of Southampton-one of the pleasantest of demonstrations, in a kind of science which is often horribly abused by dull people, but not on that account to be rejected.

The Pilgrim's Progress is one of the results of medieval romance;1 it has the sort of plan which saves even some of the dull romances from total failure, and is found in some of the best. It is the simplest thing in the world; scarcely to be called a plot-merely a journey with adventures. Yet what more is wanted to give the romancer his opportunity? It is one of the things that never grow old, from Theseus and Jason to Sir Percival, and so on to the Pilgrim's Progress and so to modern examples, which anyone may think of for himself. Rob Roy has it. The second part of Rob Roy, the Highland adventures and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, have generally rather eclipsed the first part, but not so as to spoil the impression of Francis Osbaldistone's journey northward, with the accompaniment of Mr. Campbell "-surely one of the best things in the whole of Scott for suspense and gradual deepening of interest.

Here I come to perilous ground, and I ask for sympathy. I have known about it all along, and so far I have succeeded in evading that particular risk. But now I come, to use the old ambiguous phrase, "into the danger of Stevenson's Essay on Romance. The danger is twofold; first, when one thinks of what Stevenson has written, it is more difficult than ever to have ideas of one's own; but again he speaks rather

1 "The Scriptures, thought I, what are they? A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings worth. Give me a ballad, a newsbook, George on horseback or Bevis of Southanipton, give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables; but for the holy Scriptures I cared not."

slightingly of the art of Scott, and ends not quite generously with a note of depreciation-a mistake, surely, in his own art. Of course Stevenson is very far from the enemies of Scott-from those who see no more in him than Peacock saw, or Mark Twain, with his philosophical proof that all the vanity of Southern chivalry-that is, of the Southern States in Americais attributable to Ivanhoe. And it can hardly be said that Stevenson's criticism of the one particular passage in Guy Mannering is unreasonable or unjustified, as far as it goes. But it gives a wrong impression, and the conclusion--Scott "an idle child "-is a failure of critical judgment. There is every kind of interest and every variety of art in Scott. There is the machinery of the ordinary historical novel so easily imitated by G. P. R. James and many others in all the tongues of Europe, so hopelessly antiquated now. One remembers the story of Niebuhr; how when he was on his deathbed he had Fenimore Cooper recommended to him for diversion, and tried him, and then asked for Josephus instead. And there is the adventure which is of quite a different sort from the antiquarian furniture and the conventional dialogue-adventures like those of which I have spoken in Rob Roy-like that of Sir Dugald Dalgetty in his escape from Inverary, or Everard in Woodstock, when he is caught in the dark and held down with the sword-point pricking at his throat. I have cause to remember that, because it is the first thing of Scott's that I remember; the book was being read aloud, and it seemed to me that it would be worth looking into. There is the admirable plot of the Talisman, a story which does not bring into play any of the comic genius of the author, and so attains a different kind of success from the richer books like Old

Mortality and the Heart of Midlothian, Guy Mannering, and the Fair Maid of Perth, where there are interests woven into romance-interests of character and conversation—which are not, properly speaking, romantic at all the humours of Dandie Dinmont and Cuddie

Headrigg.

Quite unlike the diffuse historical manner of much of Waverley and Kenilworth and Quentin Durward, there is the form, or rather many forms, of short story: Wandering Willie's Tale in Redgauntlet-The Highland Widow The Two Drovers: these last bringing in a tragic element of mistake and misunderstanding with more effect than any of the longer novels. And in verse there is the same enormous variety-between the plain straightforward narrative of the Lady of the Lake and the lyrical mystery of County Guy and some other of the shorter pieces. All which goes to prove what needs no particular proof, that Romance means almost everything from the two horsemen riding together at the beginning of the historical novel, or from the pasteboard Moors of the puppet-show, to the spell of the enchanted ground, the music of dreams and shadows.

ADDITIONAL NOTE

The following passage from the Citizen of the World gives a glimpse of a romantic school not now very clearly remembered :

"I was going to expose his mistakes when it was insisted that I had nothing of the true Eastern manner in my delivery. This gentleman's conversation,' said one of the ladies who was a great reader, ' is like our own-mere chit-chat and common sense; there is nothing like sense in the true Eastern style, where nothing more is required but sublimity. Oh! for a history of Aboulfaouris the

grand voyager, of genii, magicians, rocks, bags of bullets, giants and enchanters, where all is great, obscure, magnificent, and unintelligible.' 'I have written many a sheet of Eastern tale myself,' interrupts the author, and I defy the severest critic to say but that I have stuck close to the true manner. I have compared a lady's chin to the snow upon the mountains of Banek; a soldier's sword to the clouds that obscure the face of heaven. If riches are mentioned, I compare them to the flocks that graze the verdant Tefflis; if poverty, to the mists that veil the brow of Mount Baku. I have used thee and thou upon all occasions; I have described fallen stars and splitting mountains, not forgetting the little houris who make a pretty figure in every description. But you shall hear how I generally begin: "Eben-benbolo who was the son of Ban, was born on the foggy summits of Benderabassi. His beard was whiter than the feathers which veil the breast of the penguin; his eyes were like the eyes of doves when washed by the dews of the morning; his hair, which hung like the willow weeping over the glossy stream, was so beautiful that it seemed to reflect its own brightness, and his feet were as the feet of a wild deer which fleeth to the tops of the mountains." There, there is the true Eastern taste for you; every advance made towards sense is only a deviation from sound. Eastern tales should always be sonorous, lofty, musical, and unmeaning.' Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, Letter XXXIII.

XXXVIII

ON THE VALUE OF THE TERMS "CLASSICAL " AND ROMANTIC " AS APPLIED ΤΟ

LITERATURE.

THE technical terms classical" and "romantic have never had so much vogue in England as in Germany and France. We made the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century without the exaggerations and extremes which the English observer notices in the literature, as in the politics of less fortunate nations on the Continent. Yet we too had our revolt against ancient established authority in literature; it was not without its confused noise and shoutings. There was a great battle of the books all over Europe at the beginning of this century, and every reader of books, ever since, has compulsion laid on him to know something about the rights and wrongs of the contest. One can hardly open a newspaper without finding evidence that there is or once was a Romantic School in the world-were it only in this point, that newspapers, in defiance of every classical code, use the name Tragedy exclusively for the bloodshed which they delight in reproducing coram populo. The modern journalistic tragedy-" Tragedy in Camberwell" (or Euston Square, or wherever it may be)—belongs to the school of Victor Hugo rather than Sophocles.