Down he sat that day, painfully
learned to read Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. It had
been lost, nor could he find another copy but one that was in
English. Down he sat once more, learned English, and at length,
and with entire delight, read ROBINSON. It is like the story of a
love-chase. If he had heard a letter from CLARISSA, would he have
been fired with the same chivalrous ardour? I wonder. Yet
CLARISSA has every quality that can be shown in prose, one alone
excepted - pictorial or picture-making romance. While ROBINSON
depends, for the most part and with the overwhelming majority of
its readers, on the charm of circumstance.
In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and
the pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall
together by a common and organic law. Situation is animated with
passion, passion clothed upon with situation. Neither exists for
itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the other. This is high
art; and not only the highest art possible in words, but the
highest art of all, since it combines the greatest mass and
diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. Such are epics,
and the few prose tales that have the epic weight. But as from a
school of works, aping the creative, incident and romance are
ruthlessly discarded, so may character and drama be omitted or
subordinated to romance.
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