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TWO GREAT ENGLISHWOMEN 
 
 MBS. BROWNING & CHARLOTTE BRONTE 
 
 WITH AN 
 
 ESSAY ON POETEY, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED FROM 
 
 WORDSWORTH, BURNS, AND BYKON. 
 
 BY 
 
 PETEE BAYNE, M.A., LL.D., 
 
 Author of " Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution," " Lessons from 
 My Masters," 8fc>, $c. 
 
 ILontion : 
 JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1881. 
 

NOTE. 
 
 THE Essay on Poetry is published for the first time. Those 
 on Mrs. Browning and the Bronte sisters are founded on 
 Studies which appeared hi \Tfie Literary World, and have 
 now been carefully revised, greatly modified, and considerably 
 extended. 
 
 62 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSAY ON POETRY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Criticism by Sample Mr. Arnold's Test of no use to ordinary 
 readers Poetry not criticism, but creation Observation 
 and Imagination The Poetic Glow Metrical Form The 
 Song-element Wordsworth Burns Byron Mrs. Brown- 
 ingThe Bronte Sisters . . . . ix 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 
 
 CHAPTEB 
 
 I. Her Earliest Verses . . . . .3 
 
 II. The Seraphim and Drama of Exile . . .7 
 
 III. A Vision of Poets, and The Poet's Vow . . .27 
 
 IV. The Romaunt of Margret, and other Poems . .38 
 
 V. Her Philanthropic Poetry . . . . .48 
 
 VI. Lyric Pencillings . . . . . .55 
 
 VII. Lady Geraldine's Courtship . . . .60 
 
 VIIL The Rhyme of the Duchess May . . . .72 
 
 IX. Poems of Affection. . . . . .81 
 
 X. Her Love Sonnets . . . . . .87 
 
 XI. Poems of Patriotic Sympathy . . . .97 
 
 XII. Aurora Leigh. Conclusion . . . . 107 
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND HER SISTERS. 
 
 I. General Impression of Charlotte Bronte Thackeray's 
 opinion of her Mrs. Gaskell and Mr. Wemyss 
 Reid The Moors The Mother of the Brontes 
 The Father's Poems . . 157 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 II. Branwell Bronte Charlotte's Correspondence with 
 
 Southey 168 
 
 III. The Poems of the Sisters Emily Bronte . .180 
 
 IV. Wuthering Heights 196 
 
 V. Heathcliff and Cathy Old Joseph Isabella Linton 
 
 Heathcliff 207 
 
 VI. Heathcliff and Cathy Emily Bronte and Mr. G. H. 
 
 Lewes ....... 221 
 
 VII. Charlotte and Emily in Brussels Belgian Scenery 
 The Professor Villette The School Scenes in 
 Jane Eyre . . . . . . 23S 
 
 VIII. Jane Eyre Thornfield Hall Meeting with Eochester . 247 
 IX. Jane and Eochester Jane's Pictures The Mermaid 
 
 Eochester's Plea ..... 262 
 
 X. Charlotte Bronte's Defence of Jane Eyre Eochester 
 
 an egotist .... . 278 
 
 XI. Women's Eights The Ethics of Abnegation Mr. 
 
 Meredith on Egotism Thackeray's moral analysis 291 
 'XII. M. Paul Emanuel The Bronte lovers . . . 299 
 
 XIII. Mr. Donne's Exodus Shirley the author's most charac- 
 teristic book Mercenary Marriage A Day with 
 Shirley The Duty of Endurance . . .311 
 
 XIV. The Bronte genius The Yorkshire School of Litera- 
 tureThe Deaths of the Sisters . 326 
 
ESSAY ON POETRY. 
 
POETRY 
 
 WITH 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM WORDSWORTH, BURNS, 
 AND BYRON. 
 
 I DON'T know that criticism wants any other 
 vindication than that good critical writing is 
 very pleasant reading. Mr. Buskin and Mr. Arnold 
 have of late used words so dainty, bright, and ex- 
 pressive in instructing us as to what true poetry 
 is that, apart from the value of the lesson (which I 
 estimate highly), we like the receiving of it. These 
 eminent critics have laid stress mainly upon the 
 selection of examples, not indeed excluding system 
 and formula, but, on the whole, choosing rather to 
 show what poetry is than to say. The method is a 
 delightful one for the pupil, and the examples quoted 
 by Mr. Buskin and Mr. Arnold are, with hardly an 
 exception, so apt and beautiful, that I wish they could 
 be indefinitely extended. But it is a method that 
 obviously belongs of right only to those who have a 
 great and just confidence in themselves. To such it 
 
xii Poetry. 
 
 is given by the acclamation of their contemporaries, 
 and the acquiescent consciousness of genius, to wield 
 the sceptre of the realms of admiration ; to touch, 
 with golden authority, this, that, and the other poetic 
 gem, and to say, " These are admirable ; admire what 
 are like these." I shrink from the presumption of 
 adopting this imperial method. 
 
 Sooth to say, however, there is another objection to 
 this mode of teaching the art of poetical criticism. 
 The samples, though chosen with infallible tact, can 
 consist, severally, of but a few lines, and can bear no 
 proportion to the works from which they are taken. 
 If these are by great poets, the probability is that, for 
 every line quoted, its author has written at least a 
 thousand. A poem is an organised thing. That is 
 self-evident and indisputable. From the lyric of three 
 stanzas to the epic of four-and-twenty books, every 
 true poem is a unity of many parts. Its' organisation 
 is fine and complex, so fine, complex, and mysterious 
 that Mr. Kuskin does not scruple to pronounce a true 
 poem a living thing, and that not in mere meta- 
 phorical illustration, but with aim at clear scientific 
 precision. Now, a handful will tell you the quality of 
 a quarter of wheat, a tumblerful will tell you the 
 quality of a cubic league of sea- water, a chip will tell 
 you the quality of a block of granite weighing a 
 thousand tons ; but people have been very properly 
 laughing for more than two thousand years at the 
 man who carried about a brick as sample of a house, 
 and a brick may give you much more information 
 
Criticism by Sample. xiii 
 
 about a house than a line, or a couple of lines, or even 
 a stray stanza, ahout a poem. If we add, what is 
 again indisputable, that the greatest poets have weak, 
 flat, bombastic passages, and that very little poets 
 occasionally strike a lofty note, we shall have the more 
 reason to distrust the critical method which depends 
 upon selected lines or stanzas. Two critics, equally 
 adroit and equally well read, would have no difficulty 
 in bombarding each other with separate lines, to 
 prove, in the one case, that Shakespeare was a great, 
 in the other that he was not a great, poet ; and the 
 simple hearer, unacquainted with Shakespeare's works, 
 might find himself utterly unable, at the end of an 
 hour, to decide as to the place he deserves to occupy 
 among poets. 
 
 But it is the simple reader, not the man whose 
 born instinct and disciplined and cultured skill enable 
 him to dispense with rules, that requires to be assisted 
 to discriminate between excellent poetry and such as 
 is not excellent ; and, in his interest, we may ask 
 whether it is not possible to define the characteristics 
 of true poetry generally, in such a way that he may 
 intelligently assign a reason for considering one poet, 
 on the whole, greater than another. In endeavouring 
 to arrive at a comprehensive and at the same time 
 practically useful criterion of excellence in poetry, I 
 shall continue to avail myself of the pleasant help of 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, though not in a spirit of too 
 servile pupilage. 
 
 Poetry, as Mr. Arnold first and fundamentally con- 
 
xiv Poetry. 
 
 ceives it, is " a criticism of life." More particularly it 
 is " a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for 
 such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and 
 poetic beauty." This addition, however, only seems 
 to help us ; for it is clearly a truism to say that 
 poetry is criticism under poetical conditions. We 
 do not define an island when we call it land situated 
 under insular conditions. The question is, What are 
 the conditions which distinguish that criticism of life 
 which is poetical from that criticism of life which is 
 not poetical ? To have poetical value, he explains 
 from Aristotle, criticism of life must have high truth 
 and high seriousness it must, in both respects, be 
 higher than history ; and excellent poetry is such as 
 involves " the noble and profound application of ideas 
 to life." 
 
 Let us apply these principles to a passage quoted 
 by Mr. Arnold from Wordsworth. 
 
 Oh, for the coming of that glorious time 
 When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth 
 And best protection, this Imperial Bealm, 
 While she exacts allegiance, shall admit 
 . An obligation, on her part, to teach 
 Them who are born to serve her and obey ; 
 Binding herself by statute to secure, 
 For all the children whom her soil maintains, 
 The rudiments of letters, and inform 
 The mind with moral and religious truth ! 
 
 These lines accord well with Mr. Arnold's main 
 conception of poetry. They are manifestly a criticism 
 of life. No criticism could be more serious, and I do 
 not see that any criticism could be more true. Does 
 
Mr. Arnold's Test. xv 
 
 the passage not embrace, also, a " noble and profound 
 application of ideas to life " ? What form of life could 
 be presented to the imagination more august than that 
 of a mighty nation? And what idea bearing upon 
 national life could be nobler than that all the children 
 belonging to a nation ought to be instructed ? Apply- 
 ing Mr. Arnold's test, then, to these lines inquiring 
 whether they exemplify a noble and profound appli- 
 cation of ideas to life we are shut up to the con- 
 clusion that they are excellent poetry. To our sur- 
 prise, however, on turning to him for that confirma- 
 tion of our decision which we have a right to expect, 
 we are greeted with this estimate of the passage : 
 " Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the pro- 
 duction of these un-Voltairian lines must have been 
 imposed upon him as a judgment. One can hear 
 them being quoted at a Social Science Congress ; one 
 can call up the whole scene. A great room in one of 
 our dismal provincial towns ; dusty air and jaded 
 afternoon daylight ; benches full of men with bald 
 heads and women in spectacles ; an orator lifting up 
 his face from a manuscript written within and without 
 to declaim these lines of Wordsworth ; and, in the 
 soul of any poor child of nature who may have 
 wandered in thither, an unutterable sense of lamenta- 
 tion, and mourning, and woe ! " 
 
 In other words, Mr. Arnold thinks Wordsworth's 
 lines exceedingly bad poetry, so bad that only such 
 persons as are worthy of bitter contempt would 
 listen to them. Why the members of the Social 
 
xvi Poetry. 
 
 Science Congress should be selected for anointing 
 from the phials of Mr. Arnold's scorn, it is not easy 
 to see. About the practical operations that precede 
 pleasant results there is apt to be a certain dingi- 
 ness, dreariness. Follow a gardener as he digs 
 about and dungs young apple-trees, a school inspector 
 as he examines stupid classes, a Florence Nightingale 
 as she looks into the details of hospital work, and you 
 will meet with matters as unromantic as the " dusty 
 air and jaded afternoon daylight " in which " men 
 with bald heads and women in spectacles " do their 
 best to broaden the thin margin of white on the page 
 of life, and find some anodyne for human pain. But it 
 is not our present business to inquire into Mr. Mat- 
 thew Arnold's view of the contemptibility of trying 
 to bring scientific precision of thought and know- 
 ledge into the operations of benevolence. What we 
 are concerned with is the discovery that Mr. Arnold's 
 quotation, himself being witness, is very defective 
 poetry, although, to the best of our judgment, it is 
 admirable criticism of life. It happens that I agree 
 with Mr. Arnold that Wordsworth's lines are not of 
 high poetical value ; but I hope to be able to assign a 
 better reason for thinking so than is touched upon by 
 Mr. Arnold's test. 
 
 Let us take another example from Mr. Arnold. 
 The poet is again Wordsworth. 
 
 One adequate support 
 For the calamities of mortal life 
 Exists one only ; an assured belief 
 
Mr. Arnold's Test. xvii 
 
 That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
 Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
 Of infinite benevolence and power ; 
 Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
 All accidents, converting them to good. 
 
 Could any criticism of life be higher in its serious- 
 ness, nobler in its tone, than this ? Those who dis- 
 believe in the existence or providence of God will say 
 that, for them, it is untrue criticism ; but it is difficult 
 to see how any one should deny that, from the poet's 
 standpoint, it is profound criticism. Were we treat- 
 ing of the poet of a vanished civilisation, an extinct 
 religion, we should be constrained to admit that lines 
 into which he condensed the quintessence of that con- 
 solation which all races and tribes of men accepting 
 the religion in question had derived from it were, as 
 criticism of life, both noble and profound. Here, too, 
 however, Mr. Arnold holds that the lines are not good 
 poetry. They fail, he says, to exhibit "the characters 
 of poetic truth." We have a fair smile at Mr. Arnold 
 for his italics, and remind him that he has been teach- 
 ing us that criticism of life, qualified by a few adjec- 
 tives true, serious, profound, noble, each taken in a 
 very high degree is excellent poetry. He was bound 
 to show either that the lines are shallow and ignoble 
 as criticism of life, or that they are not inferior as 
 poetry. I do not think the poetical quality of Mr. 
 Arnold's second quotation so poor as that of his first ; 
 but I do not think it is poetically worth much. 
 And again I think I can assign a reason for this 
 
xviii Poetry. 
 
 estimate more tenable than its worth or worth- 
 lessness as a criticism of life. 
 
 Once more I take a sample from Mr. Arnold. It is 
 now Shakespeare that is the poet, the lines occurring 
 in Henry the Fourth's expostulation with sleep. 
 
 Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
 
 Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
 
 In cradle of the rude, imperious surge ? 
 
 Can it be alleged that, in any practical, tangible, 
 not fantastic sense, these lines contain any criticism 
 of life whatever ? They are an exceedingly imagina- 
 tive a most picturesque and powerful description 
 of the influence of sleep in lulling into unconscious- 
 ness all sense of danger, all capacity of joy or pain ; 
 but as a criticism of life they can scarcely be weighed 
 or measured, and no one could aver that, in serious- 
 ness or profoundity of meaning, they excel a grave 
 summing-up of the consolation mankind has derived 
 from the consciousness of God. Yet Mr. Arnold tells 
 us that these lines are unsurpassably fine poetry. I 
 agree with him for reasons that will presently appear; 
 but in the meantime I reiterate the question, "What 
 profit can be had of a test of poetic quality that fails 
 so egregiously? Mr. Arnold's criterion is like the 
 Bank Act made to be suspended exactly in those 
 emergencies which it was intended to provide against. 
 We should want Mr. Arnold always at our elbow to 
 apply, or rectify, or suspend his own test. His 
 intuitive perception of what is excellent in poetry, 
 and what is not excellent, may be so trustworthy that 
 
Definition of Poetry. xix 
 
 it enables him to dispense with his own formula; but 
 less gifted or cultured persons are driven to inquire 
 whether it cannot be replaced by a better. 
 
 Mr. Arnold goes astray at the outset in seeking a 
 definition of poetry by reference to the judging 
 faculty. Criticism of life is not primarily or dis- 
 tinctively the function of the poet. If it were, man- 
 kind would have been wrong in placing Aristotle, 
 Plato, Epicurus in one category, and Homer, Sopho- 
 cles, Pindar in another. There is no criticism of life 
 better than that of Bacon's Essays, yet these are not 
 poetry at all. Professor Huxley was right, on the 
 other hand, when, one day lately at Birmingham, he 
 claimed for science a place of importance in the 
 criticism of life. Doubtless and the remark is of 
 moment criticism of life is involved in poetry, but 
 it is not distinctive of poetry, it belongs to prose as 
 well as to poetry. 
 
