entirely by the character-novel, which constituted the Romantic
revival of the end of last century. 'The artistic result of a
romance,' says Stevenson, 'what is left upon the memory by any
powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated and
refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it, and yet
something as simple as nature. . . . The fact is, that art is
working far ahead of language as well as of science, realizing for
us, by all manner of suggestions and exaggerations, effects for
which as yet we have no direct name, for the reason that these
effects do not enter very largely into the necessities of life.
Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that often hangs about
the purpose of a romance; it is clear enough to us in thought, but
we are not used to consider anything clear until we are able to
formulate it in words, and analytical language has not been
sufficiently shaped to that end.' He goes on to point out that
there is an epical value about every great romance, an underlying
idea, not presentable always in abstract or critical terms, in the
stories of such masters of pure romance as Victor Hugo and
Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The progress of romance in the present century has consisted
chiefly in the discovery of new exercises of imagination and new
subtle effects in story. Fielding, as Stevenson says, did not
understand that the nature of a landscape or the spirit of the
times could count for anything in a story; all his actions consist
of a few simple personal elements. With Scott vague influences
that qualify a man's personality begin to make a large claim; 'the
individual characters begin to occupy a comparatively small
proportion of that canvas on which armies manoeuvre and great hills
pile themselves upon each other's shoulders.' And the achievements