A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century | Page 5

for March, 1886, inquired, "What do we mean by romantic?" Goethe,
he says, characterized the difference between classic and romantic "as
equivalent to [that between] healthy and morbid. Schiller proposed
'naïve and sentimental.'[10] The greater part [of the German critics]
regarded it as identical with the difference between ancient and modern,

which was partly true, but explained nothing. None of the definitions
given could be accepted as quite satisfactory."[11]
Dr. Hedge himself finds the origin of romantic feeling in wonder and
the sense of mystery. "The essence of romance," he writes, "is mystery";
and he enforces the point by noting the application of the word to
scenery. "The woody dell, the leafy glen, the forest path which leads,
one knows not whither, are romantic: the public highway is not." "The
winding secret brook . . . is romantic, as compared with the broad
river." "Moonlight is romantic, as contrasted with daylight." Dr. Hedge
attributes this fondness for the mysterious to "the influence of the
Christian religion, which deepened immensely the mystery of life,
suggesting something beyond and behind the world of sense."
This charm of wonder or mystery is perhaps only another name for that
"strangeness added to beauty" which Pater takes to be the
distinguishing feature of romantic art. Later in the same article, Dr.
Hedge asserts that "the essence of romanticism is aspiration." Much
might be said in defense of this position. It has often been pointed out,
_e.g._, that a Gothic cathedral expresses aspiration, and a Greek temple
satisfied completeness. Indeed if we agree that, in a general way, the
classic is equivalent to the antique, and the romantic to the medieval, it
will be strange if we do not discover many differences between the two
that can hardly be covered by any single phrase. Dr. Hedge himself
enumerates several qualities of romantic art which it would be difficult
to bring under his essential and defining category of wonder or
aspiration. Thus he announces that "the peculiarity of the classic style is
reserve, self-suppression of the writer"; while "the romantic is
self-reflecting." "Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of the
subject . . . is the prominent feature of the classic style. The modern
writer gives you not so much the things themselves as his impression of
them." Here then is the familiar critical distinction between the
objective and subjective methods--Schiller's _naiv and
sentimentalisch_--applied as a criterion of classic and romantic style.
This contrast the essayist develops at some length, dwelling upon "the
cold reserve and colorless simplicity of the classic style, where the
medium is lost in the object"; and "on the other hand, the inwardness,

the sentimental intensity, the subjective coloring of the romantic style."
A further distinguishing mark of the romantic spirit, mentioned by Dr.
Hedge in common with many other critics, is the indefiniteness or
incompleteness of its creations. This is a consequence, of course, of its
sense of mystery and aspiration. Schopenbauer said that music was the
characteristic modern art, because of its subjective, indefinite character.
Pursuing this line of thought, Dr. Hedge affirms that "romantic relates
to classic somewhat as music relates to plastic art. . . It [music] presents
no finished ideal, but suggests ideals beyond the capacity of canvas or
stone. Plastic art acts on the intellect, music on the feelings; the one
affects us by what it presents, the other by what it suggests. This, it
seems to me, is essentially the difference between classic and romantic
poetry"; and he names Homer and Milton as examples of the former,
and Scott and Shelley of the latter school.
Here then we have a third criterion proposed for determining the
essential differentia of romantic art. First it was mystery, then
aspiration; now it is the appeal to the emotions by the method of
suggestion. And yet there is, perhaps, no inconsistency on the critic's
part in this continual shifting of his ground. He is apparently presenting
different facets of the same truth; he means one thing by this mystery,
aspiration, indefiniteness, incompleteness, emotion suggestiveness: that
quality or effect which we all feel to be present in romantic and absent
from classic work, but which we find it hard to describe by any single
term. It is open to any analyst of our critical vocabulary to draw out the
fullest meanings that he can, from such pairs of related words as classic
and romantic, fancy and imagination, wit and humor, reason and
understanding, passion and sentiment. Let us, for instance, develop
briefly this proposition that the ideal of classic art is completeness[12]
and the ideal of romantic art indefiniteness, or suggestiveness.
A.W. Schlegel[13] had already made use of two of the arts of design, to
illustrate the distinction between classic and romantic, just as Dr.
Hedge uses plastic art and music. I refer to Schlegel's