 The fundamental idea on which a sound and a prac- 
 tically useful definition of poetry may be based will be 
 found indicated by Wordsworth himself. In the 
 beginning of his sonnet to the painter, Haydon, are 
 these words : 
 
 High is our calling, Friend ! Creative Art 
 (Whether the instrument of words she use, 
 Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues). 
 
 Poetry is that branch of creative art which works 
 in and with harmonious words. The essential cha- 
 racteristic of all art is that it makes something ; 
 the arts distinctively called useful serving the body, 
 
 c 
 
xx Poetry. 
 
 the arts distinctively called fine serving the soul. 
 Science looks upon the universe and asks what is 
 the relation between its parts, what are its pro- 
 cesses of change, what is going on beneath its sur- 
 face. Art looks out upon nature and upon man, 
 rejoicing in the vision ; essays to imitate, to re- 
 present it ; and, from its materials, visions forth a 
 world of- man's own, the world of music, sculpture, 
 painting, poetry. A simple and adequate principle 
 of classification and distinction between these is 
 obtained by reference to the materials with which 
 they work. Poetry is the most spiritual and the 
 liighest of the arts ; by the more than magical spell 
 of words, she makes all other arts her vassals. ~ 
 
 Aristotle traces poetry to imitation ; Bacon, in 
 dealing with the same subject, lays stress upon ima- 
 gination. There is beyond question, as Professor 
 Masson has pointed out, a certain antithetic opposi- 
 tion in their ways of viewing the matter ; but there is, 
 I submit, a still deeper agreement. Aristotle himself 
 affords the hint on which a reconciliation between 
 their views can be effected. The poet, he says, may 
 imitate in one of three ways showing men better than 
 they are, worse than they are, or as they are. The 
 first of these Homer's way he describes as pro- 
 ducing the noblest poetry ; and this is obviously what 
 Bacon would have called the imaginative, the improv- 
 ing, the idealising poetry. 
 
 I discussed this matter very carefully a good many 
 years ago, and I may be permitted to quote from my- 
 
Imitation. xxi 
 
 self some sentences relating to the importance of the 
 instinct of imitation, as giving the initiative in art. " It 
 was characteristic of the unimpassioned and comprehen- 
 sive observation, the strong sense, and the masculine 
 simplicity of Aristotle, to make this instinct his start- 
 ing-point in his theory of poetry. In so doing, he 
 virtually recorded the suffrages of the great mass of 
 mankind. I once had an opportunity of observing 
 the play of the great human instinct of imitation in a 
 fresh and interesting manner. I was in conversation 
 with a mechanic, on board a steamer, in one of the 
 most magnificent estuaries of our island. My com- 
 panion was a rough-hewn, sturdy, hard-working man, 
 thoroughly read, as very many of our mechanics are, 
 in the political history of the day, but who had pro- 
 bably reflected little, or not at all, on theories of art. 
 The time was summer, and the general tone of the 
 landscape was that of still grandeur and majestic 
 calm. The atmosphere, though cloudless, was suf- 
 fused with faint vapour, and bathed the prospect in a 
 pale brilliancy of light. From right and left the 
 mountains stooped undulating to the bay, the tint of 
 their green, softened by the pearly veil of air, melting 
 into the amethystine floor of sea. One or two yachts, 
 slim and graceful, cleft tenderly the glistening ripples, 
 amid the general serenity of radiance, like maidens 
 stepping delicately in the dance to the mild music ' of 
 the breeze. The combination of splendour with a 
 certain faintness and pallor in the aspect of the scene 
 as if nature, oppressed with light, had grown 
 
 c 2 
 
xxii Poetry. 
 
 languid in this hour of Pan was somewhat remark- 
 able. My admiration was awakened, and I called the 
 attention of my fellow-passenger to the beauty of the 
 prospect. He expressed sympathy with my feelings, 
 but passed instantly to another emotion, which was 
 called forth more vividly in his own breast. He spoke 
 of the keen desire, instantly experienced by the be- 
 holder, to copy such a picture. The pleasure he had 
 in possession, arising from his sensibility to the beauty 
 of the scene before him, was evidently slight in his 
 estimation, compared with that pleasure at which he 
 conceptively grasped in reproducing it for himself." 
 
 The artist is, first of all, the man who, awakening 
 to the world of nature in his youth, is stirred by 
 irrepressible longing to take some copy of it, to repro- 
 duce its sights or its sounds, to express the feelings 
 and thoughts it calls forth within him, to fashion f 
 produce, create from its materials a something, be it a, 
 statue, be it a landscape, be it an epic poem, be it a. 
 lyric song, which he can call his own, a something on 
 which his spirit shall look with unique and ravishing- 
 gladness, as a man looks upon his first-born son. It 
 is this impulse that makes the future Mrs. Browning" 
 flood her father's parsonage with her singing before 
 she is eight years old. It is this impulse that sends 
 the idle boy from the noisy crowd of his playfellows 
 up into the still pavilion of a leafy tree, where, 
 literally like a bird among the boughs, he may pour 
 forth reams of puerile verse. It is this impulse 
 which sets the keen-eyed, nimble-fingered child, 
 
The Criterion. xxiii 
 
 William Turner, to scratch copies of everything he 
 sees, if only with a pin on a pewter plate, and which, 
 when power has yielded to age, and the eye is becom- 
 ing filmed, makes him still insist on having, by the 
 bed on which he lies dying, the pigments and the 
 pencils that remind him of the glorious sovereignty 
 of his art. 
 
 In seeking, therefore, a practically useful criterion 
 of greatness, of excellence, of degree of merit in 
 poetry, we are not to ask, in the first place, how the 
 poet in question criticises life, but how much of nature 
 and life he reproduces, and whether he reproduces 
 greatly or not greatly; only in the second place, as 
 having a highly important bearing on the general 
 character and quality of his poetry, are we to inquire 
 into his criticism of life. 
 
 This criterion has the advantage of exceeding prac- 
 ticality. It is derived from a broad view, first of all 
 art and then of poetry. Any one can apply it. 
 Glance, for example, at those whom the world has 
 decided to enthrone as the greatest of poets. Homer 
 embodies in the Iliad a whole form of civilisation, 
 a long since vanished type of manners, usages, beliefs, 
 feelings, relations. From Olympus, where the upper 
 ten, or rather the upper twelve, of heaven sit on 
 their golden three-legged stools, and Zeus keeps the 
 universe with ease, and his wife with difficulty, at 
 bay, and the celestial meal is enlivened by inex- 
 tinguishable laughter at the limping Hephaistos, to 
 the shore where the black ships of the Achaians are 
 
xxiv Poetry. 
 
 drawn up, and dogs and vultures are feeding on the 
 pestilential corpses that taint the carnp, and the king 
 of men and the prince of heroes are engaging in a, 
 fierce brawl about a stolen girl, and Ther sites is 
 railing, and Nestor is praising the past, and Chryses- 
 is harping on his daughter, all that stirring world 
 is vividly present to us. It is ideal, visionary, painted 
 on the mind's retina by the miracle-working power of 
 Homer's imagination ; and yet the personages in the 
 scene are intensely real, the human character, whether 
 seen under Olympian conditions or those of mortality, 
 is utterly true to the human character of to-day. 
 
 Dante is another of the poets whose work is uni- 
 versally acknowledged to be of sovereign excellence. 
 His great poem represents a succession of regions 
 peopled with human creatures, displaying an immense 
 variety of character and passion. The mediaeval age 
 is almost as comprehensively, almost as graphically, 
 portrayed in the Divine Comedy as the heroic age of 
 Greece is portrayed in the Iliad. Once more, Shake- 
 speare brings to the actual world of his time a more 
 subtle and penetrating observation, a more compre- 
 hensive sympathy, a mightier imagination than either 
 Homer or Dante, and the world of his art embraces 
 a still larger number of typical characters, a still 
 wider vision of human affairs and human life than 
 theirs. 
 
 It is interesting, and can hardly be uninstructive, to 
 observe that Keats, himself a fine poet and critic, 
 instinctively contemplates the work of poets from the 
 
How to Apply the Test. xxv 
 
 point of view I have been suggesting. Excellent 
 poems are, for him, " goodly states and kingdoms," 
 "islands," " which bards in fealty to Apollo hold." 
 He had heard of the spacious realm that owned the 
 sway of Homer ; but he had not really known it till 
 Chapman revealed it to him. Was it then a new 
 " criticism of life," or a new world bodied forth to the 
 eye of imagination, that he was aware of? 
 
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, 
 When a new planet swims into his ken. 
 
 In applying our test, it will be conducive to intelli- 
 gence and perspicuity to distinguish the two elements- 
 which it embraces, to wit, what the poet takes from 
 nature, and what the poet gives to nature. The spirit 
 of man creates nothing out of nothing, and it will be 
 found that the quality and value of what a poet pro- 
 duces depend upon the power with which he can ob- 
 serve, and upon the richness of the materials which are 
 used by his imagination in its constructions. In the 
 actual exercise of the poetic gift, the two processes 
 observation, imagination may go together in the 
 same moment of time, and the exact relation between 
 the two, in any case of high and original production, 
 is too subtle for analysis; but both are necessarily 
 present, and very useful suggestions as to the order of 
 greatness in which poets are to be classified may be 
 derived from simply considering what they chiefly 
 observe, what supremely interests and delights them. 
 
 Poets of one class observe the beauties of nature 
 with exquisite accuracy, but have, comparatively 
 
xx vi Poetry. 
 
 speaking, no hold upon the interests, passions, 
 thoughts, activities of men. These poets love colour 
 for its own sake, form for its own sake, and are 
 consummate in execution. With the warring, the 
 working, the passionate loving, of the dusty throng 
 around them, they have little sympathy ; from hu- 
 manity they ask only such lovely tints and hues as 
 may afford play to their artistic skill. Their highest 
 name, perhaps, is Keats. In delicate felicity of execu- 
 tion his work will challenge comparison with any the 
 world ever saw. Shakespeare himself cannot excel 
 him in his own walk. But he cares little for common 
 interests, common feelings, common life. A hundred 
 generations of fighting men have thrilled to the harp, 
 or to echoes from the harp, of Homer. The grey- 
 haired farmer, as he harnesses his old mare, thinks of 
 the genial notes of Burns. The furnaceman, as he 
 groans and sweats, is happier because Schiller sang 
 the song of the bell. But what ploughman or black- 
 smith ever heard the name of Keats ? what carpenter, 
 as he plied adze or hammer, what fisherman, as he 
 furled his sail, ever murmured a ditty of the London 
 School? They are experts writing for experts. 
 
 But the power of fresh and vivid delineation of 
 beautiful objects in nature is a true mark of poetical 
 genius. If, indeed, we might venture on any one 
 assertion respecting the poets of all climes and 
 periods, it would be that they had a sense of keen 
 enjoyment in the beauties of nature. Homer did 
 not describe particular flowers, or dwell upon the 
 
Nature's Beauty. xxvii 
 
 features of a landscape for their own sake ; but there 
 is a pervasive feeling of the open air in his poetry, 
 and he is constantly referring to the sea, or to 
 starry nights, and knows better than any London or 
 Lake poet the proper office of flowers to heighten, by 
 gush of sympathetic radiance, the impassioned joy of 
 lovers. In modern poetry, however, this gift of 
 graphic presentation of the beauty of nature plays a 
 much more important part than in ancient poetry ; 
 and, though it may be in excess, and may thus offend 
 a masculine taste, its presence must be pronounced 
 indispensable to all poetry that will satisfy the de- 
 mands of modern readers. The more artificial society 
 becomes, the more we are pent up in smoke-darkened 
 cities, the more enchanting, probably, will be those 
 talismanic touches whereby the poet suddenly wafts 
 us into far-away woods, or places us again on the hill- 
 side or the river-brink where we played in childhood. 
 Nature being, to all practical intents, infinite, the 
 secret of freshness in describing her beauties lies in 
 the habit of first-hand observation. If you watch the 
 breakers as they crash on the shore when the scour of 
 the receding wave suddenly takes their feet from under 
 them, if you try to count and name the colours of the 
 stranded foam in full sunlight, while the breeze passes 
 over it, fluttering its myriad emeralds and rubies and 
 amethysts and topazes, if you note the character- 
 istic groupings and humours of the clouds in any 
 one locality, you will find that no poet or painter 
 can exhaust nature's variety. It would not be easy 
 
xxviii Poetry. 
 
 to find a better example of that kind of description 
 by which modern poets bring nature's facts not only 
 to the eye, but to the ear, than we have in Mr. 
 Arnold's admirable poem on Dover Beach. 
 
 Come to the window, sweet is the night air ! 
 
 Only, from the long line of spray 
 
 Where the ebb meets the moon -blanch 'd sand, 
 
 Listen ! you hear the grating roar 
 
 Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling, 
 
 At their return, up the high strand, 
 
 Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 
 
 With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
 
 The eternal note of sadness in. 
 
 We may be sure that no man who has not this eye 
 for nature will obtain recognition and honour among 
 modern poets ; it is more, perhaps, from the deadness 
 of their sense on this side than from any other charac- 
 teristic that Dry den, Pope, Johnson are firmly and 
 unanimously denied the distinctive glory of poets by 
 the present generation. The lilies of the field are in 
 array against them. They have said no tender, heart- 
 felt things, instinct with music, about the birds and 
 the brooks. Not one of those splendidly clever, keenly 
 intellectual men, felt about a daisy like Chaucer or 
 like Burns. I do not believe that any one of them 
 had such delight in the sea, and the stars, and in green 
 meadows, as old Homer. It has become second nature 
 with us to exact from our poets, as an indispensable 
 pledge of tenderness, sweetness, melodiousness, that 
 they shall take us with them to the country. 
 
 Poetry, viewed in relation to the poet, is lan- 
 guage uttered under the influence of that glow of 
 
The Poetic Glow. xxix 
 
 the spirit which renders it picture to the eye and 
 music to the ear. The poetic product may be a little 
 thing or a great thing, a lyric or an epic, a single 
 vase or a town with all its towers ; but now, as in the 
 days of Orpheus and Amphion, it arises before the 
 eye, and it arises to strains of music. The poet re- 
 joices in his work. No word is truer than this : 
 
 What poets feel not, when they make, 
 
 A pleasure in creating, 
 The world, in its turn, will not take 
 
 Pleasure in contemplating. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold gives this as a caution to poets; 
 I respectfully suggest that it may be useful also as a. 
 caution to critics who are tempted to think that poetry 
 can be denned as criticism of life. 
 
 Music is the mother-tongue of joy nature's mode 
 of expressing rapture in sentient beings. Science has- 
 in these last times taught us to compare and connect 
 nature's methods with each other throughout all the 
 families of life ; and we now know to be a fact, what 
 might formerly have passed for a mere flourish of 
 rhetoric, that the nightingale illuminating the night 
 of the spring woods with song is a lyric poet, and 
 that, by fundamentally the same law that sets the 
 nightingale singing, the fountains of exultant power, 
 of joyful sympathy, of delight in nature, of affection 
 for man, overflow in the poet in melodious words. 
 
