The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1893-08-03
THE HEROES OF ROMANCE
They Are Seldom Taken from the
Middle Glasses.
Strictly Speaking, There Are But Two
Normal Heroes of Fiction, and They
Are the Warrior and the
Fairy Prince.


Fairy Prince.
It is lamentable, indeed, when you
come to reflect on it, how large a pro-
portion of useful and respectable call
ings falls under the ban of romance.
What poet or romancer ever made his
first lover, for example, a baliff or a
beadle? Yet bailiffs and beadles are
men and brothers. They may do their
oftentimes dangerous duty with the
dash of Rupert, or the cool courage
of Cromwell, says Macmillan's Maga-
zine, yet they are frankly impossible
as heroes of romance De Quincey
makes a remark somewhere to the ef-
feet that one would not be inclined to
think highly of a man who, in the alb
sence of predisposing circumstances,
deliberately and for the love of the |
business decided to be butcher Yet |
butchers are husbands and fathers,
and have blood in their veins as well |
as on their aprons. AS a matter of
statistics, believe hardly day passes
but some solicitor falls in love yet no
court of love or literature will give
him audience as a lover, nor take cog
nizance of his pleadings. The breast
of the tockbroker is swayed by the
bears and bulls of passion no less than
by the subtler influences of financial
speculation. Yet his name is not hon.
ored in the more than royal exchange
of romance. Then, with one stroke of
the pen, romance rules out the whole
amorous mob of retail traders. They
| are not altogether absent from the
/ pages of romance, these worthy citi-
zens. Only they have to forego the
heroic parts and put up with being
supernumeraries or villains or comic
characters. About the butcher | am
doubtful Not even Dickens, think,
found room for butcher amid his
Babylon of trades. Nor with Shakes
peare is it any better. Ounce the car
penter, Snug the joiner, Bottom the
weaver, Flute the bellows-mender,
Snout the tinker, and Starveling the
tailor, are very we'll to play the fool,
to divert the duke and ladies, but none
of them, not even Bottom translated,
is a fit object for a lady's love. AS the
democratic Whitman has complained,
in Shakespearean play the mass of
Industrious citizens is just mob to
throw up it's sweaty night-caps in some
Casars honor at the bidding of an An
tony. What is there about a trade
thus to incapacitate man for ro-
nance?
Strictly speaking there are but two
normal heroes of romance, the warrior
and the fairy prince. If there is no
fairy prince at hand. an ordinary prince
will do. The English duke is, as the
American moralist rightly enough di-
vined, only modern variety of fairy
prince. To be mistaken for a fairy
prince the English duke no doubt needs
to be looked at from the other side OF
, the Atlantic. Seen at close quarters,
I in the house Of lords, on the race
: course or in the law courts, he isapt to
appear feshy. But he has the essen
tial attribute of the fairy prince, which
. is rarity. There are but two dozen OF
so of him all told, and most of these
have been bespoken or used up. He
has besides, for the American girl, an
other of the essential secrets of ro
mance-he is exotic 1t is the gooG
fortune and fascinating fashion of the
fairy prince to descend always from
some unknown upper and diviner air
That it is which makes the Prince
i Charming of the fairy tale so irresisti
= BILE. So it was that Cupid came Il
l Psyche, to cherish her with his secre'
and invisible godhead. So Perseul
. hoated on winged sandals through tn.
Z welcoming air to Andromeda's feet Il
> slay the monster. So Lohengrin came
flashing in a swan-drawn skif from
the mysterious halls of the Holy Grail
to champion maiden innocence agains
treachery and slander. The fair,
prince, you see, commonly includes tn
warriors part, and is doubly resistles
coming in the nick of time to fight
z distressed damsels battles and to sla,
3 her dragons. You may depend upon i
that what tells chiefly with the girl
against the eminently respectable rae
s of bankers and brewers and doctor
and lawyers istheir appalling common
> ness, their frequency, mean, and fa
miliarness. What should there be il
> one brass plate out of dozen in tn
: same street to throw romantic cir
off her emotional balance? When tn
modern novelist would surmonnt tn
professional high hat with the aureol
e of romance, he tricks out his tame her
Z to mimic the traditional advantage
U nf T,rinaa or cI,