We remember that for a brief period in the England of
Charles II, James II, and William and Mary, rakishness in the
plays of Wycherley and Congreve had a glamour of romance upon it
and was popular. Indeed, the novel or drama that gives to a
generation the escape it desires will always be popular. Test
Harold Bell Wright or Zane Grey, Rudyard Kipling or Walter Scott,
by this maxim, and it will further define itself, and ring true.
Another human craving is the desire to satisfy the impulses of
sex. This is much more difficult to define than the first because
it spreads in one phase or another through all cravings. Romance
of course has its large sex element, and so have the other
attributes to be spoken of later. However, there is a direct and
concentrated interest in the relations between the sexes which, in
its finer manifestations, seeks for a vivid contrast of
personalities in love; in its cruder forms desires raw passion; in
its pathological state craves the indecent. A thousand popular
novels illustrate the first phase; many more, of which the cave-
man story, the desert island romance, "The Sheik" and its
companions are examples, represent the second; the ever-surging
undercurrent of pornography springs to satisfy the third.
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