 The poetic glow is, of course, like all the most 
 important facts, a mystery. To analyse it into its 
 elements, to understand and classify its methods of 
 
xxx Poetry. 
 
 operation, may well be beyond us. What criticism, 
 modestly observant of the workings of genius, can 
 do is to distinguish a few of its more notable 
 characteristics. 
 
 One of these, first perhaps in the order of im- 
 portance and distinctiveness, is its tendency to make 
 the poet view all things as alive. If the reader 
 has not remarked this unique quality of poetic 
 genius, he will be surprised to observe its uni- 
 versality, and the sharpness with which it divides the 
 most accomplished versifier from the poet. It is 
 more or less an accident whether the poet writes in 
 the form of verse or the form of prose, but be sure, if 
 he is a poefc, that he scatters largesse of life abroad 
 upon creation. If he is not a poet, he cannot do this. 
 He may array his figures with exquisite taste, adorn 
 them with jewels, crown them with gold; but they will 
 be wooden figures after all. He may apostrophise 
 flowers and trees : he may speak very finely about the 
 whisperings of Windsor Forest and the tuneful gliding 
 of the Thames ; but he does not Pope, for example, 
 does not in the least believe in his own illusion. Mr. 
 Buskin, on the other hand, though he unfortunately 
 abandoned the metrical forms which he used in boy- 
 .hood with richly promising skill, constantly betrays 
 the essentially poetical character of his mind by giving 
 life to all he loves, to all that intensely interests him. 
 The crossing ripples of the tidal wave advancing on the 
 shore are for him children kissing and clapping hands ; 
 the mountain flowers come forth to his eye, " crowded 
 
Poetic Life. xxxi 
 
 for very love," crushing their leaves into strange shapes 
 " only to be nearer each other; " and the delicate pines 
 "follow each other along the soft hill-ridges up and 
 down." Homer knew perfectly well that the mortality 
 in the Greek camp spoken of in the first book of the 
 Iliad was occasioned by disease arising from the heat 
 of the sun, and that dogs and men, dying of plague, 
 are not struck with arrows. He speaks expressly of 
 disease. And yet, with the glow of poetic vision and 
 creative imagination in heart and brain, he sees, and 
 cannot help seeing, Apollo, the angry sun-god, striding 
 along the mountains, the silver arrows in his quiver 
 clanging behind him as he moves, and taking up his 
 position opposite the Greek camp, and bending his 
 bow. Shelley gives life to winter, making it a colossal 
 giant, with the wind for a whip. 
 
 He had torn the cataracts from the hills, 
 And they clanked at his girdle like manacles. 
 
 Shelley's sensitive plant is as alive as one of Kuskin's 
 pines, and nature becomes beautifully and tenderly 
 alive around her. 
 
 A sensitive plant in a garden grew, 
 The young winds fed her with silver dew, 
 And she opened her fan-like leaves to the light, 
 And closed them beneath the kisses of night. 
 
 He who has not this life-giving power is no poet ; he 
 who possesses it, appearing from the fact of his pos- 
 sessing it to be either inspired or a maniac, as we inter- 
 pret his symptoms, is a poet. If he is a great poet, he 
 gives life to men, he dowers his Achilles or his Hector 
 
xxxii Poetry. 
 
 with an immortality that will be fresh when Cheops 
 and his pyramid are "blown about the desert dust ; " 
 if he is a true but not a great- poet, he cannot, imagi- 
 natively, give life to men, but he fancifully gives life to 
 a thousand inanimate things : in all cases, where there 
 is no life there is no poetry, where there is the life of 
 fancy there is true poetry, where there is the life of 
 imagination there is great poetry. 
 
 If now we glance back at those lines quoted by Mr. 
 Arnold from Wordsworth, and pronounced by him to 
 be inferior poetry, we shall, I think, find grounds for 
 considering them such without reference to their 
 quality as criticism of life. What they want is not 
 critical depth or accuracy in dissertating on life, but 
 life itself. They have the calculating self-possession 
 of prose ; the eye of the writer, as he gravely recites 
 them, is not dilated and inflamed by the ecstasy of 
 poetic vision. England is an " Imperial Eealm." A 
 geographical, political, thoroughly prosaic expression ! 
 Turn to Milton's prose, often grander in its rhythm 
 than his verse, and note how he gives imaginative life 
 to England, whether, as an eagle mewing her mighty 
 youth, or as a veiled mother weeping for her banished 
 children, and learn the difference between genuine 
 poetic work and those lines which Mr. Arnold quotes 
 from Wordsworth. Applying our principle to the 
 three lines quoted from Shakespeare, we find that they 
 are a vivid picture, the mind's eye of the dullest reader 
 being compelled to see the ship-boy on the giddy mast, 
 rocked in the cradle of the surge, while sleep draws 
 
Metrical Form. xxxiii 
 
 near to him. a subtle, mysterious, living thing, to lull 
 him into fatal slumber. This is faultless poetry, 
 though perhaps it shows Shakespeare in his highest 
 fanciful rather than in his strictly imaginative power ; 
 but I do not see how, as a criticism of life, any high 
 value can be attached to the lines. 
 
 It will probably be felt, and justly felt, by practical 
 readers, that criticism is bound to give a more precise 
 account than I have yet attempted of the association 
 between poetry and metrical form. Though poetry 
 may occur in the form of prose, it never occurs with- 
 out cadence, without rhythmic swell and melody, in 
 one word, without tune ; and verse is its legitimate, its 
 consummate form. The poet who writes in prose has 
 never succeeded in " beating his music out." Perfect 
 verse, then, is the most precious and enchanting illus- 
 trative instance that exists, of that law of modulated 
 continuity, of measured progression, of ordered move- 
 ment, of living balance and symmetry, which pervades 
 nature. The expansion and contraction of the lungs 
 in respiration, the beat of the pulse, the rise and fall 
 of rippling waves, the succession of leaves on the 
 branch, the lull and swell in gales, are cases in which 
 the law is observed. The earliest dawn of art, in the 
 strict sense, as distinguished from mere compliance 
 with the demands of animal nature, is in law and 
 order. The savage who covers his water-jug with con- 
 fused scratches, not for any pleasure they give him, but 
 in sheer vacancy of mind, has not made the first step 
 in fine art ; but when he draws a steady line round its 
 
xxxiv Poetry. 
 
 neck, or two lines parallel to each other, or zigzag 
 lines in a definite order, he is on the threshold of art ; 
 and when he puts one broad line in the middle, and 
 two thin lines, one on each side, or remarks that a 
 curved line becomes more interesting from being 
 opposed to a straight line, then he has struck upon 
 that leading principle of all composition, contrast, and 
 is prepared to grapple with the problem that presents 
 itself to artists in every province, the combination of 
 breadth with variety. The earliest efforts in poetry 
 and in music the two probably went together were 
 doubtless of a kind corresponding to those rude yet 
 ordered lines and zigzags which we find on prehistoric 
 pottery, lilts in which the low, sweet monotone was 
 suddenly interrupted by the shrill notes of surprise, 
 delight, or apostrophe. Speech in all races, though 
 custom may have dulled our ears to its apprehension, 
 proceeds with more or less of wave-motion, associated 
 with respiration and the correlated physical conditions ; 
 and when there is strong and noble emotion the wave- 
 measure becomes more marked, the tones more full, 
 melodious, and thrilling. Poetry in its purest form 
 which I agree with Mr. Pater in holding lyrical poetry 
 to be has always been directly associated with music, 
 and the primeval bard was doubtless a singer. In all 
 impassioned feeling there is pitch, modulation, corre- 
 spondence between the feeling and the sound. " In 
 the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's 
 breast." That is one of nature's arrangements. In 
 the spring a deeper, clearer, more melodious rapture 
 
The Song-element. xxxv 
 
 comes into the nightingale's voice. That again is one 
 of nature's facts. In all the spring-tides of human 
 emotion, in the elevation of intense and noble 
 sympathy with all great human interests, the passion 
 of the feeling announces itself both in the colour and 
 the modulation of the speech, picture, as I said 
 before, unfolding itself to music. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Carlyle, in his epoch-making 
 essay on Burns, laid stress upon the test of melody as 
 enabling us to discriminate between prose and poetry, 
 between eloquence and song, he put his finger on one 
 of those truths which ought not to be forgotten or dis- 
 carded ; and Mr. Matthew Arnold, in referring us to 
 true and serious, noble and profound, criticism of life 
 as a criterion of poetical excellence, does not take us 
 beyond the point to which Carlyle conducted us, but 
 back from it. Edgar Poe was very right when he said 
 that a good off-hand way of gauging the poetical 
 quality of verse was to write it in form of prose, and 
 try whether it still forced us to feel that it was poetry. 
 Of lyrical poetry it may, I think, be stated universally 
 that, if the reader does not feel himself under some 
 impulse to sing or chant it if he can recite it with 
 perfect comfort while taking no account of the division 
 into metrical feet or into lines it is not good lyric 
 poetry. You feel the song-element in this of Victor 
 
 Hugo : 
 
 Je suis le Cid calme et sombre, 
 
 Je n'achete ni ne vend, 
 Et je n'ai sur moi que 1'ombre 
 De la main de Dieu vivant. 
 
xxxvi Poetry. 
 
 The attainment of perfect modulation will imply choice 
 of the most picturesque and expressive words, and it is- 
 characteristic of a young poet that such words have a 
 charm for him and are hoarded in his memory. Of 
 such precious stones his poetical architecture will be 
 built. The melody and charm of the verse are 
 heightened also, not only by just and powerful 
 thought and by noble feeling, but by every one of a 
 thousand nameless touches and tones of association, by 
 which the poetical fancy and the poetical imagination, 
 working with all the spells of remembered fact and 
 metaphorical enhancement, can suggest pleasant places 
 and happy hours. All nature is a harp for the poetical 
 imagination, and by an apt metaphor, or assemblage 
 of metaphors, the emotion which the poet expresses is 
 suddenly and transcendently excited. 
 
 The pale moon is setting beyond the white wave, 
 And time is setting wi' me. 
 
 No words can measure the heightening of the impres- 
 sion of sadness wrought by such a tone of nature's 
 music as that. 
 
 The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, 
 
 Had blended with the lights of eve, 
 And she was there, my hope, my joy, 
 My own dear Genevieve. 
 
 Here it is the serene exaltation of intensest joy that 
 is expressed, and again the power of the metaphoric 
 spell is beyond all measuring. A single line will show 
 that a man has the poet's ear for melodious words, 
 
 Sweet closes the evening on Craigie-burn wood. 
 The charm of true poetry is a subtle, complex, and 
 
Wordsivortli. xxxvii 
 
 unique charm, having many elements ; but it depends 
 mainly on this, that it combines the intense delight- 
 fulness of law with the intense delightfulness of free- 
 dom. Law is charming, even in zigzag lines ; how 
 much more, then, in the wave-like, star-like movement 
 of perfect verse : freedom is charming, even in the frolic 
 wind or flying cloud ; how much more in the bounding 
 ecstasy of lyric song. 
 
 Mr. Arnold, illustrating his principles of poetical 
 criticism by an example of their application, under- 
 takes to prove Wordsworth superior to any poet 
 that appeared in Europe between the death of 
 Milton and the rise of poets still living, with the 
 single exception of Goethe. Victor Hugo he specifi- 
 cally includes among the poets to whom Wordsworth 
 is superior. To this decision I by no means assent ; 
 and we cannot have better practice in the use of 
 those tests which we have been endeavouring to frame 
 than in examining this claim on behalf of Words- 
 worth put forward by his adroit and gifted advocate. 
 
 Mr. Arnold dwells upon " the extraordinary power 
 with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in 
 nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary 
 affections and duties," and " the extraordinary power 
 with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, 
 and renders it so as to make us share it." This is " the 
 cause " of the " greatness " of Wordsworth's poetry. 
 "Here," says Mr. Arnold, " is an immense advantage 
 for a poet." 
 
 Without question he is a great poet who shows 
 
 d 2 
 
xxxviii Poetry. 
 
 the joy of simple affections and duties with ex- 
 traordinary power, and makes his readers share it ; 
 "but I dispute the extraordinary power of the Words- 
 ivorthian display of simple joy, and I still more 
 -strongly dispute the Wordsworthian capacity to 
 make us share that joy. Wordsworth has a com- 
 prehensive and honest sense of the pleasantness of 
 nature, and can reproduce with accuracy many of 
 nature's sights and sounds. No one knows or shows 
 the pleasure of a fine day better than Wordsworth. 
 But that exultation which great poets have in human 
 joy, and which certainly is a note of great poetry, is 
 slightly shared by Wordsworth. I do not deny that 
 there are traces of it in his works', but they are few, 
 and there is little depth or vehemence in their joy. 
 The power of music to enrapture a street crowd, the 
 power of reverie to make a country girl in London 
 see a river flowing down the vale of Cheapside, the 
 power of cocks crowing, streams flowing, small 
 birds twittering, cattle feeding, to make a poet, 
 who has nothing to do but to watch them, happy 
 these, with some glad stanzas about the ethereal min- 
 strelsy of the lark, almost exhaust the joy-producing 
 strains which Mr. Arnold puts into the volume in 
 which he embodies Wordsworth's main achievement 
 in poetry. On the other hand, how profoundly de- 
 pressing are Wordsworth's poems generally ! Mr. Ar- 
 nold speaks of simple joys, but the pieces he applauds 
 have no gleam of joy in them. Michael, The Brothers, 
 Ruth, Lucy, Margaret, and I know not how many 
 
Wordsworth's Sadness. xxxix: 
 
 others, are unutterably mournful. To step into the 
 poetic realms of Goethe or Schiller is to step into a. 
 land of abounding life and splendour and, joy ; but to 
 walk with Wordsworth is to be sad. What poet has 
 said such mournful things? For what poet are " all 
 the ways of men so vain and melancholy ' ' ? Hera 
 is his own account : 
 
 We poets in our youth begin in gladness ; 
 
 But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness. 
 
 He writes with pretty fancying, almost mirthful,, 
 about the small celandine ; but once he takes another 
 tone, and it seems to come from a far deeper region 
 in his soul. He had often noticed the flower muffling 
 itself up when hailstones were falling, and coming out 
 again bright as the sun itself when the storm was- 
 over. Once, however, he observed a change, and thus 
 describes what he saw and what he thought : 
 
 But lately, one rough day, this flower I passed, 
 And recognised it, though an altered form, 
 
 Now standing forth an offering to the blast, 
 And buffeted at will by rain and storm. 
 
 I stopped, and said, with inly-muttered voice, 
 " It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold ; 
 
 This neither is its courage nor its choice, 
 But its necessity in being old." 
 
 The weariness with which man toils along in his 
 pilgrimage, the dumb forces of nature always like 
 invisible enemies bearing him back the hopelessness 
 of the conflict with old age the heart-heaviness and 
 desolation that overtake the honest Michaels and 
 Margarets, in spite of their industry and worth 
 
xl Poetry. 
 
 these are the impressions that remain with one after 
 reading Wordsworth's poems. Of the sunlight of 
 exultation with which poets of more humour, of more 
 jocund and mirthful power, disperse or illumine the 
 mists that shroud the world, there is in Wordsworth 
 singularly little. He does, indeed, rest upon the con- 
 solations of religion. With placid faith, that seems 
 never seriously moved by the sorrows he poetically 
 describes, he trusts that the impotence of human 
 grieving will some day be supplemented by Infinite 
 Power, and that God will mend all. This is a very 
 great consolation, and in placing it, as he does, in 
 many impressive lights, Wordsworth is, perhaps, at 
 Ms best ; but this is exactly that part of Words- 
 worth's "criticism of life" which Mr. Arnold thinks 
 commonplace and homiletical. 
 
