The artistic result of a romance, what is left upon the
memory by any really powerful and artistic novel, is
something so complicated and refined that it is difficult to
put a name upon it and yet something as simple as nature.
These two propositions may seem mutually destructive, but
they are so only in appearance. The fact is that art is
working far ahead of language as well as of science,
realising for us, by all manner of suggestions and
exaggerations, effects for which as yet we have no direct
name; nay, for which we may never perhaps have a direct name,
for the reason that these effects do not enter very largely
into the necessities of life. Hence alone is that suspicion
of vagueness that often hangs about the purpose of a romance:
it is clear enough to us in thought; but we are not used to
consider anything clear until we are able to formulate it in
words, and analytical language has not been sufficiently
shaped to that end. We all know this difficulty in the case
of a picture, simple and strong as may be the impression that
it has left with us; and it is only because language is the
medium of romance, that we are prevented from seeing that the
two cases are the same. It is not that there is anything
blurred or indefinite in the impression left with us, it is
just because the impression is so very definite after its own
kind, that we find it hard to fit it exactly with the
expressions of our philosophical speech.
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