ROMANTICISM. The word *Romantic* is derived from the old Romanic or Romance languages, which were formed by a fusion of Latin as spoken by the common people of Italy with the native tongue of the northern bar barians who invaded that country. This Ro mance speech naturally assumed a variety of forms, but it reached its highest development in Provence, in southern France, where it be came an important instrument of popular liter ary expression, especially during the 11th and 12th centuries. The compositions which ap peared in this vernacular tongue were generally tales and ballads in which the adventures of knights in pursuit of honor, or in devotion to the Christian religion, or the enthusiastic deeds of chivalry, and the spirit of loyalty and rever ence for women were portrayed. Another mark of this literature is its evident fondness for events that are strange, mysterious and supernaturaL The name ((romance then, first applied to the language in which those com positions were written, came afterward to refer to the prevailing characteristics which they dis played, as contrasted with the works written in Latin, which were termed *classical.* Dur ing the 18th century, which delighted to term itself the *Augustan Age,* and prided itself upon its purity and refinement of taste, the classical models and modes of expression were regarded as furnishing the only correct stand ards, while the literature and art of the Media val Period was regarded as barbarous, and its whole mode of thought and life to be char acteristic of Dark Ages that were unworthy of the attention of a cultivated man. At the close of this century, however, and during the early decades of the 19th, a marked change mani fested itself in the whole tone and tendency of the intellectual life of the time. This mental revolution, which is known as the Romantic Movement, affected all departments of thought, and all artistic and literary standards and modes of expression. From the first this movement showed a consciousness of its opposition to the generally received intellectual conceptions and prevailing artistic and literary standards of the time, though this contrast was less violently emphasized in England than in Germany and France. Goethe noted and commented upon the
difference between the old tendency and the new, describing it as equivalent to that between the *diseased* and the while Schiller contrasted them as the "naive* and the °senti mental.* It was Friedrich Schlegel who first employed the terms "classic* and "romantic* to characterize this opposition. Since that time many writers have undertaken to define and explain the fundamental distinctions between these tendencies, especially as they express themselves in art and literature. The following points appear to be most significant: (1) The main marks of classicism are simplicity, direct ness and nobility, and perfection in achievement. In a classic work of art there are no evidences of a lack of harmony between the ideas and the medium, no suggestion of something remaining that cannot be expressed. As a consequence, the personality of the artist is not expressed, the artist is lost in his work, which stands imper sonal and objective. He does not show us his own attitude toward the subject matter, his emo tional struggles and the play of his life. The Romanticist, on the other hand, puts himself into his work; it is no disembodied idea of beauty that he seeks to express, but his own personality, the longings, hopes and ideals of a spirit that has a tendency toward the infinite, and which, therefore, can never express itself in any finite and objective medium. Classicism is thus always definite, objective and complete, while Romanticism is always touched with sub jectivity, and thus with a suggestion of incom pleteness, which is due to the fact that it seeks to convey the mystery of spirit for which no objective mode of expression is adequate, and which, therefore, can only be symbolized and vaguely suggested. (2) As Romanticism en deavors to express what is strange and mysteri ous in the life of spirit, it naturally seeks its material in the past and feels itself especially in sympathy with the Middle Ages, when the aspi rations of the spirit, its love of adventure and sense of the mysterious expressed themselves in quests for the Holy Grail, in crusades and gallant deeds of chivalry and knight-errantry.