 Looking more particularly into Wordsworth's poet- 
 ical workmanship, I submit that he adds less to 
 nature, exercises less of imaginative power, than 
 belongs to great poetry. Mr. Arnold takes a bold 
 course in dealing with this part of his subject, alleging 
 that what I must regard as a fatal defect is a tran- 
 scendent merit. " Nature herself seems " these are 
 his emphatic and eloquent words "I say, to take the 
 pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her 
 own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from 
 two causes from the profound sincereness with which 
 Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the pro- 
 foundly sincere and natural character of his subject 
 itself. He can and will treat such a subject with 
 
Wordsworth's Poetic Method. xli 
 
 nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere 
 naturalness. His expression may often be called bald 
 as, for instance, in the poem of 'Resolution and In- 
 dependence but it is bald as the bare mountain tops 
 are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur." 
 
 Is it imagination too mighty to endure any but the 
 naked majesty of nature, or is it sheer lack of 
 imaginative power, that characterises Wordsworth's 
 poetic method? That is the question. Mr. Arnold 
 tells us that even he cannot read Vaudracour and 
 Julia. I beg to ask why. The language of the piece 
 is quite on a level with Wordsworth's usual writing 
 
 nay, unusually felicitous. 
 
 Oh, balmy time, 
 
 In which a love -knot on a lady's brow 
 Is fairer than the fairest star in heaven 1 
 
 The following lines, on Vaudracour's love for Julia, 
 are about as good as you will find anywhere in Words- 
 worth. 
 
 Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring, 
 
 Life turned the meanest of her implements, 
 
 Before his eyes, to price above all gold ; 
 
 The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine : 
 
 Her chamber window did surpass in glory 
 
 The portals of the dawn ; all paradise 
 
 Could, by the simple opening of a door, 
 
 Let itself in upon him. 
 
 If Wordsworth had often expressed the joy of 
 noble passion with such power, I should not have 
 denied him a place among those poets whose music 
 gladdens the world for us. Nevertheless, Vaudracour 
 and Julia is, as a whole, unreadable even by so 
 
xlii Poetry. 
 
 fervent a Wordsworthian as Mr. Arnold, and I ask 
 the reason why. The secret, I am convinced, lies- 
 in this that it is literal fact no more. The passion 
 of Vaudracour for Julia, simple, intense, generous 
 self-forgetting; the locust pride of his family, eating 
 off every green leaf of hope, every opening bud of 
 joy, in his bosom and hers ; the dismal end in Julia's 
 being immured in a convent, and Vaudracour's be- 
 coming a drivelling idiot all this is detailed with the 
 literal precision of a transcript from nature. There- 
 fore it is oppressive in the sense in which a descrip- 
 tion of any hideous calamity, any social horror, drawn 
 out in mere statistical prose, is oppressive a news- 
 paper account, for example, of a woman found by the 
 police sitting, starved to death, by a fireless grate in 
 winter ; a father taking his boy from the house in 
 which he is being cared for, and hanging him up like 
 a dog ; a steamer run into on the river, and six hun- 
 dred persons screeching and drowning in the water. 
 Told in the dreariest prose, these things affect us, but 
 not as art affects us. There is nothing in the bare 
 
 'narrative of them to impart that redeeming spell 
 whereby imaginative handling lends fascination to 
 i sorrow, and attracts us again, again, and yet again, to 
 contemplate the woes of Juliet and Romeo, of Othello 
 and Desdemona, of Lear and Cordelia, of the chained 
 and vulture-torn Prometheus. 
 
 Now you will find, if you look, that Wordsworth's 
 method in Vaudracour and Julia is his habitual 
 method an unimaginative method. Mr. Arnold 
 
Wordsworth's Imagination. xliii 
 
 admits that a very large proportion of Wordsworth's 
 work is unimaginative. He throws overboard even so 
 Wordsworthian and so extensive a performance as 
 The Excursion, But he avers that Wordsworth's- 
 imagination, when it does awake, is extremely power- 
 ful. "No poet, perhaps," he says, "is so evidently 
 filled with a new and sacred energy when the inspira- 
 tion is upon him." I am not prepared to deny that 
 the author of The Affliction of Margaret, Laodamia, . 
 several of the odes, a good many of the sonnets, and 
 some other pieces, was possessed of imagination ; but 
 what has most deeply impressed me in connection 
 with Wordsworth's imagination is the rarity of its ' 
 awakenings, and the slow and grave character of its. \ 
 action even when awake. No piece of writing i 
 could be more intensely true than The Affliction 
 of Margaret ; Wordsworth, in that poem, gets into 
 the inmost recesses of a bereaved mother's heart, and 
 only imagination could have brought him there. The 
 fire of imagination burns his own theory of imaginative 
 expression to ashes ; and he makes the woman speak 
 to her son in language elevated by passion until it has- 
 more of Shakespearean exaltation than of Words- 
 worthian simplicity. 
 
 Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan, 
 Maimed, mangled by inhuman men ; 
 
 Or thou upon a desert thrown 
 Inheritest the lion's den ; 
 
 Or hast been summoned to the deep, 
 
 Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep 
 
 An incommunicable sleep. 
 
xliv Poetry. 
 
 Deeply characteristic of Wordsworth is the utter 
 sadness of the poem as if his main conception of 
 man's lot were that of painful, hopeless, life-long 
 breathing with a gravestone on the breast. Here, as 
 so often with Wordsworth, there is no help ; strange 
 to say, in this his mood of deadly earnestness, he per- 
 mits to his sufferer no glimpse of light from those 
 celestial countries, from that Father's home, to which 
 lie so often, and with faith so placid, refers. 
 
 I look for ghosts ; but none will force 
 Their way to me : 'tis falsely said 
 
 That there was ever intercourse 
 Between the living and the dead ; 
 
 For, surely, then I should have sight 
 
 Of him I wait for day and night, 
 
 With love and longings infinite. 
 
 But to give intensely imaginative expression to a 
 single emotion cannot be pronounced one of the higher 
 efforts of poetical genius ; and though we admit that 
 Wordsworth has given unsurpassed expression to the 
 sorrow arising in connection with the simple primary 
 affections, we have still to ask for proof that he 
 deserves a lofty seat among those poetic sons of the 
 morning who excel in the far higher office of quicken- 
 ing life and increasing joy. 
 
 Estimate as you please, however, the occasional 
 imaginative success of Wordsworth, I contend that, 
 as a general rule, his imagination fails expressly at 
 those points where its interposition is required, and 
 that the failure in Vaudracour and Julia, on which 
 Mr. Arnold himself lays emphasis, is but a striking 
 
Wordsworth's Literalism. xlv 
 
 instance of what occurs in a great variety of cases. 
 Take Peter Bell, take The Waggoner, nay, take Michael 
 and Resolution and Independence, not to mention scores 
 of minor poems, I maintain that, in each and all of 
 these, imagination fails to give the right, vital unity of 
 art. An artist does not produce a picture by merely 
 beginning at one line on his right and working round 
 to another line on his left. That is a mere strip of 
 country transferred to canvas. The true artist puts 
 an eye, a soul, into his landscape, whether castellated 
 crag, or towered city, or sail on the far horizon ; and 
 all his picture centres in that. Wordsworth treats his 
 subject topographically. Some incident or series of 
 incidents has come within the field of his experience, 
 and he chronicles the details, beginning -at the begin- 
 ning and going on to the end. Peter Bell comes to the 
 river-brink, observes the donkey, notes how its long 
 ear rolls round on the pivot of its skull, discovers the 
 corpse in the water, mounts the ass, rides to the hut of 
 the drowned man, and so forth ; the waggoner drives 
 his team in the stormy night, has one or two mildly 
 interesting adventures, takes a little too much at the 
 public-house, is dismissed by his master, &c., &c. 
 Michael is an industrious, upright peasant ; his only 
 son, who has always been dutiful, goes to the great 
 town and becomes bad; and his father thinks of him 
 with inexpressible sadness as he tries in vain to take 
 interest in the simple industries they used to transact 
 together. The poet sees the leech-gatherer at his work 
 and asks him to tell his story ; the leech-gatherer 
 
xlvi Poetry. 
 
 complies, but the poet has gone off in melancholy 
 musings about "mighty poets in their misery dead," 
 and asks the leech-gatherer to go over it all again, 
 which the good soul does ; and the poet then tells it 
 to the reader ; and it turns out to be no great story 
 after all, though illustrating the resolution and inde- 
 pendence of leech-gathering peasants. This, I say, is 
 Wordsworth's manner, and it is not the manner of 
 great imaginative poets. 
 
 These poems, however, show Wordsworth at his 
 best, or nearly at his best; but it is fair that we 
 should take him also, if in one sample only, at his 
 worst. In Ellen Irwin, or the Braes of Kirtle, he dis- 
 plays a degree of imaginative torpor distinctly beyond 
 that which appals Mr. Arnold in Vaudracour and 
 Julia. He had a fine subject to deal with, and the 
 old minstrel who treated it before him had shown him 
 how it could be imaginatively treated. Love, death, 
 woman sacrificing herself to save her lover, and the 
 fiery vengeance of the lover overtaking the man to 
 whom her death was due such was the subject. If 
 that does not awaken imagination, what will? It 
 awakened the imagination of the old minstrel so effec- 
 tually that it is almost impossible not to feel that 
 he must himself have been a chief actor in this truly 
 dramatic lyric. 
 
 O that I were where Helen lies, 
 
 Night and day on me she cries, 
 
 that I were where Helen lies, 
 
 On fair Kirkconnell Lee ! 
 
Ellen Irwin. xlvii 
 
 Is that not the very wail of love in agony ? And then 
 the vengeance 
 
 I hacked him in pieces sma'. 
 
 You see that he could have torn the slayer of his 
 love with his teeth like a tiger. That is imaginative 
 work. 
 
 Read now the' unparalleled production in which 
 Wordsworth, as I have no doubt, believed himself to 
 have improved upon the rugged work of the old 
 " maker," and shown him how it ought to have been 
 done. With exemplary, gin-horse industry, he begins, 
 more suo, at the beginning, and plods on to the end, 
 in tiresome, soporific detail. The name of the one 
 lover was Bruce, the name of the other was Gordon ; 
 the one did this, the other did that, &c., &c. So mor- 
 tally unimaginative is the work, that it becomes untrue 
 even as a transcript of possible fact. One of the 
 lovers I forget whether it was Bruce or Gordon, and 
 don't care " launched a deadly javelin " at the breast 
 of the other ; whereupon 
 
 Fair Ellen saw it when it oame, 
 And stepping forth to meet the same, 
 Did with her body cover 
 The youth, her chosen lover. 
 
 Consider that. The writer has evidently no vision 
 of what occurred, and writes what, even in prose, 
 would be untrue. Had Ellen " stepped forth to meet 
 the same," the javelin must have reached its goal in 
 her lover's heart before she had completed her arrange- 
 ments. Even a schoolboy, or the bellman, would have 
 
xlviii Poetry, 
 
 said " springing upward like a flame," or something 
 like that. Hear Wordsworth on the passion of 
 the lovers. 
 
 For it may be proclaimed with truth, 
 
 If Brace hath loved sincerely, 
 
 That Gordon loves as dearly." 
 
 " It may be proclaimed with truth," Wordsworth, 
 his mark ! Such phrases, even in prose, denote spraw- 
 ling, nerveless, unimaginative composition. They in- 
 dicate in Wordsworth an occasional union of lethargic 
 cerebration with perpetual self-consciousness not ex- 
 hibited, I think, by any other poet who has got a 
 place, as Wordsworth has after all rightfully done, 
 among the true poets of the world. Mr. Arnold 
 speaks of the "new and sacred energy" of Words- 
 worth's inspired moments. But how frequently is 
 this sacred energy absent exactly at the moment when 
 it is wanted ! That single word " machine," applied, 
 in the very climax of the poem, to his "perfect woman 
 nobly planned," is a touch of the dead hand that 
 almost makes us think of a woman at Madame 
 Tussaud's. 
 
 So much for Wordsworth's habitual method of 
 treating his subjects. A few words must be said on 
 the nature of those subjects. His practice is to write 
 poems on the simplest incidents of everyday expe- 
 rience. He teases his little boy of five years to tell 
 him whether he likes best to be " on Kilve's smooth 
 shore by the green sea, or here at Liswyn farm." 
 The child says carelessly that he would rather be at 
 
Wordsworth's Commonplace. xlix 
 
 Kilve than where he is, but does not know why. 
 Five times does the father press the boy to " tell him 
 why." At last the little fellow, happening to glance 
 up at the vane on the house-top, and hoping to silence 
 the old fidget, says that there was no weathercock at 
 Kilve and that was " the reason why." On this 
 incident we have fifteen stanzas, the fifteenth being as 
 follows : 
 
 dearest, dearest Boy ! my heart 
 For better lore would seldom yearn, 
 
 Could I but teach the hundredth part 
 Of what from thee I learn. 
 
 I suppose a true Wordsworthian would find no end 
 of lessons in all this ; to the practical mind it seems 
 to illustrate no truth more profound than that, if you 
 tease a child with twaddle, he will say anything that 
 comes uppermost to stay the infliction. The poet sees 
 old Simon Lee at work on the root of an old tree, and 
 helps him to get over a difficulty. The man thanks 
 him. The incident suggests nearly a hundred lines, 
 the whole history of Simon being sketched, and the 
 sorrow of bleak age shown stealing, as is usual with 
 melancholy Wordsworth, over the brightness of youth 
 and the power of manhood. It is an eminently 
 characteristic and quietly beautiful piece, the last two 
 of its double stanzas being these : 
 
 " You're overtasked, good Simon Lee, 
 
 Give me your tool," to him I said ; 
 And at the word right gladly he 
 Eeceived my proffered aid. 
 
Poetry. 
 
 I struck, and with a single blow 
 
 The tangled root I severed, 
 At which the poor old man so long 
 
 And vainly had endeavoured. 
 
 The tears into his eyes were brought, 
 
 And thanks and praises seemed to run 
 So fast out of his heart, I thought 
 
 They never would have done. 
 I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 
 With coldness still returning ; 
 Alas ! the gratitude of men 
 
 Hath oftener left me mourning. 
 
 Such, incidents occur to every one. The village 
 pastor could fill volumes with them. Wordsworth 
 dwells longer upon them than other people, and his 
 persistent practice of poetical composition and undis- 
 puted genius enabled him to detail them with a more 
 felicitous simplicity than commonplace people could 
 attain ; but he rarely gives them a diamond point of 
 thought, or fuses them in the fire of his imaginative 
 glance. His reflections are those which occur natur- 
 ally to every humane man. It can hardly be doubted 
 that he carried too far the principle of trusting for his 
 subjects to the trivialities of everyday experience. 
 The routine pacing of the sunbeam in serene weather 
 along the dial-plate will not ordinarily yield signs and 
 wonders, either of religion or of poetry. 
 
