The St. Johns herald., 1893-12-21
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.

Are the Warrior and the
 Fairy Prince.
 It is lamentable, indeed, when you come to reflect on it, how large 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, baliff or beadle? Yet bailiffs and beadles are men and brothers. They may do their oftentimes dangerous duty with the dash of a 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 eff feet that one would not be inclined to think highly of man who, in the ab- 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 matter of statistics. believe hardly a day passes but some solicitor falls in love; yet no court of love or literature will give him audience as lover, nor take cog nizance of his pleadings- The breast of the stoclkbroker 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- zeps. Only they have to forego the heroic parts and put up with being supernumeraries or villains or comic characters. About the butcher I am doubtful. Not eveh Dickens, think, found room for a butcher amid his Babylon of trades. Nor with Shakes peare is it any better. Quince the car penter, Snug the joiner, Bottom the weaver, Flute the bellows-mender, Shout the tinker, and Starveling the tailor. are very well to play the fool, to divert the duke and ladies, but none of them, not even Bottom translated, is fit object for lady's love. As the democratic Whitman has complained, in Shakespearean play the mass of industrious citizens is just mob to throw up its sweaty night-caps in some C8sar's honor at the bidding of an An tony. What is there about a trade thus to incapacitate a man for TO- 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 fairy prince the English duke no doubt needs to be looked at from the other side of the Atlantic. Seen at close quarters, in the house of lords, on the race course or in the law courts, he isapt to appear fleshy. But he has the essen tial attribute of the fairy prince, which is rarity. There are but two dozen or 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 TO- mance-he is exotic. It is the good fortune and fascinating fashion of the fairy prince t0 descend always from some unknown upper and diviner air. That it is which makes the Prince Charming of the fairy tale so irresisti- ble. So it was that Cupid came to Psyche, to cherish her with his secret and invisible godhead. So Perseus foated on winged sandals through the welcoming air to Andromeda's feet to slay the monster. So Lohengrin came flashing in a swan-drawn slxiff from the mysterious halls of the Holy Grail, to champion maiden innocence against treachery and islander. The fairy prince, you see, commonly includes the warriors part, and is doubly resistless coming in the nick of time to fight a distressed damsel's battles and to slay her dragons You may depend upon it that what tells chiefly with the girls against the eminently respectable race of bankers and brewers and doctors and lawyers is their appalling common ness, their frequency, mean, and fa- miliarness. What should there be in one brass plate out of a dozen in the same street to throw a romantic girl off her emotional balance? When the modern novelist would surmount the profess Gal high hat with the aureole of romar ce, he tricks out his tame hero to mimic the traditional advantages of prince or champion.
 HIS PLAINTIvE PLEA.