the "Iliad:" is, in fact, rather a romance than a hero-epic. The
adventures of the wandering Ulysses, the visit to the land of the
lotus-eaters, the encounter with the Laestrygonians, the experiences in
the cave of Polyphemus, if allowance be made for the difference in
sentiments and manners, remind the reader constantly of the medieval
_romans d'aventure_. Pater quotes De Stendhal's saying that all good art
was romantic in its day. "Romanticism," says De Stendhal, "is the art of
presenting to the nations the literary works which, in the actual state
of their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them the greatest
possible pleasure: classicism, on the contrary, presents them with what
gave the greatest possible pleasure to their great grand-fathers"--a
definition which is epigrammatic, if not convincing.[8] De Stendhal
(Henri Beyle) was a pioneer and a special pleader in the cause of French
romanticism, and, in his use of the terms, romanticism stands for
progress, liberty, originality, and the spirit of the future; classicism,
for conservatism, authority, imitation, the spirit of the past.
According to him, every good piece of romantic art is a classic in the
making. Decried by the classicists of to-day, for its failure to observe
traditions, it will be used by the classicists of the future as a pattern
to which new artists must conform.

It may be worth while to round out the conception of the term by
considering a few other definitions of _romantic_ which have been
proposed. Dr. F. H. Hedge, in an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_[9]
for March, 1886, inquired, "What do we mean by romantic?" Goethe, he
says, characterized the difference between classic and romantic "as
equivalent to [that between] healthy and morbid. Schiller proposed
'naïve and sentimental.'[10] The greater part [of the German critics]
regarded it as identical with the difference between ancient and modern,
which was partly true, but explained nothing. None of the definitions