to analyse a reaction of the mind. We cannot put emotions in a crucible. Yet, guided by this profound distinction, we may, perhaps, say that Romance results from welcoming the strange, and specially from welcoming the symbols, perforce fantastic, in which foreign lands and far-away ages have sought to express their intimations of immortality' and doubtful wonder at that perpetual revolution which we see to be in all things that never remain the same."

ROMANTIC SCENERY

We get a tentative definition, if we say that Romance is not simply the strange, but a result of welcoming the strange, instead of excluding it. Let us test that definition by seeing if it applies to things generally called romantic. Take a hackneyed illustration-mountain scenery. Since the Revival of Romance, and the novels of Walter Scott, most people agree that mountain scenery is romantic. The definition applies to that view, and goes some way to explain it. Mountain scenery is not romantic, or even strange, to the mountaineer who wrests a hard-won livelihood from its crags and heather. It was strange, but not romantic, to the cultured sybarite of the eighteenth century who describes it in his journal as a 'horrid alp.' It is romantic to the heart city-pent' of the age in which we live, and only because its strangeness is welcome.

Reverting to the earlier Romantic period, this definition will, I believe, throw a light on one of its features; the labyrinthine development of Allegory. Assuming that an author seeks a welcome for something novel and strange, he must express the new matter by images that are obvious to his audience; otherwise it remains unintelligible, and unwelcome. In order to establish the coherence of his novelties with the life to which all are accustomed, he personifies his sentiments in characters with whom all are familiar; and that is allegory. Take a capital example, the Romance of the Rose, which shaped and coloured European literature in the thirteenth century, and for long afterwards. The author of the first part (Guillaume de Lorris, 1237) turns the new sentiments of courteous love' into the usual inhabitants of a medieval castle, and illustrates the course of love which never did run smooth' by the ups and downs to which life in a fortress was exposed. For that was the kind of thing which any fellow could understand.' The author of the first part sought a welcome for a new kind of love, differing, in its delicacy, from the romping of 'Floralia' and May Games, sung in rustic ditties; and, in its mysticism, from the stark passion depicted in classic literature. The author of the second part (Jean de Meun, 1277) sought a welcome for a new kind of fun, differing, in its whimsical satire, from the blunt predicaments of Plautus, and the banter of Horace. The new love, and the new fun, were made

familiar by allegory to secure a welcome for their strangeness.

FABLES

Will a welcome of the strange account for another feature in medieval Romance: the revival of Fables in which animals have most of the speaking parts? I think it will. If you except the animals of Æsop, the dog of Odysseus, the charger of Alexander, and Lesbia's sparrow, there are not many animals in the classics. Man dominates the scene. On the other hand, there is an irruption of animals into the first Period of Romance. To secure a welcome for these intruders the earlier romantics had recourse to Esop-Ysopet as they call him— who had brought them, long before, from the East, where animals have ever been revered. Marie de France ushers them in under the auspices of an imaginary emperor, called Romulus, and dedicates her Fables to William Longsword, the natural son of Henry II.

'Ci cummencerai la primière

Des Fables K'Ysopez escrit.'

But the animals soon made themselves at home by the charm of their own half-strangeness to man. We know the names of the horses of nearly all the heroes of Romance. In the thirteenth century, without any aid from heroes, Reynard the Fox, Bruin the Bear, Chanticleer the Cock, came to stay,' till the classical interregnum. After the revival of romance they returned; so that, now, in the Jungle of Kipling and the Farmyard of Rostand, they occupy the whole of the stage.

FANTASTIC SYMBOLS

It is the note of Romance to welcome in literature much else beside man: with delight when that is possible, and, when it is not, with courage. In Romance man disputes his place with other living beings and elemental forces without life. He receives the impression of scenery, and guesses at dim 'dominations and powers' that baffle his mundane progress and cloud his longing for eternity. All these Romance accepts for their strangeness; and, I would add, for their truth.

When their strangeness is exorbitant, Romance, in order to make their truth intelligible, resorts to allegory and fable, and even to fantastic symbols that seem ludicrous. We laugh, with Cervantes, at the giants and dragons and warlocks of Romance. It is our human privilege. Man is divided by laughter from all that surrounds him. When we have done laughing, we detect in these symbols an attempt-frantic if you please-to explain realities that are coeval with man; that, indeed, preceded his origin and may outlast his existence. Man's domination, even of this earth, is more partial than would appear from the unromantic presentment of his case. There are forces in nature, by comparison with whose gigantic strength man's efforts are puny. There are enemies to his well-being that, like dragons, are not only dangerous but loathsome. There are subtleties in the universe that, like wizards, bewilder and deride his intelligence. Even to-day, enlightened as enlightened as we are by popular science, we may recall, without contempt, the wild allegories by which other men, in other ages, tried to explain the overpowering, and grisly,

and inscrutable; we may remember with human kindness that those who invented the symbols of horror, invented also a vague belief that horror can be conquered by a charm in the hand of the little child.

UNIVERSAL AFFINITY

The reaction of the mind, when confronted with the strange, is, in some sort, a recognition of ignored realities. Romance is an act of recognition. When Shakespeare attacks the reality of Time, as if suggesting that, round Time, there is Eternity, in which all things and all men are coexistent and co-eternal, we feel that a rare mind is soaring through a rarer atmosphere to the extreme verge of the comprehensible. When Tennyson makes Ulysses say, 'I am a part of all that I have met,' we feel that this is a dark saying. Yet there are moments when it seems true of each one of us. Its truth strikes as a forgotten face strikes by its strange familiarity. At such moments we understand that darker utterance, 'The Kingdom of God is within you.' A sense of universal affinity comes into literature when men are no longer content with the mythologies, or philosophies, of their own time and people. Then they turn, with a kindly curiosity, to other nations and other ages.

'Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

To ferne halwes couthe in sondry londes.'

Romance revives, and, extending her welcome to the strange, discovers in it something which has always been latent in man's mind, although starved by convention. The old northern mythology, with its twilight of the gods, and ceaseless battle against