Another London paper, the _Academy_, took me to task for using the
word "romantic" in the sense I applied to it. But in this case, too,
further research has shown that I was justified in using that word to
designate pure prematrimonial love. There is a passage in Steele's
_Lover_ (dated 1714) which proves that it must have been in common use
in a similar sense two centuries ago. The passage refers to "the reign
of the amorous Charles the Second," and declares that
"the licenses of that court did not only make the Love which
the Vulgar call Romantick, the object of Jest and Ridicule,
but even common Decency and Modesty were almost abandoned as
formal and unnatural."
Here there is an obvious antithesis between romantic and sensual. The
same antithesis was used by Hegel in contrasting the sensual love of
the ancient Greeks and Romans with what he calls modern "romantic"
love. Waitz-Gerland, too, in the six volumes of their _Anthropologie
der Naturvölker_, repeatedly refer to (alleged) cases of "romantic
love" among savages and barbarians, having in all probability adopted
the term from Hegel. The peculiar appropriateness of the word romantic
to designate imaginative love will be set forth later in the chapter
entitled Sensuality, Sentimentality, and Sentiment. Here I will only
add an important truth which I shall have occasion to repeat
often--that _a romantic love-story is not necessarily a story of
romantic love_; for it is obvious, for instance, that an elopement
prompted by the most frivolous sensual passion, without a trace of
real love, may lead to the most romantic incidents.
In the chapters on affection, gallantry, and self-sacrifice, I shall
make it clear even to a Saturday Reviewer that the gross sensual
infatuation which leads a man to shoot a girl who refuses him, or a
tramp to assault a woman on a lonely road and afterward to cut her
throat in order to hide his crime, is absolutely antipodal to the
refined, ardent, affectionate Romantic Love which impels a man to
sacrifice his own life rather than let any harm or dishonor come to
the beloved.