he
name was then applied to any piece of literature composed in this
vernacular instead of in the ancient classical Latin. And as the
favorite kind of writing in Provencal, Old French, and Spanish was the
tale of chivalrous adventure that was called _par excellence_, _a roman_,
_romans_, or_ romance_. The adjective _romantic_ is much later,
implying, as it does, a certain degree of critical attention to the
species of fiction which it describes in order to a generalizing of its
peculiarities. It first came into general use in the latter half of the
seventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth; and naturally,
was marked from birth with that shade of disapproval which has been
noticed in popular usage.

The feature that struck the critics most in the romances of the Middle
Ages, and in that very different variety of romance which was cultivated
during the seventeenth century--the prolix, sentimental fictions of La
Calprenede, Scuderi, Gomberville, and D'Urfe--was the fantastic
improbability of their adventures. Hence the common acceptation of the
word _romantic_ in such phrases as "a romantic notion," "a romantic
elopement," "an act of romantic generosity." The application of the
adjective to scenery was somewhat later,[5] and the abstract
_romanticism_ was, of course, very much later; as the literary movement,
or the revolution in taste, which it entitles, was not enough developed
to call for a name until the opening of the nineteenth century. Indeed,
it was never so compact, conscious, and definite a movement in England as
in Germany and France; and its baptism doubtless came from abroad, from
the polemical literature which attended the career of the German
_romanticismus _and the French _romantisme_.

While accepting provisionally Heine's definition, it will be useful to
examine some of the wider meanings that have been attached to the words
_classic_ and _romantic_, and some of the analyses that have been
attempted of the qualities that make one work of art classical and
another romantic. Walter Pater took them to indicate opposite tendencies
or elements which are present in varying proportions in all good art. It
is the essential function of classical art and literature, he thought, to
take care of the qualities of measure, purity, temperance. "What is
classical comes to us out of the cool and quiet of other times, as a
measure of what a long experience has shown us will, at least, never
displ