ROMANCE', in literature, a talc or fictitious history of extraordinary adven tures, intended to excite the passions of wonder and curiosity, and to interest the sensibilities of the heart. The romance from the novel, as it treats of great actions and extravagant adventures, soaring beyond the limits of fact and real life. Rom:Inces have of late years given way to historical novels ; and even such as are occasionally published are very ditrerent from those of the olden time, in which the blandishments of beauty and the enterprises of chivalry wore incon• gruously blended with fictions exceeding all bounds of human credulity. The earliest modern romances were collections of chivalrous adventures. chiefly founded on the lives and achievements of the war like adherents of two sovereigns, one of whom, perhaps, had only a fabulous ex istence, while the annals of the other have given rise to it wonderful series of fables=Arthur and Charlemagne. These
romances were metrical compositions in that branch of the modern French lan guage termed the longue doll, which pre vailed throughout the north of France, and especially in Normandy. Besides these a great variety of smaller tales, some chivalrous, some marvellous, some simply ludicrous, termed. fabl /aux, exist in the same language. The date of those com positions extend from the 12th to the 15th centuries. From the hands of these rhymers the tales of chivalry passed first into those of prose compilers, who re duced them into a form more resembling that of our mode•rn romances. The French prose romances of chivalry, still confined to the same classes of subjects, belong to the Nth and 15th centuries.