Historical romance

“ I pass on to deal with the subject of Historical Fiction itself. Most of us, I suppose, at one time or another have experienced a thrill of interest when some prominent personage, whom we knew well by repute, came before us in the flesh. We watched his manner, and noted all those shades of expression which in another's countenance we should have passed by unheeded. Well, it seems to me that, parallel with this experience, is that which we gain, when, reading some first-rank romance, we encounter in its pages a figure with which History has made us more or less familiar. ”

“ We confess that we have, speaking generally, a great objection to what may be called historical romance, in which real and fictitious personages, and actual and fabulous events are mixed together to the utter confusion of the reader, and the unsettling of all accurate recollections of past transactions ”

“ Every man and every woman would be merely characters in an historical romance. Every sentence he would hear would sound like fiction. All manners and customs would seem exaggerated, sentimental, and he himself would give the impression of being a monster without breeding or a single attribute becoming to proper manhood. ”

“ I cannot call it absolutely a historical romance, because there are several characters which are not historical, and I am afraid I have taken a few little liberties with Chronology which, were she as prudish a dame as some of the middle-aged ladies whom I could mention, would either earn me a box of the ear, or produce so much scandal that my good name would be lost forever. Plague take the months and the days! they are always getting in one's way. ”

“ The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. ”

“ And the gift of the Romance—in that wide historical sense in which it could be, and was, in the Middle Ages applied to almost every manner of subject—was a gift to literature so inestimable that perhaps no other has ever quite equalled it. ”

“ In truth the whole work abounds in powerful delineation both of character and scenery, and it is with pride that we hail it as at once assuming and commanding a proud rank in the department of historical romance. ”

“ When the nature of an historical work admits of its being invested with a dramatic interest—and all history is capable, more or less, of having that attraction—where minute details can fill up the whole outline of characters, events, and scenes, all bearing the impress of truth and certainty, real history, being often stranger than fiction, may be, and ought to be, so written as to bring to bear upon the reader, the charm, and work the spell, of what is called romance. ”

“ Unless, indeed, the history had been perverted to a mischievous purpose, we should esteem it impertinent to direct argument against a mere romance, and to subject a work of imagination to a grave discussion. ”

“ We turn to an historical work with as much zest as to a romance, and find in it, now, that enthusiasm, that liveliness, that interest in human affairs which old historians allowed to be obscured by dates and names. ”

“ He has carried romance out of the region of imagination and sensibility into the walks of actual life. He has combined historical accuracy and romantic adventure with the interest of tragic events; we live with the heroes, and princes, and paladins of former times, as with our own contemporaries ”

“ This may all be well enough, in a historical romance—but in a matter, pretending to be true and impartial history, no good reader will walk by faith, altogether, and upon the staff of a single narrator ”

“ What is incomparable in the war part of the romance are the descriptions of military customs, the scenes of camp-life, the impressions of certain hours of day and night, the reminiscences of evening conversations, the effects of groups lighted up by the weird light of the bivouac, the heart-rending aspects of the battle-field or the hospital-wards. The marvellous beauty of all this wealth of feelings felt and experienced adds its glory to the more commonplace and less valuable woof of the historical narration. ”

“ The plan thus adopted is unquestionably the more popular and attractive, and, being favoured by the most illustrious writers of historical romance, there is presumptive reason for supposing it to be also that which is the more agreeable to the art of fiction. ”

“ If what is called history is so near mythology as, many times, to be confounded with it, what about romance and the historical drama in which events, entirely imaginative, must of necessity find a place? ”

“ The writers of biography and auto-or pseudo-autobiography who flourished and were so abundant in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made a great mistake by adding to the simple narrative a great number of romantic incidents which there is much reason to believe had no foundation in fact. Putting aside the morality or immorality of lying, they committed an artistic blunder. History is the best romance. ”

“ A book labelled ‘A tale for—’ is apt to carry a note of warning to the perverse spirits of those to whom it is addressed.
Historical tales and those of other lands require a certain degree of cultivation and imagination, to be appreciated. To some, even the best are distasteful, to others they supply the element of romance. Those that have a charm about them of character and adventure, fitting them for almost all [13] readers, have been put into the groups intended for the age they suit, as well as into their places as illustrations of history. ”

“ They are historical romances, filled to overflowing with love, stirring adventures, gallantry, soldierly daring and manliness, plots and counterplots, dark deeds, political machinations, virtue, vice, innocence and guilt. ”

“ But, goes on the objector, in the case of a Historical Romance we allow ourselves to be hoodwinked, for, under the influence of a pseudo- historic security, we seem to watch the real sequence of events in so far as these affect the characters in whom we are interested. ”

“ To him, historical characters are at least as real as those of romance, which they are very far from being to us, and he enters into their impressions and motives with a facile sympathy which we rarely feel. ”

“ Though an historical novel, necessarily devoted to grave and often painful matters, and plentifully strewn with moral and theological reflections, there is just enough of romance and feminine gossip in its pages to enlist the attention and excite the sympathies of the more sentimental and less seriously inclined readers. ”

“ There is none of that sense of familiarity which we enjoy when reading a sixteenth or seventeenth century romance; in the latter case, the historical background, being easily perceptible, merges for us with the creations of the author's own imagination. Where the writer of an "ancient" romance happens to be a scholar like Ebers, we feel that—so far at least as historical presentment goes—we cannot be far wrong, but the combination of great scholarship and narrative capacity is, alas, too rare!
I have likewise refrained from giving many tales dealing with Early-Christian times. ”

