On Romances:
1. Of all the multifarious productions which the efforts of superior genius, or the
labours of scholastic industry, have crowded upon the world, none are perused with
more insatiable avidity, or disseminated with more universal applause, than the
narrations of feigned events, descriptions of imaginary scenes, and delineations of
ideal characters. The celebrity of other authors is confined within very narrow
limits. The geometrician and divine, the antiquary and the critic, however
distinguished by uncontested excellence, can only hope to please those whom a
conformity of disposition has engaged in similar pursuits; and must be content to be
regarded by the rest of the world with the smile of frigid indifference, or the
contemptuous sneer of self-sufficient folly. The collector of shells and the
anatomist of insects is little inclined to enter into theological disputes: the
divine is not apt to regard with veneration the uncouth diagrams and tedious
calculations of the astronomer: the man whose life
has been consumed in adjusting
the disputes of lexicographers, or elucidating the learning of antiquity, cannot
easily bend his thoughts to recent transactions, or readily interest himself in the
unimportant history of his contemporaries: and the cit, who knows no business but
acquiring wealth, and no pleasure but displaying it, has a heart equally shut up to
argument and fancy, to the batteries of syllogism, and the arrows of wit. To the
writer of fiction alone every ear is open, and every tongue lavish of applause:
curiosity sparkles in every eye, and every bosom is throbbing with concern.
2. It is, however, easy to account for this enchantment. To follow the chain of
perplexed ratiocination, to view with critical skill the airy architecture of
systems, to unravel the web of sophistry, or weigh the merits of opposite
hypotheses, requires perspicacity, and pre-supposes learning. Works of this kind,
therefore, are not so well adapted to the generality of readers as familiar and
colloquial composition; for few can reason, but all can feel; and many who cannot
enter into an argument, may yet listen to a tale. The writer of romance has even an
advantage over those who endeavour to amuse by the play of fancy; who, from the
fortuitous collision of dissimilar ideas, produce the scintillations of wit; or by
the vivid glow of poetical imagery delight the imagination
with colours of ideal
radiance. The attraction of the magnet is only exerted upon similar particles; and
to taste the beauties of Homer, it is requisite to partake his fire; but every one
can relish the author who represents common life, because every one can refer to the
originals from whence his ideas were taken. He relates events to which all are
liable, and applies to passions which all have felt. The gloom of solitude, the
languor of inaction, the corrosions of disappointment, and the toil of thought,
induce men to step aside from the rugged road of life, and wander in the fairy land
of fiction; where every bank is sprinkled with flowers, and every gale loaded with
perfume; where every event introduces a hero, and every cottage is inhabited by a
Grace. Invited by these flattering scenes, the student quits the investigation of
truth, in which he perhaps meets with no less fallacy, to exhilarate his mind with
new ideas, more agreeable, and more easily attained: the busy relax their attention
by desultory reading, and smooth the agitation of a ruffled mind with images of
peace, tranquillity, and pleasure: the idle and the gay relieve the listlessness of
leisure, and diversify the round of life, by a rapid series of events pregnant with
rapture and astonishment; and the pensive solitary fills up the vacuities of his
heart by interesting himself in the fortunes of imaginary beings, and forming
connexions with ideal excellence.
3. It is, indeed, no ways extraordinary that the mind should be charmed by fancy, and
attracted by pleasure; but that we should listen with complacence to the groans of
misery, and delight to view the exacerbations of complicated anguish, that we should
choose to chill the bosom with imaginary fears, and dim the eyes with fictitious
sorrow, seems a kind of paradox of the heart, and can only be credited because it is
universally felt. Various are the hypotheses which have been formed to account for
the disposition of the mind to riot in this species of intellectual luxury. Some
have imagined that we are induced to acquiesce with greater patience in our own lot
by beholding pictures of life tinged with deeper horrors, and loaded with more
excruciating calamities; as, to a person suddenly emerging out of a dark room, the
faintest glimmering of twilight assumes a lustre from the contrasted gloom. Others,
with yet deeper refinement, suppose that we take upon ourselves this burden of
adscititious sorrows, in order to feast upon the consciousness of our own virtue. We
commiserate others, say they, that we may applaud ourselves; and the sigh of
compassionate sympathy is always followed by the gratulations of self-complacent
esteem. But surely
they who would thus reduce the sympathetic emotions of pity to a
system of refined selfishness, have but ill attended to the genuine feelings of
humanity. It would, however, exceed the limits of this paper, should I attempt an
accurate investigation of these sentiments. But let it be remembered, that we are
more attracted by those scenes which interest our passions, or gratify our
curiosity, than those which delight our fancy: and, so far from being indifferent to
the miseries of others, we are, at the time, totally regardless of our own. And let
not those on whom the hand of Time has impressed the characters of oracular wisdom,
censure with too much acrimony productions which are thus calculated to please the
imagination, and interest the heart. They teach us to think, by inuring us to feel:
they ventilate the mind by sudden gusts of passion; and prevent the stagnation of
thought, by a fresh infusion of dissimilar ideas.
Date: 1825
(revised 02/08/2005) Author: Anna Letitia Barbauld
(revised Zach Weir).
The editing on this page is copyrighted; this page may be used according to the rules of fair use.