XX.

Of the finer kinds of romance, as distinguished from the novel, I would
even encourage the writing, though it is one of the hard conditions of
romance that its personages starting with a 'parti pris' can rarely be
characters with a living growth, but are apt to be types, limited to the
expression of one principle, simple, elemental, lacking the God-given
complexity of motive which we find in all the human beings we know.

Hawthorne, the great master of the romance, had the insight and the power
to create it anew as a kind in fiction; though I am not sure that 'The
Scarlet Letter' and the 'Blithedale Romance' are not, strictly speaking,
novels rather than romances. They, do not play with some old
superstition long outgrown, and they do not invent a new superstition to
play with, but deal with things vital in every one's pulse. I am not
saying that what may be called the fantastic romance--the romance that
descends from 'Frankenstein' rather than 'The Scarlet Letter'--ought not
to be. On the contrary, I should grieve to lose it, as I should grieve
to lose the pantomime or the comic opera, or many other graceful things
that amuse the passing hour, and help us to live agreeably in a world
where men actually sin, suffer, and die. But it belongs to the
decorative arts, and though it has a high place among them, it cannot be
ranked with the works of the imagination--the works that represent and
body forth human experience. Its ingenuity, can always afford a refined
pleasure, and it can often, at some risk to itself, convey a valuable
truth.

Perhaps the whole region of historical romance might be reopened with
advantage to readers and writers who cannot bear to be brought face to