It is not needful, nor indeed is it possible, to define Romance. In the
mathematical sciences definitions are all-important, because with them
the definition is the thing. When a mathematician asks you to describe a
circle, he asks you to create one. But the man who asks you to describe
a monkey is less exacting; he will be content if you mention some of the
features that seem to you to distinguish a monkey from other animals.
Such a description must needs be based on personal impressions and ideas;
some features must be chosen as being more significant than the rest. In
the history of literature there are only two really significant
things--men, and books. To study the ascertained facts concerning men
and books is to study biography and bibliography, two sciences which
between them supply the only competent and modest part of the history of
literature. To discern the significance of men and books, to classify
and explain them, is another matter. We have not, and we never shall
have, a calculus sufficient for human life even at its weakest and
poorest. Let him who conceives high hopes from the progress of knowledge
and the pertinacity of thought tame and subdue his pride by considering,
for a moment, the game of chess. That game is played with thirty-two
pieces, of six different kinds, on a board of sixty-four squares. Each
kind of piece has one allotted mode of action, which is further cramped
by severe limitations of space.
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