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Robert Louis Stevenson-Part3_Walter Raleigh(1861-1922)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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effort. In his stories his imagination worked on the old lines,

but it became conscious of its working. And the highest note of



these stories is not drama, nor character, but romance. In one of

his essays he defines the highest achievement of romance to be the



embodiment of 'character, thought, or emotion in some act or

attitude that shall be remarkablystriking to the mind's eye.' His



essay on Victor Hugo shows how keenlyconscious he was that

narrativeromance can catch and embodyemotions and effects that



are for ever out of the reach of the drama proper, and of the essay

or homily, just as they are out of the reach of sculpture and



painting. Now, it is precisely in these effects that the chief

excellence of romance resides; it was the discovery of a world of



these effects, insusceptible of treatment by the drama, neglected

entirely by the character-novel, which constituted the Romantic



revival of the end of last century. 'The artistic result of a

romance,' says Stevenson, 'what is left upon the memory by any



powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated and

refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it, and yet



something as simple as nature. . . . The fact is, that art is

working far ahead of language as well as of science, realizing for



us, by all manner of suggestions and exaggerations, effects for

which as yet we have no direct name, for the reason that these



effects do not enter very largely into the necessities of life.

Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that often hangs about



the purpose of a romance; it is clear enough to us in thought, but

we are not used to consider anything clear until we are able to



formulate it in words, and analytical language has not been

sufficiently shaped to that end.' He goes on to point out that



there is an epical value about every great romance, an underlying

idea, not presentable always in abstract or critical terms, in the



stories of such masters of pure romance as Victor Hugo and

Nathaniel Hawthorne.



The progress of romance in the present century has consisted

chiefly in the discovery of new exercises of imagination and new



subtle effects in story. Fielding, as Stevenson says, did not

understand that the nature of a landscape or the spirit of the



times could count for anything in a story; all his actions consist

of a few simple personal elements. With Scott vague influences



that qualify a man's personality begin to make a large claim; 'the

individual characters begin to occupy a comparatively small



proportion of that canvas on which armies manoeuvre and great hills

pile themselves upon each other's shoulders.' And the achievements



of the great masters since Scott - Hugo, Dumas, Hawthorne, to name

only those in Stevenson's direct line of ancestry - have added new



realms to the domain of romance.

What are the indescribable effects that romance, casting far beyond



problems of character and conduct, seeks to realise? What is the

nature of the great informing, underlying idea that animates a



truly great romance - THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, MONTE CRISTO, LES

MISERABLES, THE SCARLET LETTER, THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE? These



questions can only be answered by de-forming the impression given

by each of these works to present it in the chop-logic language of



philosophy. But an approach to an answer may be made by

illustration.



In his AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS Nathaniel Hawthorne used to jot down

subjects for stories as they struck him. His successive entries



are like the souls of stories awaiting embodiment, which many of

them never received; they bring us very near to the workings of the



mind of a great master. Here are some of them:

'A sketch to be given of a modern reformer, a type of the extreme



doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold water, and the like. He

goes about the streets haranguing most eloquently, and is on the



point of making many converts, when his labours are suddenly

interrupted by the appearance of the keeper of a madhouse whence he






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