The Project Gutenberg eBook, Romance, by Walter Raleigh

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Title: Romance
Two Lectures

Author: Walter Raleigh

Release Date: September 25, 2006 [eBook #19367]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE***

Transcribed from the 1916 Princeton University Press edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM FOUNDATION

ROMANCE

TWO LECTURES BY

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

M.A., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, FELLOW OF
MERTON COLLEGE

LECTURES DELIVERED AT PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY, MAY 4TH AND 6TH, 1915

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1916

Copyright, 1916, by
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published October, 1916

THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE

The period of English political history which falls between Pitt's
acceptance of office as prime minister, in 1783, and the passing of the
Reform Bill, in 1832, is a period rich in character and event. The same
period of fifty years is one of the most crowded epochs of our national
literature. In 1783 William Blake produced his _Poetical Sketches_, and
George Crabbe published _The Village_. In 1832 Scott died, not many
months after the death of Goethe. Between these two dates a great
company of English writers produced a literature of immense bulk, and of
almost endless diversity of character. Yet one dominant strain in that
literature has commonly been allowed to give a name to the whole period,
and it is often called the Age of the Romantic Revival.

We do not name other notable periods of our literature in this fashion.
The name itself contains a theory, and so marks the rise of a new
philosophical and aesthetic criticism. It attempts to describe as well
as to name, and attaches significance not to kings, or great authors, but
to the kind of writing which flourished conspicuously in that age. A
less ambitious and much more secure name would have been the Age of
George III; but this name has seldom been used, perhaps because the
writers of his time who reverenced King George III were not ve