He imparts a vivid sense of the social interrelations, for the most part in a medieval environment, but in any case in an environment which one recognizes as controlled by human laws; not the brain-freak of a pseudo-idealist.  Scott’s Novels, judged broadly, make an impression of unity, movement and climax.  To put it tersely:  he painted manners, interpreted character in an historic setting and furnished story for story’s sake.  Nor was his genius helpless without the historic prop.  Certain of his major successes are hardly historical narratives at all; the scene of “Guy Mannering,” for example, and of “The Antiquary,” is laid in a time but little before that which was known personally to the romancer in his young manhood.

It will be seen in this theory of realism and romance that so far from antagonists are the story of truth and the story of poetry, they merely stand for diverging preferences in handling material.  Nobody has stated this distinction better than America’s greatest romancer, Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Having “The House of the Seven Gables” in mind, he says: 

When a writer calls his work a romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a novel.  The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not only to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience.  The former, while as a work of art it must rigidly subject itself to laws and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart, has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances to a great extent of the author’s own choosing or creation.  If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture.  He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the marvelous rather as a slight, delicate and evanescent flavor than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public.  The point of view in which this tale comes under the romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a by-gone time with the very present that is flitting away from us.  It is a legend, prolonging itself from an epoch now gray in the distance, down into our own broad daylight, and bringing along with it some of its legendary mist, which the reader may either disregard or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect.  The narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture, as to require this advantage and at the same time to render it the more difficult of attainment.

These words may be taken as the modern announcement of Romance, as distinguished from that of elder times.