 A large proportion of Wordsworth's existence was 
 passed in what may be described as a state of refined 
 spiritual dreaminess, bordering on lethargy. A friend 
 rebukes him for sitting on a grey stone and musing 
 half a day. He writes a poem by way of answer, and 
 
Wordsworth's Half-truths. li 
 
 urges that " we can feed this mind of ours in a wise 
 passiveness." But the passive mood was with him 
 too frequent, and the thoughts that loomed on him 
 through the haze, as he " dreamed his time away," 1 
 were apt to he only half true. 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 If so, the sages teach precious little. He made 
 more of the teaching of nature than was fit ; man 
 learns from man. 
 
 Books ! 'tis a dull and endless strife ; 
 
 Come, hear the woodland linnet, 
 How sweet his music ! on my life 
 
 There's more of wisdom in it. 
 
 No, there is not. Milton had a very different notion 
 of books. Wordsworth's highest excellence, as well 
 as his deepest defects, have connection with this 
 passive habit of mind. In his musing moods he occa- 
 sionally strikes chords that vibrate to no hand so finely 
 as to his. 
 
 If thou be one whose heart the holy forms 
 
 Of young imagination have kept pure, 
 
 Stranger ! henceforth be warned ; and know that pride, 
 
 Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, 
 
 Is littleness ; that he who feels contempt 
 
 For any living thing, hath faculties 
 
 Which he has never used ; that thought with him 
 
 Is in its infancy. The man whose eye 
 
 Is ever on himself doth look on one, 
 
 The least of Nature's works, one who might move 
 
 The wise man to that scorn which Wisdom holds 
 
 Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou ! 
 
 e 
 
Hi Poetry. 
 
 Instructed that true knowledge leads to love, 
 True dignity abides with him alone 
 Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
 Can still suspect, and still revere himself, 
 In lowliness of heart. 
 
 Even in these noble lines there is a trace of un- 
 Teality. It is not true that we ought to feel con- 
 tempt for no living thing. Wordsworth himself else- 
 where expresses a just and manly contempt for the 
 sordid worldling who had given away his heart. The 
 following is better, shows Wordsworth, in fact, to 
 
 my thinking, at his best : 
 
 There lives 
 A Judge 
 
 In whose all-seeing eye a noble aim 
 
 Faithfully kept is as a noble deed 
 
 In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed. 
 
 Nothing in religious poetry could be more majestically 
 noble than that. I do not remember meeting the 
 same thought in any other author. It is one of those 
 thoughts which, when memorably expressed, form the 
 best boon a poet bestows upon his race, and are in 
 very truth words of God to stay the soul in trouble. 
 But this, as I said before, is what Mr. Arnold thinks 
 the weak vein in the poet ; and he does not include 
 the sonnet in which these lines occur amongst his 
 selections. I entirely agree with Mr. Arnold that 
 Wordsworth was a true and even a great poet ; funda- 
 mentally healthy and wise ; with a passion for nature 
 that made him a force among his countr} 7 men : but 
 I differ with him sharply when he lifts Wordsworth 
 
Burns. liii 
 
 above the head of Hugo and of Schiller, and of all 
 those poets that appeared in Britain between the 
 death of Milton and the birth of Queen Victoria. 
 Of two of these last I shall more particularly, though 
 briefly, speak ; and first of Robert Burns. 
 
 No man presents poetical genius or inspiration as a 
 glow more peremptorily than Burns. Imagination is 
 his natural mood, his intellect works by vision, his 
 soul is an eye. And the peculiar poetic mania of 
 seeing all things alive was eminently his. This is the 
 greatest imaginative gift, and distinguishes the maker ; 
 but the gift of penetrating sympathy, whereby the poet 
 gets into the heart of everything that lives, or that he 
 dowers with life, belonged also in the rarest perfection 
 to Burns. Compared with his, the poetical genius of 
 Wordsworth is lax, is slow. 
 
 Take a piece which, though characteristic of Burns, 
 is unmistakably one of his minor efforts, The Two, 
 Dogs. He had noticed his own sheep-dog, or " collie," 
 gambolling with a gentleman's Newfoundland, and it 
 occurred to him that a conversation between the two 
 might furnish the " something serious " which, his pub- 
 lisher told him, would be a desirable feature in his first 
 volume. He sees the dogs in manner as they lived, 
 and he makes us see them. The "locked, letter'd 
 braw brass collar " of the one, the glossy black coat, 
 white breast, curling tail, and honest face of the other, 
 mark them out in all the distinctness of canine rank 
 and canine individuality. Burns gets at once into 
 their hearts and enjoys their sport. 
 
 e~ 2 
 
liv Poetry. 
 
 Nae doubt but they were fain o' ither, 
 An' unco pack an thick thegither ; 
 Wi' social nose whyles snuff'd an' snowkifc 
 Whyles mice an' moudieworts * they howkit ; 
 Whyles scour'd awa' in lang excursion, 
 And worry'd ither in diversion. 
 
 That is as vivid as painting, and painting could not 
 give the movement of the dogs. Tired at length of 
 play, they sit down and talk of mankind. Their 
 remarks are redolent of satire, and the raciest pith 
 and sense, lit up here and there by vignette pictures 
 of peasant life, not to be surpassed in graphic felicity 
 and genial warmth. But observe how thoroughly 
 he enters into the hearts of the dogs ! how he un- 
 derstands the sentiments of dog-land, and writes like 
 a very dog ! Consider this, on a functionary whose 
 character must be a subject of interest in every kennel. 
 
 Our whipper-in, wee, blastit wonner, 
 Poor worthless elf, it eats a dinner, 
 Better than ony tenant man. 
 
 If a dog could speak, would he not say just that 
 about the whipper-in? The collie, for his part, 
 describes the life of the poor, assuring his friend 
 that, though hard, it has its alleviations. There are 
 the high-tides of Hallow-mass and New Year's Day, 
 when the frost-winds are barred out, and the " ingle " 
 burns bright. 
 
 The cantie auld folks crackin' crouse, 
 The young anes rantin' through the house, 
 My heart has been sae fain to see them, 
 That I for joy hae barkit wi' them. 
 
 * Moles. 
 
Burns' 's Sympathy. Iv 
 
 The Ettrick Shepherd said that he had seen this 
 description verified a hundred times to the letter. It 
 is true to the kind heart of Burns that he should have 
 embraced the old within the circle of household joyful- 
 ness. Age in Wordsworth is despondent, heavy-laden, 
 apathetic ; not in Burns. And the loyal dependent 
 of man is accepted into the human circle, and 
 heightens the merriment by his genial bark. Very 
 precious in its moral quality is the regard that Burns 
 has for the lower creatures. Often it is simply the 
 tenderness that shrinks from the idea of their pain, 
 his unaffected dislike of the huntsman's art evinc- 
 ing extraordinary fineness and gentleness of nature in 
 a peasant. But often, also, it is a feeling of mingled 
 justice and mercy with reference to the services they 
 render man, and of sympathetic appreciation of their 
 companionship. His New Year Morning Salutation 
 of the old farmer to his old mare has a poetry 
 in it as much deeper than the poetry of feudal knight- 
 hood, as the poetry of industry and home is deeper 
 than the poetry of strife. 
 
 Though now thou's dowie, stiff, an' crazy, , 
 An' thy auld hide's as white's a daisy, 
 I've seen thee dappl't,' sleek, and glaizie, 
 A bonnie grey. 
 
 With manly pride and beautiful tenderness, he 
 recalls the day when the dappled mare bore home his 
 bride, and recounts her triumphs on the road and in the 
 furrow. And now, when they both are old, his trusty 
 servant will find that she has a friend. 
 
Ivi Poetry. 
 
 We've worn to crazy years thegither ; 
 We'll toyte about wi' ane anither ; 
 Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tether, 
 To some hain'd * rig. 
 
 Mr. Arnold fully acknowledges the necessity, to the 
 appreciation of Burns, of having some acquaintance 
 with Scotch ; and it is thoroughly genial in him to say 
 that the language of Burns deserves study from culti- 
 vated Englishmen as the language of Chaucer deserves 
 it : such a phrase as " we'll toyte about wi' ane 
 anither " is untranslatable the marvellous onomato- 
 poetic accuracy of the word which describes the 
 tottering motion of an old man and an old horse 
 belongs to the original inseparably. "Tottering" is 
 too hard expresses too much of creaky brokenness 
 the " toy ting " has something in it of the pleasant 
 feebleness of second childhood in a sunny field. And 
 how delicate is the " tentie care ! *" 
 
 Of The Jolly Beggars Mr. Arnold speaks in terms of 
 admiration that may well satisfy the most enthusiastic 
 reader of Burns. It is in his eyes a "puissant and 
 splendid production," " a superb poetic success," 
 displaying " a breadth, truth, and power which make 
 the famous scene in Auerbach's Cellar, of Goethe's 
 Faust, seem artificial and tame beside it, and which 
 are only matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes." 
 For badness and for goodness the piece is entirely true 
 to Burns here he stands, the whole man, as we have 
 Wordsworth in Peter Bell and Michael. The coarse- 
 
 * Saved ; kept in reserve. 
 
The Jolly Beggars. Ivii 
 
 ness which mars Burns, the coarseness which was a. 
 broadly-marked, undeniable characteristic of the 
 Scotland mirrored in his poetry, is here at its worst. 
 It is not so bad as the coarseness of Chaucer ; it is 
 never dwelt on, as the subject and interest of the 
 description, as in tales which could be mentioned of 
 Chaucer's; it is put in, with flying, forceful touch, 
 because it is there, a part of the visioned fact into 
 which the eye of the poet is glaring, necessary if we 
 must have utter veracity, however alien to ideal 
 beauty : but it is lamentable, nevertheless. 
 
 If the stains on Burns's genius, however, are con- 
 spicuous in this poem, they do not quench its general 
 blaze of power and brilliance. It displays in its ut- 
 most intensity and comprehensiveness that sympathy 
 with mankind, which was his master-passion, and 
 that creative gift of imagination by which he gave 
 form and life. The gambolling of dogs and the 
 fortunes of old mares interested him, but the merry- 
 makings of his fellow-men had for him an irresistible 
 and supreme fascination. Accordingly he dived, one 
 night, with a brace of trusty companions, into a 
 public-house in Mauchline of the lowest description, 
 the resort of strolling tinkers, fiddlers, and other vag- 
 rants. What he witnessed forms the subject-matter 
 of this poem ; and he has made out of it perhaps 
 the most exultant demonstration of the strength of 
 life, and of the power of laughter to rise victorious 
 over hardship and penury, to be found in any litera- 
 ture. Not one circumstance of the squalor and 
 
Iviii Poetry. 
 
 looped and windowed raggedness of these waifs and 
 strays of human kind is disguised, and yet they are 
 uproariously happy. There is no didacticism in the 
 poem, yet it is a deep chapter in the philosophy of life. 
 It shows nature's reserve power her capacity, when 
 she seems driven to extremity, to make life still 
 tolerable. 
 
 We should note, as significant in many ways, that 
 the poor vagrants have not a word to say against their 
 social superiors. Of the democratic exasperation and 
 teeth-gnashing, of which we have had so much since 
 the French Kevolution, there is not a forecast. Nor, 
 though we have throughout a humourous contempt for 
 the respectabilities, is there any suggestion of sym- 
 pathy with mean thieving or swindling. " Braw John 
 Highlandman," though he holds the Lowland laws in 
 scorn, " is faithful to his clan." The tinker is proud 
 of his trade, the fiddler pays for his cheer " at kirns 
 and weddings " with music. The battered old soldier, 
 minus an arm and a leg, is a hero every inch, one with 
 whom Homer would have hobnobbed. He tells you 
 where he got his wounds, one, for example, "in a 
 trench, when welcoming the French." That epithet 
 " welcoming " is perfection. All the nobleness of 
 chivalry is in it, the frank valour of the soldier who 
 bears no grudge against a noble foe, and the reckless 
 joy of battle. Then, with what brilliant lyrical 
 touches lyrical in their brevity and brightness, epic 
 in their decisive selection of the right points does old 
 Wooden-leg glance along the wars of Great Britain in 
 
Old Wooden-leg. lix 
 
 liis time ! The song is worthy of any war-poet from 
 Tyrtasus to Beranger, and yet it is not in the least out 
 of keeping with the character of the begging soldier. 
 
 My 'prenticeship I past where my leader breath'd his last, 
 When the bloody die was cast on the heights of Abram ; 
 
 I serv'd out my trade when the gallant game was play'd 
 And the Moro low was laid at the sound of the drum. 
 
 I lastly was with Curtis, among the floating batteries, 
 And there I left for witness an arm and a limb ; 
 
 Yet let my country need me, with Elliot to head me, 
 I'd clatter on my stumps at the sound of a drum. 
 
 That belongs to the perennial in poetry. Out of 
 the dingy atmosphere of a tavern revel the old soldier 
 rises into the changeless blue of universal human 
 sympathy. 
 
 Mr. Arnold is severe upon Scottish life. " Burns's 
 world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch 
 manners, is often a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world." 
 Not " sordid," Mr. Arnold peremptorily not sordid. 
 A world of hard labour, of stern thrift, not of sordid- 
 ness ; the old farmer has had a hard life of it, but he 
 can spare a " hain'd rig " for his old mare yet, though 
 she will never do him another stroke of work. A rude 
 coarse world in many of its aspects, but without any 
 of those pestilential taints that kill or paralyse the 
 soul ; a world in which the peasant can respect his 
 pastor, though he never fancies him a priest or hesi- 
 tates to hold his own against him in argument ; in 
 which the farmer's cottage is his castle ; in which there 
 is severe, but not stunting or depressing labour, hard 
 
l x Poetry. 
 
 fare, but not the pinch of hunger; and the heath-clad 
 or grass-clad breast of mother earth to rest on, the 
 flashing sea to look at, the unpolluted air to breathe, 
 the wheeling plover-flight to watch in the sky and the 
 birch and hawthorn, to make love under, by the river 
 side. Certain it is that Scottish national feeling did 
 not bar the old soldier of Burns from taking the world- 
 historical and British view of events. Every conflict 
 he celebrates is English. I take leave to add that the 
 imperial patriotism of Burns, Campbell, Scott, might 
 rebuke that provincial patriotism which makes it so 
 difficult to find in a poem by an English writer one 
 word of cordial reference either to Ireland or to Scot- 
 land. Tennyson has an open heart for all English 
 interests and parties, but at these, with freezing pre- 
 cision, he draws the line. In celebrating the deliver- 
 ance by the Highlanders of the besieged remnant in 
 Lucknow Eesidency, he makes his verse meaningless 
 by speaking of the "pibroch of Europe," rather than 
 name the land of Carlyle, Scott, and Burns. 
 
