It is in fact the first division of literature in which the heroine assumes the position of a protagonist.

If it falls short in character, so do even later romances to a great extent: if dialogue is not very accomplished, that also was hardly to be thoroughly developed till the novel proper came into being.

In the other two great divisions, incident and description, it is abundantly furnished.

And, above all, the two great Romantic motives, Adventure and Love, are quite maturely present in it.
To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much.

The opinion of the present writer--the result, at least, of many years' reading and thought--is that it is a result of the marriage of the older East and the newer (non-classical) West through the agency of the spread of Christianity and the growth and diffusion of the "Saint's Life." The beginnings of Hagiology itself are very uncertain: but what is certain is that they are very early: and that as the amalgamation or leavening of the Roman world with barbarian material proceeded, the spread of Christianity proceeded likewise.