Chap­ter XV opens by sug­gest­ing that for the roman­tic read­er and writer alike, the joy of fic­tion lies not in per­fect word­ing but in the vivid feel­ing it awak­ens. Words serve mere­ly as the bridge to imag­i­na­tion, and if they suc­ceed in con­jur­ing the desired vision, their ele­gance becomes sec­ondary. Scott, for instance, often relied less on pre­ci­sion and more on evo­ca­tion, allow­ing raw sen­ti­ment to lead the scene. His best pas­sages can daz­zle with ener­gy, but this bril­liance appears inter­mit­tent­ly, embed­ded in a fab­ric less fine­ly woven. Com­pared to Richard­son or Defoe—who used dis­ci­plined, focused prose—Scott’s effect can feel spon­ta­neous and change­able. Yet, this unpre­dictabil­i­ty also becomes a strength, mir­ror­ing the roman­tic spir­it that shifts with mood and mem­o­ry, nev­er set­tling into a sin­gle, fixed form.

Steven­son con­tin­ues by assert­ing that the true strength of romance lies in its abil­i­ty to trans­port rather than instruct. He recalls how as a child, it wasn’t the lit­er­ary qual­i­ty that mat­tered, but the pow­er to escape into unknown lands through mere pages. The abil­i­ty of romance to stir vivid men­tal images, regard­less of style or log­ic, rep­re­sents a kind of mag­ic unique to nar­ra­tive. Books that gave him thrilling visions, even if awk­ward­ly writ­ten, left deep­er impres­sions than more pol­ished works. In this view, the pur­pose of such fic­tion is not to dis­sect real­i­ty but to offer entry into some­thing brighter, stranger, or more exhil­a­rat­ing. And this, Steven­son argues, is not a flaw but a rare tri­umph of the imagination—a moment when fic­tion becomes more than paper and ink.

He then cri­tiques the obses­sion with struc­ture and pol­ish in sto­ry­telling. Where some authors strive for per­fec­tion, craft­ing lan­guage that is exact and immov­able, others—like Scott—embrace a loos­er form to pre­serve spon­tane­ity. This allows their char­ac­ters and moments to feel alive, ever shift­ing and capa­ble of sur­prise. In Scott’s case, this flex­i­bil­i­ty results in moments that stay with read­ers long after oth­er sto­ries fade. The wild­ness of his craft echoes nature itself—beautiful but untamed, marked by highs and lows. The sto­ries that live longest in our minds, Steven­son sug­gests, are not always the best-writ­ten, but the most vibrant­ly imag­ined and felt.

Roman­tic lit­er­a­ture, there­fore, serves a pur­pose beyond mere enter­tain­ment. It speaks to the emo­tion­al needs of read­ers who long to feel won­der and adven­ture in every­day life. Steven­son illus­trates how this genre helps peo­ple rehearse dreams, face imag­i­nary dan­gers, or feel brave in a world that often sti­fles dar­ing. These expe­ri­ences, while fic­tion­al, give real courage and hope. The appeal of romance, then, lies in its emo­tion­al truth rather than in its tech­ni­cal finesse. Through it, read­ers explore parts of them­selves that real­i­ty may nev­er allow.

There’s a time­less qual­i­ty to such tales, and Steven­son empha­sizes that the best sto­ries live not because they instruct, but because they stir some­thing pri­mal. Books like Robin­son Cru­soe endure because they awak­en a sur­vival instinct, a long­ing for self-reliance, or a crav­ing for soli­tude and dis­cov­ery. Such sto­ries tap into deep emo­tion­al wells and pro­vide read­ers with frame­works through which they under­stand them­selves. Even when real­ism fails to res­onate, romance can feel more hon­est, more vital, and more deeply human. The tales we remem­ber aren’t always those with moral weight, but those that made us feel most alive.

In the final pas­sages, Chap­ter XV sug­gests that lit­er­a­ture must not always strive to mir­ror the world exact­ly, but should instead reveal its poten­tial. The roman­tic sto­ry lifts the veil on a ver­sion of life where feel­ings are sharp­er, choic­es clear­er, and the soul more coura­geous. Steven­son defends this not as child­ish escapism but as a noble pursuit—a mir­ror for the dreams peo­ple car­ry but rarely voice. Fic­tion, at its high­est, is not bound by fact but by feel­ing. It asks what life could be, rather than what it already is, and in doing so, offers a rich­er, fuller vision of exis­tence.