 Nor is it too daring to hold that Burns's love for 
 Scotland did not pervert but ennoble his patriotism in 
 general. It is because he wrote Bruce' s Address to his 
 Soldiers before the Battle of Bannockbwrn that he 
 could sing with right enthusiasm of the Heights of 
 Abram and the Storm of the Moro, of Wolfe at 
 Quebec and Elliot at Gibraltar. Mr. Arnold would 
 have had a still deeper and truer appreciation of Burns, 
 if he had been as able as Carlyle to understand and 
 sympathise with his Scottish feeling. No one under- 
 

 Burns 's Pride. Ixi 
 
 standing the part played by religion in the history of 
 Scotland could think that Burns, for all his wild words 
 of satire and his fiery scorn for hypocrisy, was an ironical 
 free-thinker of the knowing modern type " whistle 
 o'er the lave o't " as Mr. Arnold suggests : nor, if he 
 had known what a thing is Scotch pride, in struggle 
 with the res angusta domi, could he have imagined 
 that it was from the outworks, and not from the 
 central fastness and heart's heart of Burns, that A 
 man's a man for a 1 that proceeded. In his boyhood, 
 under his father's roof, Burns had known the struggle 
 with straitened circumstances, and with all the strength 
 of his soul had longed for the freedom and enlarge- 
 ment of an " honest independence." Throughout his life 
 he had yearned for this, striven for it, keeping only apart 
 from it, as holier than it, the sacred and thrilling joy 
 of his poetry. And now, at thirty-six, when he knows 
 that in the battle of life he has been what the world 
 calls beaten that he has lived and will die a poor 
 man he stands forth and sings this solemn psalm, in- 
 stinct with the imperishable life of universal truth. 
 
 Is there, for honest poverty, 
 
 That hangs his head and a' that, 
 The coward slave we pass him by, 
 
 We dare be poor for a' that. 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 Our toils obscure and a' that ; 
 The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 
 The man's the gowd for a' that. 
 
 But in Burns, no more than in his old soldier, is 
 there any of the sava indignatio that tore the heart 
 of Swift any furious grudge against society any pes~ 
 simistic bitterness or despair of mankind. 
 
Ixii Poetry. 
 
 Then let us pray that come it may 
 
 As come it will for a' that 
 That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 
 
 May bear the gree and a' that ; 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 It's comin' yet for a' that, 
 That man to man, the warld o'er, 
 
 Shall brithers be for a' that. 
 
 It was like Burns to speak slightingly of this mighty 
 lyric when sending it to the unsouled clay of George 
 Thomson. " It was little," says Lockbart, " in 
 Burns's character to let his feelings on certain subjects 
 escape." 
 
 In no respect do the poems of Wordsworth more 
 strongly contrast with those of Burns than in what I 
 would call, with strict meaning, historical value. The 
 first book of Homer's Iliad makes the life of old heroic 
 Greece visible to us. We see it and know it in a sense 
 in which no mere statistical information could place it 
 before us. In this sense Burns is the Scottish historian 
 of his day and generation. His Tarn o'Shanter, his 
 Duncan Gray, his Doctor Hornbook, his lads and 
 lasses frolicking at Halloween, his peasant opening the 
 Bible and reverently reading it to his household in the 
 evening, are as true to the Ayrshire of his time as the 
 weeping Achilles and his divine mother, the mourning 
 Priam and his dead Hector, are to that old Homeric 
 world ; and the same ring and shout of human laughter 
 makes ancient and modern kin, when the preternatural 
 portent of Halloween turns out to be " grumphy, asteer 
 that night," and when Ajax, clearing from mouth and 
 nostril the mud into which he had flopped, complains 
 that he had been tripped up in the race by Pallas, and 
 
The Daisy. Ixiil 
 
 the surrounding Achaians " laugh sweetly " at the 
 notion. Now Wordsworth's poems, as compared with 
 those of Keats and Shelley, are racy of the soil. There 
 is a good deal of Cumberland in them. But, compared 
 with those of Burns, they are outside Cumberland life. 
 They render its misty melancholy, but of its mirth 
 they give hardly the faintest echo. Only once in The 
 Waggoner do we hear much of dancing. The humour 
 of the people, the movement of their life, their sports, 
 their passionate loving, all which we must suppose 
 them to have had, are absent. There is in fact nothing 
 in English poetry that will take rank with the vital 
 and vivid presentation of Scottish life and manners in 
 the poems of Burns. The world has enjoyed it, not 
 because it is Scotch, but because it is human. 
 
 Such pieces as the address to the Daisy and the 
 address to the Mouse are too familiar to require more 
 than mention. Their tenderness, their pathos, their 
 aptness of allusion to human destinies, are universally 
 felt. In the Daisy there are some lines so delicately 
 fanciful that they form an enchanting variation on the 
 strong vehemence of the poet's general mood. His 
 plough had gone harshly over the " crimson- tipped 
 flower." Burns touches on the circumstance. 
 
 Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet, 
 The bonnie lark, companion meet, 
 Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, 
 
 Wi' speckled breast, 
 When upward-springing, blithe, to greet 
 
 The purpling East. 
 
 If Burns had never written another verse but that, 
 
Ixiv Poetry. 
 
 we should have known that he had a poetic nature. 
 There is something feminine in it, so there is in all 
 gently fanciful poetry : doubtless the melody and magic 
 of poetry have something to do with the blending 
 together of the finest elements distinctive of man and 
 the finest elements distinctive of woman, breeze and 
 stream co-operating in the modulated ripple. Between 
 Milton and Burns you will not meet with a stanza like 
 this. To Dryden, to Pope, to Cowper even, it would 
 have seemed silly. It is hardly imaginative, but it is 
 fancy's finest gold. 
 
 More imaginative, more earnest, is the address to 
 the Mouse. The daisy's fate does not really stir the 
 depths of any man's heart. Its woes are of the fancy. 
 But a mouse feels as well as a man, and no one knew 
 that better than Burns. He looks down with intensest 
 sympathy on the sleek, soft, glittering-eyed little 
 wonder, whose " wee bit housie " he has laid in ruins. 
 "Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie ! " The strong 
 man's heart beats in the tiny, panting breast. 
 
 I can conceive nothing more finely perfect than the 
 lines to the mouse ; but if I were asked which of his 
 poems conveys to me the most forcible impression of 
 his power, not in its tenderness, but in its strength, I 
 should name the lines to an unmentionable phenomenon 
 a creeping thing detested by saint and sinner seen 
 on a lady's bonnet in church. If you want to have 
 Burns in the very tempest of his strength in his ve- 
 hemence, his fervent heat the Thor knuckles white as 
 his hammer smites the rock read this unique and tre- 
 
Burns at His Strongest. Ixv 
 
 mendous poem. We have seen that he could get into 
 the hearts of dogs and mice ; but now he goes lower in 
 creation, and, in all the rapture of poetic vision, enters 
 the soul of this crawling beast. As a moralist, as 
 a satirist, as a humourist, Burns here culminates. 
 There is the grandest world-irony in the lines, a 
 laugh deep, sardonic, shaking the man's whole frame. 
 If Bottom and Dogberry and Malvolio had presented 
 themselves in one incomparable moment to the mind 
 of Shakespeare, he would have felt as Burns felt while 
 watching the entomological specimen on the ladv r 's 
 bonnet. The impudence that protects the complacent 
 creature, as it " strunts rarely o'er gauze and lace " 
 the semi-starvation that is the lightly borne penalty 
 of beggarly pride, " dining sparely " in its exalted sta- 
 tion these come out in the first stanza. Then, with 
 that inquisitiveness of prying imagination which led 
 him into Poosy Nancy's tavern when the revel was in 
 full scream, the poet dives into the Tartarean deeps 
 of entomological existence. Returning to the upper 
 air, he once more concentrates his attention on the 
 devious, yet mounting, course of the specimen in view. 
 For a moment it disappears under the ribbons. 
 
 Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight, 
 Below the fatt'rils snug and tight ! 
 
 Not likely ! The aspiring creature, proudly re-emer- 
 gent, mounts and mounts, until it beams forth on 
 
 The very tapmost, tow'ring height 
 
 O' Miss's bonnet. 
 
 Two verses of admirably arch and pungent humour 
 
Ixvi Poetry. 
 
 follow, and then, in two more, about " winks and 
 finger-ends" that are taking notice, and the beneficent 
 gift of seeing ourselves as others see us, this master- 
 piece ends. 
 
 O Jenny, dinna toss your head, 
 
 Or set your beauties all abread ; 
 
 Ye little ken what cursed speed 
 The blastie's makin*. 
 
 Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread, 
 Are notice takin'. 
 
 wad some Power the giftie gie us 
 
 To see oursels as ithers see us ! 
 
 It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 
 
 An' foolish notion ; 
 What airs in dress and gait wad lae' us, 
 
 And e'en devotion ! 
 
 Consider the range of poetic faculty between the 
 rugged strength of these verses and the delicate beauty 
 and tenderness of the following : 
 
 The hoary cliffs are crown'd wi' flowers, 
 White o'er the linns the burnie pours, 
 And rising weets wi' misty showers 
 The birks of Aberfeldy ; 
 
 Let fortune's gifts at random flee, 
 They ne'er shall draw a wish frae me, 
 Supremely blest wi' love an' thee, 
 In the birks of Aberfeldy. 
 
 Lyrical poetry is the essential poetry, the poetry of 
 life in its highest moments, the poetry of spring and of 
 passion. Its distinctive note is love ; and it will not 
 be disputed that in the songs and lyrical ballads of 
 Burns is to be found as noble an expression of love 
 as exists in language. His love-lyrics have the 
 
Burns's Love-songs. Ixvii 
 
 play and colour of the fountain and the heat of the 
 furnace. Mr. Arnold signalises the nice perfection of 
 Tarn Glen; but surely it is only the light touch and 
 sportive mood of Burns that we have in Tarn Glen. 
 For anything to equal the best love-songs of Burns, we 
 must step beyond the English language, and listen to 
 Clarchen's song in Egmont, or Amalia's in The Robbers. 
 The genius of English, stately, proud, and cold, is not 
 so favourable to lyric poetry as the German of Goethe 
 and Schiller, or the Scotch of Burns. If Burns is 
 one of the greatest love-poets of the world, Words- 
 worth can hardly be called a love-poet at all. Of 
 youth-and-maiden rapture there is, in his poems, 
 almost no sympathetic expression. 
 
 We have, indeed, the stateliness of his verse to make 
 some amends. I would grant that, in style, he has the 
 advantage of Burns. Style is a high quality, and, if 
 other things are equal, the poet whose work has most 
 style is the better poet. But style is, perhaps, irrecon- 
 cilable with the wild and witching sweetness of the 
 Doric lyre. Style seems also to involve some element 
 which, if not irreconcilable with superlative genius, is 
 yet not quite congenial to it. The greatest poets of all, 
 though they can occasionally be stylists, are by pre- 
 ference and on the whole humourists. Dante, Milton, 
 Schiller, are stylists, not humourists ; Homer, Shake- 
 speare, Goethe, are humourists rather than stylists. 
 We praise the stylists, and ought to read them. We 
 cannot help reading the humourists. 
 
 It seems almost a shame, however, to pit Words- 
 
Ixviii Poetry. 
 
 worth against a poet whom he so deeply valued, so 
 generously recognised. He is always at his best in 
 writing about Burns, and never has the greatness of 
 Burns been more correctly defined than in the follow- 
 ing monumental stanza : 
 
 Through busiest street and loneliest glen 
 
 Are felt the flashes of his pen ; 
 
 He rules 'mid winter's snows, and when 
 
 Bees fill their hives ; 
 Deep in the general heart of men 
 
 His power survives. 
 
 No poet is more expressly the poet of a class a 
 refined, a superior class, if you will, but a strictly 
 limited one a class confined hitherto, Mr. Arnold 
 tells us, to England than Wordsworth. No poet in 
 all the starry throng has struck more decisively those 
 perennial chords in the human heart to which all 
 hearts vibrate than Burns. 
 
 And Byron ? Can we, unless blinded by early 
 associations or by that insular prejudice which was 
 personified and has been canonised in Dr. Johnson, 
 maintain against Europe that the author of Childe 
 Harold and Don Juan was an inferior poet to the 
 author of The Excursion ? I am prepared to en- 
 dorse a very dark indictment against Byron, both 
 as a man and as a poet. If we exempt the vices 
 of cruelty and dishonesty, I see not what could 
 have been more immoral than his life ; and I cannot, 
 after most carefully considering the point, doubt that, 
 as an artist, he, who had been gifted by nature so 
 bounteously, who was in possession of so many of 
 
Byron. Ixix 
 
 the true spells of poetic art, deliberately stained and 
 defiled his work in order that it might be bought, 
 anointing it with honey of hell in order that the base 
 sweetness might attract the flies of Beelzebub. I 
 admit also that, apart from the artistically illegitimate 
 attractions of licentiousness in his poems, we find in 
 them occasionally an utter prosiness which it is hard 
 to explain. Byron's dead bits are palpably, offensively 
 dead, and they are apt to occur in his fine work. The 
 " there let him lay," at the end of one of the stanzas 
 of the address to the ocean at the end of Childe 
 Harold, is unsurpassable both in vulgarity and in 
 
 feebleness. 
 
 A king sat on the rocky brow 
 
 That looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 
 And ships, by thousands, lay below, 
 
 And men in nations ; all were his ! 
 He counted them at break of day 
 And when the sun set where were they ? 
 
 That is, to my thinking, as noble poetry, of the 
 lyrical-descriptive kind, as can be conceived. The 
 words that succeed 
 
 And where are they ? 
 
 are sheer fatuity. The first question calls up a crowd 
 of ideas, all sublime ; the second clashes with the first, 
 or blends with it, and both become nonsense. Once 
 more, I do not make much of the philosophy or the 
 politics of Byron. The profundities and audacities of 
 speculation in Cam are in fact the commonplaces, the 
 mere chips and sweepings, of the schools of theological 
 and philosophical controversy. All that vapouring 
 
 /-a 
 
Ixx Poetry. 
 
 against kings and priests that swaggering defiance 
 of the conventional ordinances of society depended 
 on mere ignorance as to the part really played by 
 Idngs and priests in human history, and was put to 
 flight by the first dawning rays of Carlyle's genial 
 sagacity and historical instinct. 
 
 Enough ; I am tempted by no enthusiasm to over- 
 rate the power of Byron ; but it seems to me almost 
 incredible that Mr. Arnold should set Wordsworth 
 above him. Goethe, at the time when Byron attained 
 his reputation, was greater as a critic than as a poet, 
 and he deliberately pronounced Byron's genius incom- 
 mensurable. Scott accounted for his own abandon- 
 ment of poetry in three words, "Byron beat me." 
 Por Shelley Byron was "the Pythian of his age," 
 and Wilson, who himself had seemed at one moment 
 to be no unlikely candidate for the poetical crown, was 
 satisfied with the honour of strewing flowers in Byron's 
 path. We mark the noble poet, expelled from England , 
 lighting up Europe with the splendour of his genius, 
 which runs like liquid fire along the course of the Rhine, 
 and glitters among the Alpine summits. He had an eye 
 that could pierce to nature's most exquisite loveliness, 
 hut it was seldom his mood to watch the glancing of 
 the silver streamlet, like " the shy chamois' eye," or to 
 mark the delicate fluttering of daffodils. He loved to 
 look on nature in her moments of sublimity and of 
 terror, and at such moments he flung the life of his 
 creative imagination into the glory and the gloom. 
 He is the fellow of the mountains in their Titan 
 
Byron's Imagination. Ixxi 
 
 mirth, and laughs with them amid the rattling 
 thunderbolts and the hissing rain. 
 
