The Best Horrors by F. Marion Crawford. Francis Marion Crawford

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      "The spelling is very curious, but the sentiment is unmistakable and the language is Provencal. There is the origin of romance in the Romansch language. Those songs preserved the customs of those times, the troubadour with his lute below the castle wall, the obdurate lady behind the lattice in her tower, the life-and-death seriousness of love in the eleventh century — it is all there, and we call it romance. The literature of love-songs continued to spread after the customs of those days had passed away, but it did not move with the times, though it increased. The knight in armour, the lute, and the lady with her scarf were preserved like curious zoological specimens in spirits, and are the foundation of all romance. Then we had Germans and Englishmen who wrote long epic romances in other languages, such as Wolfram von Eschenbach and Sir Thomas Malory, who got his Morte d 'Arthur from the French. A modern poet owes much of his fame to his treatment of the same theme, which shows that the subject is not even yet worn out. But though the old songs still stir us, they are not enough for us nowadays. The frantic fighting, the melancholy tragedy, the black-and-white magic which appealed to the imagination of a Black Forest freebooting baron of the tenth century, do not appeal to ours. The French pastoral romances were an attempt to change the form of the solemn chivalric epic of earlier times into something lighter and more gay. But unlike the chivalric epic the pastoral had no foundation in real life and consequently disappeared almost without a trace. The modern romantic novel is a prose epic, generally founded on modern life."

      "And what is the modern realistic novel?" asked Diana.

      "It is the prose without the epic," answered the poet. "It is therefore the opposite of romance in every respect. It sets aside all invention, and takes for its standpoint the principle that a hero is not necessary to a story, and that every-day life, with such episodes as it may chance to bring forth, should be of sufficient interest to everybody, to make everybody ready to dispense for ever with imagination. The realists say that a man may learn more from being shown what he is than from being told what he should be. The romantists say that if a man will study the ideal he can to some extent imitate it. When I was a young man romance stood on a low level. The mechanically correct and spiritually feeble performances of our little poets did not please me. Goethe was a realist, and I determined to be a realist. I did not perceive that Goethe was also a romantist, and that while he was well able to paint men as they are, he had a surpassing gift for describing them as they should be. I believe that literature without realism cannot last. But I believe also that literature without romance cannot interest."

      "Nor life, without romance, either," said Gwendoline.

      "Oh! Do you think so ? " exclaimed Lady Brenda. " I am sure I know many people who are not at all romantic but whose lives are very interesting to themselves."

      "People who make money an object," answered Augustus. " But they have a romance nevertheless, and a very pretty one — the story of the loves of the pound, the shilling and the penny, told in many manuscript volumes with a detail worthy of M. Zola."

      "Yes," said Heine with a smile, " the love of a Hamburg banker for a dollar is wonderful, passing the love of women."

      "The sense of romance must be instinctive," said Diana. " We distinguish at a glance between what is romantic and what is not, as we distinguish between black and white. For instance Alexander the Great is a romantic character; Julius Caesar is not. I do not see that in those cases the explanation is true which ascribes romance to the traditions of knights-errant, troubadours and tournaments."

      "That is true," said Chopin. " Just as the primeval song of the Arab or the Hindoo peasant is romantic, while Chinese music is not."

      "Judas Maccabseus was a romantic character," put in Heine. " Moses was not, though he was a greater man. Judas Maccabaeus was the Cromwell of the Jews, and it is impossible to read his history without a thrill of enthusiasm. I suppose that is why the early Church instituted the feast of the Maccabean martyrs, on the first of August, though they were Jews, put to death before the birth of Christ for the Jewish faith by Antiochus Epiphanes — a mother and her seven sons. Judas Maccabseus was undoubtedly a hero."

      "Then our whole theory of romance falls to the ground," said Lady Brenda.

      "I think not," answered Augustus. " It is enough to extend it a little, and to say that all men and women who have acted nobly under the influence of strong and good passions have been romantic characters."

      "That is not enough, either," objected Heine. "I do not think that they need have acted nobly, nor necessarily under the influence of good passions. Alexander, burning Persepolis under the influence of Thais's smiles and Timotheus's song is a romantic character enough. But the action was not noble, nor the passion good."

      "But was he romantic in that case? " asked Lady Brenda. "It was rather like Nero burning Rome, you know."

      "Perhaps there is a doubt on the subject," replied the poet. " It may be a question of individual taste.

      Take another instance, out of more recent times. Was Giovanna of Naples, the first — the daughter of Robert — a romantic character or not ? "

      "Of course," answered Lady Brenda.

      "Was her love for Luigi of Taranto a romantic passion ? "

      "I suppose so," admitted the lady.

      "Then the murder of her husband, Andreas of Hungary, which she planned and caused to be executed out of her love for Luigi, her cousin, was romantic. There is no doubt of it. Many murders have a strong romantic colour. Christina of Sweden causing Monaldeschi to be killed at Fontainebleau, is another instance. There was nothing noble or good about either of those cases."

      "I yield," said Augustus. " Then suppose we say that men and women acting under the influence of strong passions are romantic characters."

      "There is more truth in that," replied Heine; " but it does not include enough."

      "It does not tell me why I feel that the Arab is romantic while the Chinaman is not," remarked Chopin.

      "My dear friend," said the other, " we know very little about Chinamen, and their appearance does not suggest romantic thoughts."

      "True. But why?" insisted the composer, who felt that there was something in his question.

      "It СКАЧАТЬ