A Gossip on Romance - Page 2

they
moved. This was the most sentimental impression I think I had yet
received, for a child is somewhat deaf to the sentimental. In the
last, a poet, who had been tragically wrangling with his wife, walked
forth on the sea-beach on a tempestuous night and witnessed the
horrors of a wreck.[7] Different as they are, all these early
favourites have a common note--they have all a touch of the romantic.

Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance.
The pleasure that we take in life is of two sorts--the active and the
passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny;
anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and
dashed we know not how into the future. Now we are pleased by our
conduct, anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to
say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more effective, but
the latter is surely the more constant. Conduct is three parts of
life,[8] they say; but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal
in life and letters both which is not immoral, but simply a-moral;
which either does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it
in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest turns, not upon
what a man shall choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on
the passionate slips and hesitations of the conscience, but on the
problems of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean,
open-air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy of life. With
such material as this it is impossible to build a play, for the
serious theatre exists solely on moral grounds, and is a standing
proof of the dissemination of the human conscience. But it is possible
to build, upon this ground, the most joyous of verses, and the most
lively, beautiful and buoyant tales.

One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in events and
places. The sight of a pleasant arbour[9] puts it in our minds to sit
there. One place suggests work, another idleness, a third early rising
and long rambles in the dew. The effect of night, of any flowing
water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open
ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and
pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we
proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet
by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment.
It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into
deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Something must
have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my
race; when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games
for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them with