 The sky is changed ! and such a change 1 Oh night, 
 And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, 
 
 Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light 
 Of a dark eye in woman ! Far along, 
 
 From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, 
 
 Leaps the live thunder ! Not from one lone cloud, 
 
 But every mountain now hath found a tongue, 
 And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, 
 Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 And this is in the night : most glorious night ! 
 
 Thou wert not made for slumber ! let me be 
 A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, 
 
 A portion of the tempest and of thee ! 
 How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, 
 
 And the big rain comes dancing to the earth I 
 And now again 'tis black, and now, the glee 
 
 Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain -mirth, 
 
 As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. 
 
 Has Wordsworth written anything like that ? Can 
 we wonder that Europe thrilled to touches like these, 
 while it remained indifferent to poetical admonitions 
 addressed to robins for killing butterflies ? Here is a 
 personification of battle a vision of the thing alive 
 executed while we can still trace the 'prentice hand in 
 Byron's manner. 
 
 Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc, 
 
 Bed Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Lo 1 where the Giant on the mountain stands, 
 His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun, 
 
 With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands, 
 And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon ; 
 
Ixxii Poetry. 
 
 Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon 
 
 Flashing afar, and at his iron feet 
 Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done. 
 
 Why should I refer to a host of such passages as 
 that on the eve of Waterloo, that on the dying 
 gladiator, or to what, though faulty here and there, 
 is a magnificent poem, The Isles of Greece ? A genera- 
 tion or two ago, these were recognised, and when the 
 present reaction from the past over-praise of Byron 
 shall have spent its force, they will again be recog- 
 nised as supreme as magnificent. 
 
 But critics have not given due consideration to that 
 part of Byron's performance in which he had begun to 
 divest himself of his affectations, to fling aside the stage 
 dress of misanthropy and self-condolence which had 
 so impressed the shilling gallery, and to let his native 
 shrewdness and genuine sympathy have full play. 
 Those cantos of Don Juan which lead up to and de- 
 scribe the siege of Ismail show Byron at his best ; and 
 their quality is high indeed. In no poetry in the 
 world not in Shakespeare's or Homer's do we feel 
 ourselves more decisively to be among living men, 
 among great human interests, and in the hand of a 
 poet who understands both the one and the other. 
 The portrait of Suwarrow is unrivalled in recent 
 English verse. In the best characters in his novels, 
 Scott is as graphic and as true ; but Scott never suffi- 
 ciently emancipated himself from the sense of what was 
 due to style and stateliness in poetry to dare to put such 
 work into his Marmion, his Fitzjames, his Bruce, as 
 
Byron's Suwarrow. Ixxiii 
 
 Byron puts into his Suwarrow. Byron's humour here 
 stands him in good stead, no touch indeed save that 
 of a humourist could have realised such a personality as 
 Suwarrow's ; and yet the grotesque does not in the 
 least when the delineation of the leader is viewed in 
 connection with the description of the siege as a whole 
 compromise the sublime. But Byron apprehends more 
 than the personality of Suwarrow. He apprehends, 
 with a practical discernment as shrewd as that of 
 Frederick of Prussia, the principles on which Suwarrow 
 conducts the whole business, the inexorable necessity 
 of putting the first before the second the dreary de- 
 tails of drill before the pomp and circumstance of 
 battle and the electrical effect of an original mind in 
 breathing new energy into masses of men. It is not 
 too much to say that, in the cantos to which I now 
 refer, the principle may be found of all those books in 
 which Mr. Carlyle, with so vast an influence upon 
 historical literature, has illustrated "the sway of your 
 great men o'er little." 
 
 There was not now a luggage-boy but sought 
 Danger and spoil with ardour much increased, 
 And why ? because a little, odd, old man, 
 Stript to his shirt, was come to lead the van. 
 
 Suwarrow did not call upon the army to rush at once 
 to the charge; he bethought him of something else 
 
 first. 
 
 It is an actual fact, that he, Commander- 
 in-chief, in proper person deign'd to drill 
 The awkward squad, and could afford to squander 
 His time, a corporal's duty to fulfil. 
 
Ixxiv Poetry. 
 
 He could invent, however, as well as drill, and abandon 
 routine at the proper time. 
 
 Also he dress'd up, for the nonce, fascines 
 Like men with turbans, scimitars, and dirks, 
 
 And made them charge with bayonets these machines, 
 By way of lesson against actual Turks ; 
 
 And when well practised in these mimic scenes, 
 He judged them proper to assail the works ; 
 
 At which your wise men sneered in phrases witty : 
 
 He made no answer ; but he took the city. 
 
 Lord Macaulay is much too sweeping in his conclu- 
 sion that Byron had no dramatic power. The Corsair, 
 Lara, Manfred character, is artificial and shallow, and 
 without question reflects the superficial affectations. 
 which Byron found so telling upon " folly and green 
 minds." But Don Juan has not the smallest resem- 
 blance to the stalking, moon-apostrophising Manfred ; 
 Lambro is not in the least like Cain ; and if Suwarrow 
 shows us anything of Byron, it is his sterling sense and 
 command of the science of ruling men. " John John- 
 son," who accompanied Juan to the Russian camp, is 
 dismissed by Macaulay as "a most signal failure." 
 The portrait is sketchy and slight, but this expression 
 is extravagantly over-charged. Few as are the touches 
 by which Johnson is realised for us, he is a living man, 
 with a marked and thoroughly English character. 
 
 Seldom he altered feature, hue or muscle, 
 And could be very busy without bustle. 
 
 His meeting with Suwarrow the brief, terse, soldierly 
 dialogue that passes between them the frank yet quite 
 unsentimental pleading of the rough but kind fellow 
 
The Siege of Ismail. Ixxv 
 
 for the women are managed with dramatic propriety. 
 Suwarrow himself is as dramatically conceived and 
 executed as Dalgetty. 
 
 And then the breadth, the occasional sublimity, of 
 the purely descriptive passages ! 
 
 Hark ! through the silence of the cold, dull night, 
 The hum of armies gathering rank on rank ! 
 
 Lo ! dusky masses steal in dubious sight 
 Along the leaguer'd wall and bristling bank 
 
 Of the armed river, while with straggling light 
 
 The stars peep through the vapours dim and dank, 
 
 Which curl in curious wreaths : how soon the smoke 
 
 Of hell shall pall them in a deeper cloak ! 
 
 The night was dark, and the thick mist allowed 
 Naught to be seen save the artillery's flame, 
 
 Which arched the horizon like a fiery cloud, 
 And in the Danube's waters shone the same 
 
 A mirror'd hell ! the volleying roar and loud 
 Long booming of each peal on peal, o'ercame 
 
 The ear far more than thunder; for heaven's flashes 
 
 Spare, or smite rarely man's make millions ashes. 
 
 It is infinitely to be regretted that Don Juan, besides 
 being unequal, besides having a great deal in it which, 
 whether as wit, as wisdom, or as humour, is wretchedly 
 poor stuff, should be brought down to the level of Tom 
 Jones , or lower, by its moral taint ; but when we con- 
 sider its vast range, its world-like variety, its diction 
 and imagery, strong as iron, yet fantastically free as 
 the tendrils, the wreaths, the festooned briers and 
 roses of a forest lane in June, can we think otherwise 
 than with surprise that Mr. Arnold should claim for 
 
Ixxvi Poetry. 
 
 the poetry of Wordsworth a higher place than for the 
 poetry of Byron ? 
 
 In the present volume I try to give some account 
 of the genius and productions of Mrs. Browning and 
 the Bronte sisters. Mrs. Browning was a poet in 
 the simple, yet intense, meaning of the ancient word 
 a maker, an imaginative life-giver and artist. Cast- 
 ing the mind's eye over what she did and what 
 she was, I am strongly moved to claim for her pre- 
 cedence of Wordsworth in the procession of English 
 poets. In no poet whatever was the lyrical glow more 
 authentically fervid and genuine. In another respect 
 she is exemplary and classic. The motivation of her 
 work is perfect. To the great movements, of thought 
 and feeling, as they work themselves into action in the 
 world of her time, she gives intense and melodious 
 expression. We may figure her as hovering in her 
 singing robes, a herald of victory, over the van of the 
 spiritual armies that fought the good fight of ad- 
 vancing civilisation in two hemispheres, to strike 
 down rebellion and slavery in the West, and despotism 
 in Italy. Had she done as much for men as she did 
 for women had man's work, passion, character been 
 delineated on a scale, and with a truth and power, 
 correspondent to those with which, in the world of her 
 art, she embodied woman's I scarce know what place 
 among the throned ones would have been too high for 
 her. Woman, as Mrs. Browning shows her, is once 
 more the entrancing object that men have loved with- 
 out measure and without end, loved as they have 
 
The Bronte Sisters. Ixxvii 
 
 been loved in return, totally, passionately, with self- 
 oblivious pride, 
 
 Such pride as from impetuous love may spring, 
 That will not be refused its offering, 
 
 as Shelley worthily sings. But Mrs. Browning is not 
 so great in the delineation of men as in that of women. 
 With all deductions, I reckon her one of the greatest 
 poets of her time. I have, I think, been able to prove 
 in the following pages that, in her treatment of the 
 theme handled by Milton in Paradise Lost, she has 
 succeeded in bringing out the human tenderness of the 
 subject, and imparting a realisable personality to 
 Adam and Eve, better than the Puritan poet. 
 
 Of Charlotte Bronte and her sisters I have written, 
 if with erring appreciation, at least with honest affec- 
 tion. One's heart is drawn towards the three un- 
 mothered girls who attracted the eyes of all Europe to 
 the sequestered parsonage among the Yorkshire moors. 
 What, after all, can we say of genius, but that it is in- 
 scrutable, heaven-descended, wonder-working ? From 
 a headland you look over a wide district, all wrapped 
 in somnolent haze, beneath which nothing is distinctly 
 visible. Suddenly, through a rift in a cloud, a sun- 
 beam glances from the blue and touches one spot. 
 There, in piercing brilliance, shine out tower and tree 
 and meadow. Then the cloud closes, the ray is with- 
 drawn, and once more the impartial haze drops its 
 shroud upon the landscape. The genius of the Bronte 
 sisters was that single ray, descending upon Yorkshire. 
 
 
Ixxviii Poetry. 
 
 So intense was the clearness of it, so fine and sweet 
 its beauty, that all England all Europe looked to- 
 wards the remote moorland hill in the West Biding, 
 with its parsonage and its graves. To that illuminated 
 spot, while the ray still falls on it, I invite my readers 
 to turn for a little time. 
 
ELIZABETH BAKKETT BROWNING. 
 
 // 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 HER EARLIEST VERSES. 
 
 T7ILIZABETH BAEEETT BAEEETT, now better 
 Pj known as Mrs. Browning, seems almost lite- 
 rally to have lisped in numbers. Those for whom it 
 was a sacred obligation to guard her fame and enforce 
 her wishes manifested the utmost displeasure when 
 Mr. Herne Shepherd, that inevitable literary treasure- 
 digger, reissued the verses published by her in her 
 seventeenth year. It is perhaps not surprising that, 
 from the vantage-ground of " higher things " to which 
 they have risen, poets should look with disdainful 
 irritation on their " dead selves," and ask for them the 
 boon of oblivion. But this is a weakness. 
 
 How proud we are 
 In daring to look down upon ourselves ! 
 
 says Mrs. Browning in her mature time, intending to 
 signify that such pride is not strong, but weak; not 
 great, but mean. No fact in a man's history can do 
 him injustice, and the nobly proud man wants only 
 justice. Nor is the labour of friends, in guarding 
 one's reputation from one's dead self, other than. 
 
 12 
 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 labour thrown away. The world inexorably forgets 
 everything that is not preserved by its intrinsic merit, 
 and inexorably refuses to forget all that really takes its 
 ear. The few lines in which, through some felicity of 
 inspiration, or some happy chance of association or 
 local colour, a boy Cowley, Pope, or Byron, has struck 
 a deathless note, are as safe as the strains of their 
 ripest genius ; but all the publishers in England 
 could not perpetuate a tenth of what they wrote in 
 boyhood. 
 
 None of Mrs. Browning's earliest verses will, I 
 think, form part of the world's current coin of poetry, 
 but they are pleasant and instructive as biographical 
 records of a poet's youth. They set before us her. 
 bright presence as she moved about her father's par- 
 sonage, an ardent, affectionate girl, not without her 
 meditative hours, her melancholy moment s, but happy 
 because full of love and truth and admiration. A long 
 poem on Mind, not much superior on the whole to 
 College prize-poetry, is interesting as a stammering 
 prophecy of that intensely spiritual enthusiasm which 
 was to glow like purifying fire in all her works. The 
 spirituality of her poems attests their high quality ; for 
 spirituality is the characteristic of all supreme art. 
 It is because of its spirituality that the sculpture of 
 Greece is radiantly pure. It treats the body with a 
 sense of beauty so elevating that, as we look, we think 
 not of bodily things. The " marble burns, and be- 
 comes transparent with very spirit." A thoroughly 
 base painter, on the other hand, as Mr. Buskin, from 
 
Her Affectionate Nature. 
 
 whom these words are quoted, again observes, " puts a 
 scent of common flesh about his marble Christ." To 
 say that poetry is sensuous that it suggests the body 
 rather than the soul, matter rather than spirit, flesh 
 rather than immortality is to say that it is bad 
 poetry. In Mrs. Browning's, from first to last, the 
 spirituality burns with the intensity of flame. 
 
 Another lovely characteristic of Mrs. Browning that 
 conies out in these early poems is the strength of her 
 domestic affections. She finds in her father her " best 
 Maecenas." She writes with tender joy of her studies 
 and readings with her brother. She is already on the 
 side of progress and freedom, and is the gentlest com- 
 forter of the exiled widow, who dies heart-broken 
 when her patriot husband is executed. I quote a 
 passage from Mind. We may note with interest that 
 the poetry freshens and brightens from commonplace 
 exactly when the girl-poet turns from her books to her 
 personal experiences. 
 
 If human faults to Plato's page belong, 
 
 Not even with Plato willingly go wrong. 
 
 But though the judging page declare it well 
 
 To love Truth better than the lips which tell; 
 
 Yet 'twere an error, with injustice class'd, 
 
 T'adore the former, and neglect the last. 
 
 Oh ! beats there, Heaven ! a heart of human frame, 
 
 Whose pulses throb not at some kindling name ? 
 
 Some sound which brings high musings in its track, 
 
 Or calls perchance the days of childhood back, 
 
 In its dear echo, when, without a sigh, 
 
 Swift hoop, and bounding ball, were first laid by, 
 
 To clasp in joy, from schoolroom tyrant free 
 
 The classic volume on the little knee, 
 
 And con sweet sounds of dearest minstrelsy, 
 
Elizabeth Barrett Et -owning. 
 
 Or words of sterner lore ; the young brow fraught 
 With a calm brightness which might mimic thought, 
 Leani on the boyish hand as, all the while, 
 A half-heaved sigh, or aye th' unconscious smile 
 Would tell how, o'er that page, the soul was glowing, 
 In an internal transport, past the knowing ! 
 How feelings, erst unfelt, did then appear, 
 Give forth a voice, and murmur, " We are here ! " 
 As lute-strings, which a strong hand plays upon ; 
 Or Memnon's statue singing 'neath the sun. 
 
