was done. By the middle of the eighteenth
century there was no notable kind of Greek or Latin
literature--historical, philosophical, poetical; epic, elegy, ode,
satire--which had not worthy disciples and rivals in the literatures of
France and England. Nothing remained to do but to go further afield
and seek for new masters. These might easily have been found among
the poets and prophets of the East, and not a few notable writers of the
time began to forage in that direction. But the East was too remote and
strange, and its languages were too little known, for this attempt to be
carried far; the imitation of Chinese and Persian models was practised
chiefly by way of fantasy and joke. The study of the neglected and
forgotten matter of mediaeval times, on the other hand, was undertaken
by serious scholars. The progress of the mediaeval influence
reproduced very exactly the successive phases of the Classical
Renaissance. At first there was study; and books like Sainte Palaye's
Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry, and Paul Henri Mallet's Northern
Antiquities, enjoyed a European reputation. Then followed the period
of forgery and imitation, the age of Ossian and Chatterton, Horace
Walpole and Bishop Percy. Lastly, the poets enrolled themselves in the
new school, and an original literature, suggested by the old, was created
by Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge, and Keats. It was the temper of the
antiquary and the sceptic, in the age of Gibbon and Hume, that begot
the Romantic Revival; and the rebellion of the younger age against the
spirit of the eighteenth century was the rebellion of a child against its
parents.
It is not needful, nor indeed is it possible, to define Romance. In the
mathematical sciences definitions are all-important, because with them
the definition is the thing. When a mathematician asks you to describe
a circle, he asks you to create one. But the man who asks you to

describe a monkey is less exacting; he will be content if you mention
some of the features that seem to you to distinguish a monkey from
other animals. Such a description must needs be based on personal
impressions and ideas; some features must be chosen as being more
significant than the rest. In the history of literature there are only two
really significant things--men, and books. To study the ascertained
facts concerning men and