“ But however the annals of our History have been exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject you finally pressed on my choice is unquestionably one which, whether in the delineation of character, the expression of passion, or the suggestion of historical truths, can hardly fail to direct the Novelist to paths wholly untrodden by his predecessors in the Land of Fiction. ”

“ To G. P. R. James, Harrison Ainsworth, and James Grant I have previously alluded. It has been my endeavour to choose the best examples of all the above-named novelists—a task rendered specially difficult in some cases by the fact of immense literary output. Doubtless not a few of the works so chosen are open to criticism, but they will at least serve to illustrate certain stages in the growth of Historical Romance. ”

“ Its first object is, to throw light upon the dark places of history, necessarily left unclear by the historian. Poetry has the right and duty of setting facts in a clear light, and of illuminating the darkness by its sunny beams. The poetry of the romance writer seeks to deduce historical characteristics from historical facts, and to draw from the spirit of history an elucidation of historical characters, so that the writer may be able to detect their inmost thoughts and feelings, and in just and sharp traits to communicate them to others. ”

“ I have tried to show that the Renaissance bears the same relation to classical literature as p. 35the Revival of Romance bears to mediaeval literature, and that the whole history of the literature of Europe is an oscillation between Christian and Pagan ideals during that long and wavering process whereby Christianity was partially established as the creed and way of life of a group of diverse nations. The historical meaning of the word Romance is exact and easy to define. ”

“ I mention this to show that omissions do not necessarily mean ignorance, though, in covering such an immense ground, I cannot doubt that romances worthy of a place in my list have been overlooked.
I think many will be surprised to find how large a proportion of
our best writers (English and American) have entered the domain of
Historical or Semi-Historical Romance. Scott, Thackeray, Dickens,
George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, George Meredith, R. L. Stevenson,
Hawthorne, Peacock, Charles Kingsley, Henry Kingsley, Charles
Reade, Anthony Trollope, Mrs. ”

“ The Sagas differ in value, according to their use and arrangement of these matters, in relation to a central or imaginative conception of the main story and the characters engaged in it. The best Sagas are not always those that give the least of their space to historical matters, to the genealogies and family memoirs. From these the original life of the Sagas is drawn, and when it is cut off from these the Saga withers into a conventional and insipid romance. ”

“ Not only is there the interest of their present importance, which nobody would be likely to deny, but there is the charm of a historic past as full of romance as any chapter whatever in the annals of mankind. ”

“ The relation of epic poetry to its heroic age is not to be found in the observance of any strict historical duty. It lies rather in the epic capacity for bringing together all manner of lively passages from the general experience of the age, in a story about famous heroic characters. The plot of the story gives unity and harmony to the composition, while the variety of its matter is permitted and justified by the dramatic variety of the characters and their interests. ”

“ The pioneers, as a body, were only a little different from those who were too affectionate or diffident to start, and among them were all sorts of people; but looking only to those who endured extraordinary privations, to those who developed an uncommon degree of strength, courage, and virtue, there have grown up the poetry and romance of the pioneers, and to none is this more evident than the pioneers themselves. ”

“ It is not a law to history, as it is to romance, to make for a beautiful ideal. History is, or ought to be, what it was; while romance ought to be "the better world," as was said by Mme. Necker, one of the most distinguished thinkers of the last century. ”

“ If by romantic we mean what is strange and removed from ordinary experience and what has the attractions of wonder, thrill, and idealization, then for the Elizabethan the world of romance was a wide one. ”

“ Every heart confessed the influence of a romantic age,—the dying age, indeed, of chivalry,—but when, with superior refinement, it had lost nothing of the enthusiasm and exaltation of its prime. A shadowy twilight of romance enveloped every object. Every day gave birth to such extravagances, not merely of sentiment, but of action, as made it difficult to discern the precise boundaries of fact and fiction. ”

“ There are many such,—dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact. ”

“ The eye glows with noble desire; enthusiasm shines from that fair brow, surmounted only by clustering curls, not yet by the laurel wreath. He is a poet. The wondrous smile of love, of life, is on his lips; romance dwells in these thoughtful eyes, drollery in the cheeks' roguish curves. ”

“ Your history is quite a romance, and the world, which delights in romances contained in two covers of yellow paper, strangely mistrusts those which are bound in living parchment, even though they be gilded like yourself. ”

“ Here the phrase “Jesus came into the world,” like all else he did or suffered, is, of course, to be understood in a Pickwickian sense, for he never came into the world at all. The Gospels are not only a romance concocted by “such students of religion as the first Christians were” (p. 65) , and inspired by their study of Plato,4 and of the best elements in ancient mythology; they are a romance throughout—an allegory of a secret pre-Christian Nazarene society and of its secret cult (p. 34) . Of this society, he tells us, we know nothing; esoterism and cult secrecy were its chief interests ”

“ The heart beats quickly, and we feel ourselves taking a part in the exciting scenes described. You lay the book aside with the feeling that you have seen a gloriously true picture of the Revolution. His whole story is so absorbing that you will sit up far into the night to finish it. As a love romance it is charming. ”