A DEFINITION OF ROMANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

A DEFINITION OF ROMANCE.

We have written to trifling purpose if we have not given the reader the means of judging whether the world of Scott's imagining is a world to fortify the spirit and increase the delight of living—more cannot be asked of the novelist who does not set out to be a preacher, says the "Times Literary Supplement," in its Scott centenary article. But it is easy to understand why the Waverley tales which fell cold on tlie ears of the Puritan of early Victorian times fall cold on the ears of the inverted Puritans of 9ur own day. Scott believed in the nobility of man', and man is the most unpopular character in modern fiction. He believed that the conditions of good living were novelty and adventure; this age believes more and more that they are standardisation and .regulation. We have spoken of Scott's bearings towards romanticism in two senses of that slip'pery term. There is a third definition of romanticism, Peter's "the addition of strangeness to beauty," which comfig as near as any definition of the indefinable can do to express the magic of his | great moments. The real openings of the novels, when we have worked through the preliminary tunnels with their antiquarian lumber, display this quality. When Frank Osbaldistone, after the City countinghouse and the long and dusty roads, finds himself among the fells, and to the music of the horn Diana, wearing "what was then somewhat unusual, a coat, vest and, hat resembling those of a man, which fashion has since called a riding habit," comes cantering into ..the tale: when Redgauntlet appears spearing the salmon at a furious gallop on the Solway sands in the crimson sunset glow: when Edgar Ravenswood lays his hand on his hilt and "a hundred swords at once glitter in the air" of the dreary November day upon the cliff ±o prevent the interruption of the dead Master's funeral ceremonies: when the grim stranger at the inn rises to answer Sergeant Botliwell's raillery with the toast of "The Archbishop of St. Andrewis and the place he now holds," we feel the Bhock of surprise and expectation, ' the presentiment of strange things, lovely or terrible, which is the essence of natural romanticism.