ROMANCE, originally a ccmposition written in "Romance" language, i.e., in one of the phases on which the Latin tongue en tered after or during the dark ages. For some centuries by far the larger number of these compositions were narrative fictions in prose or verse; and since the special "Romance" language of France—the earliest so-called—was the original vehicle of nearly all such fictions, the use of the term for them became more and more accepted in a limited sense. Yet for a long time there was no definite connotation of fiction attached to it, but only of narrative story; and the French version of William of Tyre's History of the Crusades, a very serious chronicle written towards the close of the 12th century, bears the name of Roman d'Eracle simply because the name of the emperor Heraclius occurs in the first line. But if the explanation of the name "Romance" is quite simple, certain and authentic, the same is by no means the case with its definition, or even with the origin of the thing to which that name came mostly to be applied. For some centuries an abstraction has been formed from the concrete examples. "Ro mance," "romanticism," "the romantic character," "the romantic spirit," have been used to express sometimes a quality regarded in itself, but much more frequently a difference from the sup posed "classical" character and spirit. The following article will deal chiefly with the matter of Romance, excluding or merely re ferring to accounts of such individual romances as are noticed elsewhere. But it will not be possible to conclude without some reference to the vaguer and more contentious signification.
wanting which were to be all-powerful in the romances proper— chivalry and religion. They could not yet be included, for chiv alry did not exist; and such religion as did exist lent itself but ill to the purpose except by providing myths for ornament and perhaps pattern.
The "Saint's Life."—A possible origin of the new romance into which these elements entered (though it was some time be fore that of chivalry definitely emerged) has been seen by one of the least hazardous of the speculations above referred to in the hagiology or "Saint's Life," which arose at an early though un certain period, developed itself pretty rapidly, and spreading over all Christendom (which by degrees meant all Europe and parts of Asia) provided centuries with their chief supply of what may be called interesting literature. If the author of On the Sublime was actually Longinus, the minister of Zenobia, there is no doubt that examples both sacred and profane of the kind of "fiction" ("imitation" or "representation") which he deprecated were mus tering and multiplying close to, perhaps in, his own time. The Alexander legend of the pseudo-Callisthenes is supposed to have seen the light in Egypt as early as A.D. 200, and the first Greek version of that "Vision of Saint Paul," which is the ancestor of all the large family of legends of the life after death, is pretty certainly as old as the 4th century and may be as old as the 3rd. The development of the Alexandreid was to some extent checked or confined to narrow channels as long as something like tradi tional and continuous study of the classics was kept up. But hagiology was entirely free from criticism ; its subjects were im mensely numerous ; and in the very nature of the case it allowed the tendencies and the folklore of three continents and of most of their countries to mingle with it. Especially the comparative sobriety of classical literature became affected with the Eastern appetite for marvel and unhesitating acceptation of it; and the extraordinary beauty of many of the central stories invited and necessitated embroidery, continuation, episode. Later, no doubt, the adult romance directly reacted on the original saint's life, as in the legends of St. Mary Magdalene most of all, of St. Eustace, and of many others. But there can be very little doubt that if the romance itself did not spring from the saint's life it was fostered thereby.