dopted by others, was at least an
improvement upon the old unregenerate system of seasoning the
conversation of warriors and peasants with uncouth phrases picked up
at random, or trusting to mere fancy or accepted formula for the
description of battles or of the ways of folk in mediaeval castles and
cottages. But the process savoured too much of the workshop. A novel
or poem that required an appendix of notes and glossaries must be of
high excellence to avoid suspicious resemblance to an elaborate
literary counterfeit, since open and avowed borrowing from
dictionaries of antiquities or volumes of travel must damage the
illusion which is the indispensable element of romance. In Moore's
fantastic metrical romance of _Lalla Rookh_ the system was carried to
an extent that now seems ridiculous, for certain passages are loaded
with outlandish phrases or metaphors that are unintelligible except by
reference to the notes. Nevertheless the English public, being then
quite ignorant of the true East, tolerated Moore's sham Orientalism,
even though Byron's fine poems were just then exposing the difference
between working up the subject in a library and wandering in Asiatic
countries. Byron's language seems in the present day turgid, and his
Greeks and Turks may have a theatrical air, but his splendid
descriptive passages were drawn by a master hand straight from nature,
while his colouring, landscape, and costume are usually excellent; so
that his work also is a distinct movement in the direction of realism.
Yet it is to be observed that after Byron and Scott the metrical
romance, that most ancient form of tale-telling, fell rapidly into
disuse. The fact that Byron's latest poem, _Don Juan_, belonged
essentially to the coming realistic school, is a significant
indication of transition; and Scott's abandonment of poetry for prose,
which was a necessary consequence of his advance toward realism, gave
its death-blow to the earlier fashion.

By this time, indeed, the conventional writer of adventures, though he
held his ground up to or even beyond the middle of the century, was in
a state of incurable decadence. He was losing the confidence of the
general reader, who had picked up some precise notions regarding
appropriate scenery, language, and costume in sundry periods and
divers places, from China to Peru; and he was persecuted by that
mortal foe of the old romancer, the well-informed critic, who trampled
even upon a commonplace bo