A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century | Page 4

well-known tale, to which we can nevertheless
listen over and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolute
beauty of its form is added the accidental, tranquil charm of
familiarity."
On the other hand, he defines the romantic characteristics in art as
consisting in "the addition of strangeness to beauty"--a definition which
recalls Bacon's saying, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some
strangeness in the proportion." "The desire of beauty," continues Pater,

"being a fixed element in every artistic organization, it is the addition
of curiosity to this desire of beauty that constitutes the romantic
temper." This critic, then, would not confine the terms classic and
classicism to the literature of Greece and Rome and to modern works
conceived in the same spirit, although he acknowledges that there are
certain ages of the world in which the classical tradition predominates,
_i.e._, in which the respect for authority, the love of order and decorum,
the disposition to follow rules and models, the acceptance of academic
and conventional standards overbalance the desire for strangeness and
novelty. Such epochs are, _e.g._, the Augustan age of Rome, the
_Siècle de Louis XIV_, in France, the times of Pope and Johnson in
England--indeed, the whole of the eighteenth century in all parts of
Europe.
Neither would he limit the word romantic to work conceived in the
spirit of the Middle Ages. "The essential elements," he says, "of the
romantic spirit are curiosity and the love of beauty; and it is as the
accidental effect of these qualities only, that it seeks the Middle Ages;
because in the overcharged atmosphere of the Middle Age there are
unworked sources of romantic effect, of a strange beauty to be won by
strong imagination out of things unlikely or remote." "The sense in
which Scott is to be called a romantic writer is chiefly that, in
opposition to the literary tradition of the last century, he loved strange
adventure and sought it in the Middle Age."
Here again the essayist is careful to explain that there are certain
epochs which are predominately romantic. "Outbreaks of this spirit
come naturally with particular periods: times when . . . men come to art
and poetry with a deep thirst for intellectual excitement, after a long
ennui." He instances, as periods naturally romantic, the time of the
early Provençal troubadour poetry: the years following the Bourbon
Restoration in France (say, 1815-30); and "the later Middle Age; so that
the medieval poetry, centering in Dante, is often opposed to Greek or
Roman poetry, as romantic to classical poetry."
In Pater's use of the terms, then, classic and romantic do not describe
particular literature, or particular periods in literary history, so much as

certain counterbalancing qualities and tendencies which run through the
literatures of all times and countries. There were romantic writings
among the Greeks and Romans; there were classical writings in the
Middle Ages; nay, there are classical and romantic traits in the same
author. If there is any poet who may safely be described as a classic, it
is Sophocles; and yet Pater declares that the "Philoctetes" of Sophocles,
if issued to-day, would be called romantic. And he points out--what
indeed has been often pointed out--that the "Odyssey"[7] is more
romantic than the "Iliad:" is, in fact, rather a romance than a hero-epic.
The adventures of the wandering Ulysses, the visit to the land of the
lotus-eaters, the encounter with the Laestrygonians, the experiences in
the cave of Polyphemus, if allowance be made for the difference in
sentiments and manners, remind the reader constantly of the medieval
_romans d'aventure_. Pater quotes De Stendhal's saying that all good
art was romantic in its day. "Romanticism," says De Stendhal, "is the
art of presenting to the nations the literary works which, in the actual
state of their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them the greatest
possible pleasure: classicism, on the contrary, presents them with what
gave the greatest possible pleasure to their great grand-fathers"--a
definition which is epigrammatic, if not convincing.[8] De Stendhal
(Henri Beyle) was a pioneer and a special pleader in the cause of
French romanticism, and, in his use of the terms, romanticism stands
for progress, liberty, originality, and the spirit of the future; classicism,
for conservatism, authority, imitation, the spirit of the past. According
to him, every good piece of romantic art is a classic in the making.
Decried by the classicists of to-day, for its failure to observe traditions,
it will be used by the classicists of the future as a pattern to which new
artists must conform.
It may be worth while to round out the conception of the term by
considering a few other definitions of romantic which have been
proposed. Dr. F. H. Hedge, in an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_[9]