Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1903 — ROMANCE IN VARIED GUISE. [ARTICLE]

ROMANCE IN VARIED GUISE.

Definition of the Word Is Suecepttblor of Wide Dlvcralflcation. What is romance? Even the colloquial use of the term is varied. When* we say “you are romancing” or call' anything romantic as distinguished from what is real or what is true wa mean one thing, hut quite another when we apply the term romantic to natural scenery. And in this application we must distinguish between theeffect upon us of that which we call romantic because of human associations with certain sights or sounds and that wildness of nature which we call romantic because of its absolute dissociation from anything human. Keeping out of mind the use of the word in artistic and literary criticism, let us try to find what element of reconcilement there is in the diversitiesof colloquial usage. In all that is generally called romantic in the cases above mentioned there is the common element of strangeness. We easily revert to what must have been the original sense of the word in its connection with those mediaeval modifications of the Latin tongue known as the romance languages. The Saxon or Celt would have found his native tongue sufficient for all ordinary needs, but if he caught the Roman air in any way, by travel or refinement of taste and habit,, he would, to meet the newly developed! need, borrow the graces of the Roman speech—that is, he would romance.— Harper’s Magazine.