ABSTRACT
What an epic was to the old world-a continuous narration of stirring events, with linked sweetness long drawn out-that is the romance to the modern world. With the change of matter there has been a change of form; it is no longer the story of ‘physical force’ that absorbs and delights mankind, it is the battle of life,—not the encounter of flesh and blood, but the clash of principles and the conflict of passion. The decease of the three volume fiction has often been foretold, but has never come to pass, because it exists as the supply of a want, and a very complex want. All men want amusement; but, more than this, mankind, however civilized, require some stimulus of the simpler emotions ; overlaid as these may be by habit, perverted by selfishness or dilapidated by overwear, they are still the chief source of pleasure. That, therefore, must be welcome which awakes them. The novel has, for the unimaginative, incidents,—for the student of human nature, character,— for the critical ear, vigour or beauty of language,—for the theorist, an ample store of cobwebs. It offers love and children to the spinster, red coats and glory to the legal or the literary drudge; and, if it does harm by exhausting the sympathies of some, it does good by exalting and keeping them fresh in sluggish and mechanical natures. The Romance, we say, occupies the place of the epic; it is more various, because the forms of society are more manifold, and men’s knowledge and their requirements alike more diverse.
