The word romantic when traced historically is found to go back to the old French _roman_ of which still elder forms are _romans_ and _romant_. These and similar formations derive ultimately from the mediæval Latin adverb _romanice_. _Roman_ and like words meant originally the various vernaculars derived from Latin, just as the French still speak of these vernaculars as _les langues romanes_; and then the word _roman_ came to be applied to tales written in the various vernaculars, especially in old French. Now with what features of these tales were people most struck? The reply to this question is found in a passage of a fifteenth-century Latin manuscript:[17] “From the reading of certain romantics, that is, books of poetry composed in French on military deeds which are for the most part fictitious.”[18] Here the term romantic is applied to books that we should still call romantic and for the very same reason, namely, because of the predominance in these books of the element of fiction over reality. In general a thing is romantic when, as Aristotle would say, it is wonderful rather than probable; in other words, when it violates the normal sequence of cause and effect in favor of adventure. Here is the fundamental contrast between the words classic and romantic which meets us at the outset and in some form or other persists in all the uses of the word down to the present day. A thing is romantic when it is strange, unexpected, intense, superlative, extreme, unique,[19] etc. A thing is classical, on the other hand, when it is not unique, but representative of a class. In this sense medical men may speak correctly of a classic case of typhoid fever, or a classic case of hysteria. One is even justified in speaking of a classic example of romanticism. By an easy extension of meaning a thing is classical when it belongs to a high class or to the best class.