This, if not a positive fault, was yet a great defect in the Romance.
It is true, that not only the practice of some great authors in this
department, but even the general course of human life itself, may be
quoted in favour of this more obvious and less artificial practice of
arranging a narrative. It is seldom that the same circle of
personages who have surrounded an individual at his first outset in
life, continue to have an interest in his career till his fate comes
to a crisis. On the contrary, and more especially if the events of his
life be of a varied character, and worth communicating to others, or
to the world, the hero's later connexions are usually totally
separated from those with whom he began the voyage, but whom the
individual has outsailed, or who have drifted astray, or foundered on
the passage. This hackneyed comparison holds good in another point.
The numerous vessels of so many different sorts, and destined for such
different purposes, which are launched in the same mighty ocean,
although each endeavours to pursue its own course, are in every case
more influenced by the winds and tides, which are common to the
element which they all navigate, than by their own separate exertions.
And it is thus in the world, that, when human prudence has done its
best, some general, perhaps national, event, destroys the schemes of
the individual, as the casual touch of a more powerful being sweeps
away the web of the spider.
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