 The negative qualities of these earliest pieces are a& 
 good as their positive. They are an effluence, not 
 strong, but sweet, of tenderness and of beautiful 
 enthusiasm, and they are illustriously void of asperity, 
 of conventional satire, of conceit, of any kind of 
 flippancy. They show that, if Mrs. Browning did not 
 in her girlish years write poetry, she looked poetry,, 
 felt poetry, lived poetry, was a radiant incarnation of 
 music and beauty moving about the Hereford par- 
 sonage within sight of the Malvern Hills. 
 
CHAPTEK II. 
 THE SERAPHIM, AND DRAMA OF EXILE. 
 
 THE first poems by which Mrs. Browning chose to- 
 be permanently represented have as their sub- 
 ject that tale of sin and redemption which occupied 
 the. mature genius and veteran skill of Milton. Speak- 
 ing somewhat largely, we may say that the Drama of 
 Exile corresponds, in subject, to Milton's Paradise 
 Lost, and The Seraphim to his Paradise Regained. 
 In the Drama of Exile, indeed, the victory of Christ 
 is touched upon, just as Satan's defeat is referred to in 
 Paradise Lost, but it is in the second of Mrs. 
 Browning's poems that the triumph of the Saviour 
 is expressly delineated, as Milton reserved for Paradise 
 Regained the specific conflict between Christ and 
 Satan. We may, therefore, compare broadly the 
 treatment of the entire theme by two great poets, the 
 one a man, the other a woman ; the one a Puritan, 
 the other the daughter of a clergyman of the Church 
 of England. 
 
 As works of literary art, the performances of Mrs. 
 Browning cannot enter into rivalry with those of 
 
8 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Milton. In constructive power, in sustained strength 
 and severe beauty of language, in majestic harmony 
 and subtle modulation of music, organ, harp, and 
 flute, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained surpass 
 A Drama of Exile and The Seraphim. The language is 
 the weakest part of these poems. It exhibits Mrs. 
 Browning's mannerism without those qualities by 
 which her mannerism was subsequently softened and 
 chastened into a deeper melodiousness. The diction is 
 rugged ; the imagery often borders on the grotesque ; 
 we are always conscious of more or less extravagance, 
 always of more or less obscurity. The very first verse 
 in the Drama of Exile has an oddity of rhyme which 
 Milton would never have let pass. Lucifer, address- 
 ing his hosts, whom he calls up to deform and destroy 
 the world which he has conquered for them, speaks 
 
 thus : 
 
 Bejoice'in the clefts of Gehenna, 
 
 My exiled, my host ! 
 Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a 
 
 Heaven's empire was lost. 
 
 On the other hand, Mrs. Browning is in some 
 respects and these important more successful in 
 the treatment of the subject than Milton. She throws 
 a finer tenderness into her portraiture of Adam and 
 Eve, especially of the latter. Charlotte Bronte ex- 
 pressed in terms of scornful brilliancy the dissatisfac- 
 tion with which women generally look upon Milton's 
 account of Eve. It is a picture of the first woman by 
 a man who holds uncompromisingly that woman's 
 supreme happiness is to contribute to and sympathise 
 
Milton and Mrs. Browning. 9 
 
 with the happiness of her lord and master. In doing 
 justice to Eve, Mrs. Browning does justice also to 
 Adam, breathing passionate life into the statuesque 
 propriety of Milton's first man. 
 
 Mrs. Browning has the superiority also in the con- 
 ception formed and the view presented of redemption. 
 All who have carefully considered Paradise Lost and 
 Paradise Regained as the parts of one great poem 
 on sin and salvation, must have been struck by the 
 fact that Milton has almost ignored the death of 
 Christ. In Paradise Lost he was not required to say 
 much of it, but he almost wholly omits it also from 
 Paradise Regained. The four books of that marvel- 
 lously learned and very beautiful poem are taken up 
 with an account of Christ's temptation in the wilder- 
 ness. The triumph of Christ over Satan is viewed by 
 Milton as essentially a triumph in argument. At the 
 end of the argument and of the fotir books contain- 
 ing it, do we not experience, when we first read the 
 poem, a sense of utter incompleteness? Additional 
 books seem to be wanted for the treatment of the 
 rest of Christ's life and of His death. The universal 
 judgment of Christendom has attached more conse- 
 quence, in the general scheme of redemption, to the 
 death on Calvary, than to the temptation in the 
 wilderness, and the body of Catholic theology cor- 
 responds to this Christian sentiment. It is well 
 known that Milton in the latter portion of his life 
 held Arian opinions ; and the only way in which I can 
 account for the virtual omission of the crucifixion 
 
10 Elizabeth Barrett Broivning. 
 
 from Paradise Eegained is by supposing that, when he 
 wrote the poem, he had ceased to accept the Catholic 
 view of Christ's death as a propitiatory sacrifice. Be 
 this, however, as it may, Mrs. Browning, in The 
 Seraphim, presents to us the victory of Christ over 
 evil as consummated on the cross. Both in that poem 
 and in the Drama of Exile, she seeks to penetrate into 
 the spiritual meanings of the death of Christ, into the 
 mystery of sorrow shared by Divinity, into love that, 
 through death, conquers death and hell. If the feel- 
 ing of Christendom, sanctioned by the opinion of such 
 men as Lessing, Goethe, and Hegel, is right in appre- 
 hending atonement as distinctive of Christianity, then 
 Mrs. Browning must be allowed to be more compre- 
 hensive than Milton in her treatment of their common 
 theme. 
 
 The Drama of Exile opens with a fiercely exultant 
 chant poured forth by Lucifer, who has completed the 
 ruin of the human pair, and stands on the outer side 
 of the gate of Eden, near the flaming sword. He and 
 his angels have fallen from heaven on account of their 
 sin, and his belief is that the Almighty Himself cannot 
 save any created being that once has sinned. He has 
 defaced God's image in the person of Adam; "un- 
 kinged is the king of the garden : ' ' and he now calls 
 upon his " locusts " to come up and feed in " the green 
 of the world." 
 
 Come up ! we have conquered by evil. 
 
 Good reigns not alone, 
 /prevail now ! and, angel or devil. 
 
 Inherit a throne ! 
 
Lucifer and Gabriel. 11 
 
 Suddenly Gabriel appears, and a conversation be- 
 tween him and Lucifer ensues. It is but partially 
 successful. The words used by Lucifer, in defiance of 
 God and expression of trust in his own resolution, 
 sound feebly after those of Milton's Satan. Lucifer 
 affects an air of jaunty scornfulness and irony which 
 recalls the mockery, though not the envenomed malig- 
 nity, of Goethe's Mephistopheles. Gabriel is cour- 
 teous even to Lucifer, and noble in all tones of thought. 
 The fiend, believing sin to be, in the nature of things, 
 unpardonable, suggests that he and his demons could 
 stand with a sword between man and Eden as well as. 
 Gabriel and his angels. Gabriel replies : 
 
 Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change. 
 If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God 
 This morning for a moment, thou hadst known 
 That only pity fitly can chastise, 
 While hate avenges. 
 
 Lucifer rejoins that no pity has been shown to him. 
 
 When I fell back, down, staring up as I fell, 
 The lightnings holding open my scathed lids, 
 And that thought of the infinite of God, 
 Hurled after to precipitate descent ; 
 When countless angel faces still and stern 
 Pressed out upon me from the level heavens 
 Adown the abysmal spaces, and I feh 1 
 Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind, 
 By the sight within your eyes, 'twas then I knew 
 How ye could pity, my kind angel-hood ! 
 
 Gabriel does not deem it inconsistent with loyalty to 
 Heaven to express sympathy with the fallen spirit. 
 
 Yet, thou discrowned one, by the truth in me 
 Which God keeps in me, I would give away 
 
12 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 All save that truth and His love keeping it, 
 To lead thee home again into the light, 
 And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars, 
 When their rays tremble round them with much song 
 Sung in more gladness ! 
 
 To the dialogue between Lucifer and Gabriel suc- 
 ceeds a chorus of Eden spirits, bewailing the expulsion 
 of the human pair. Some of the verses have a 
 pathetic beauty. 
 
 Hearken, oh hearken, ye shall hearken surely, 
 
 For years and years, 
 The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely, 
 
 Of spirits' tears ! 
 The yearning to a beautiful denied you, 
 
 Shall strain your powers ; 
 Ideal sweetnesses shall overglide you, 
 
 Eesumed from ours ! 
 In all your music, our pathetic minor 
 
 Your ears shall cross ; 
 And all good gifts shall mind you of diviner, 
 
 With sense of loss ! 
 
 On the whole, however, there is more of fancy than 
 of true imagination in this song of the river-spirits, 
 bird-spirits, and flower-spirits of Eden, and it is with 
 a sense of relief that, at its close, we find ourselves 
 listening neither to angels nor to nightingales, but to 
 Adam and Eve. They have been fleeing before the 
 glare of the flaming sword, and Eve now sinks down 
 weary, able only to look into Adam's face. She calls 
 upon him to strike her dead, in order that, the curse 
 having spent itself on her, he may be restored to 
 happiness. 
 
 O Adam, Adam ! by that name of Eve 
 Thine Eve, thy life which suits me little now, 
 
Adam and Eve. 
 
 Seeing that I confess myself thy death 
 And thine undoer, as the snake was mine, 
 I do adjure thee, put me straight away, 
 Together with my name. 
 
 Adam answers : 
 
 My beloved, 
 
 Mine Eve and life I have no other name 
 For thee or for the sun than what ye are, 
 My utter life and light ! If we have fallen, 
 It is that we have sinned, we : God is just : 
 And, since His curse doth comprehend us both 
 It must be that His balance holds the weights 
 Of first and last sin on a level. What ! 
 Shall I who had not virtue to stand straight 
 Among the hills of Eden, here assume 
 To mend the justice of the perfect God, 
 By piling up a curse upon His curse, 
 Against thee thee 
 
 Eve. For so, perchance, thy God 
 
 Might take thee into grace for scorning me ; 
 Thy wrath against the sinner giving proof 
 Of inward abrogation of the sin ! 
 And so the blessed angels might come down 
 And walk with thee as erst. 
 
 The self-sacrificing nobleness of Eve calls forth all the 
 chivalry of Adam's nature, and he tells her that he is 
 the greater transgressor of the two. 
 
 If God, 
 
 Who gave the right and joyaunce of the world 
 Both unto thee and me, gave thee to me, 
 The best gift last, the last sin was the worst, 
 Which sinned against more complement of gifts 
 And grace of giving. God ! I render back 
 Strong benediction and perpetual praise 
 From mortal feeble lips (as incense -snioke, 
 Out of a little censer, may fill heaven), 
 That Thou, in striking my benumbed hands 
 And forcing them to drop all other boons 
 
14 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Of beauty, and dominion, and delight, 
 Hast left this well-beloved Eve this life 
 Within life this best gift between their palms, 
 In gracious compensation ! 
 
 Milton does not make Adam say anything so nobly 
 beautiful as that. Eve replies. 
 
 Eve. Is it thy voice ? 
 
 Or some saluting angel's calling home 
 My feet into the garden ? 
 
 Adam. O my God ! 
 
 I, standing here between the glory and dark 
 The glory of Thy wrath projected forth 
 From Eden's wall, the dark of our distress 
 Which settles a step off in that drear world 
 Lift up to Thee the hands from whence hath faUen 
 Only creation's sceptre thanking Thee 
 That rather Thou hast cast me out with her, 
 Than left me lorn of her in Paradise, 
 With angel looks and angel songs around 
 To show the absence of her eyes and voice. 
 
 The sense of this is as deep and true as the poetry 
 is beautiful. It is not possible for us to conceive how, 
 in this world at least, human beings could be much to 
 each other, and human affection have exercise and 
 expansion, if there were no want, no sorrow, no toil, 
 no necessity of mutual ministering. Physical evil is 
 in our planet a condition of moral progress, and it was 
 in the first pangs of sorrow and suffering that the 
 exiles from Eden would know how dear they were 
 to each other. 
 
 Hitherto the poet has shown us chiefly the com- 
 pensations and redeeming features of the state into 
 which Adam and Eve have fallen ; but the tragedy 
 
Sin and Sorrow. 15 
 
 now begins to deepen. By imagery too gigantesque 
 and vague the signs of the zodiac being introduced 
 into the machinery of the poem the anguish of the 
 creatures of the earth, on account of the sin that has 
 been brought into it, is shadowed forth. 
 
 That phantasm, there, 
 Presents a lion albeit twenty times 
 As large as any lion with a roar 
 Set soundless in his vibratoiy jaws, 
 And a strange horror stirring in his mane ! 
 And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh 
 Good against ill, perchance ; and, there, a crab 
 Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws, 
 Like a slow blot that spreads till all the ground, 
 Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself. 
 
 The Spirit of the Earth, that once sang only of joy 
 and peace, now mourns perpetually. 
 
 I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike 
 A sense of death to me, and undug graves ! 
 
 The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling like 
 The ragged foam along the ocean waves : 
 
 The restless earthquakes rock against each other ; 
 
 The elements moan round me " Mother, mother," 
 And I wail ! 
 
 The feeling with which Lucifer regards the exiles 
 from Eden is that of scorn, modified by a sense of their 
 advantage over him in being able to pray to God 
 and to hope for pardon. This is the peculiarity of 
 Mrs. Browning's Lucifer as distinguished from 
 Milton's devil, and from Goethe's. I am not sure 
 that Mrs. Browning has kept the character in perfect 
 consistency with itself. Lucifer at first appears to be 
 exultant, confident, resolute in his sin, and proud of it. 
 
16 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 The red sign 
 
 Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with, 
 Is God's sign that it bows not unto God, 
 The potter's mark upoh his work, to show 
 It rings well to the striker. 
 
 This is not the speech we should expect from one 
 who appreciates the infinite advantage over him 
 possessed by the human pair in that they are admitted 
 to converse with God. " Your prayers," says Lucifer, 
 " tread high as angels." They are not doomed, as he 
 says that he is, to hate, and tempt, and destroy. His 
 hatred of them " glares without, because it burns 
 within," with the searching fires of remorse. 
 
 I, angel, in antagonism 
 To God and His reflex beatitudes, 
 Moan ever in the central universe 
 With the great woe of striving against Love 
 And gasp for space amid the Infinite. 
 
 The Satan of Paradise Lost would never have said 
 that ; but I shall not assert the same . so decisively of 
 the Satan of Paradise Regained, for the fiend of 
 Milton's second poem is much softened down. Mrs. 
 Browning is careful to make it appear that Lucifer 
 does not repent. He is " self-elect to Kingship of 
 resistant agony toward the good; " and, therefore, her 
 delineation may be formally consistent with itself. 
 But such a conception of the character embraces 
 elements of essential impossibility and contradictori- 
 ness. A spirit that felt it to be anguish to contend 
 against love would be at heart a good spirit. 
 
 Bowed and bent almost to despair by the cruelty of 
 the creatures that in Eden had been their obedient 
 
Christ Appears. 17 
 
 servants, Adam and Eve now cry to God, the- latter 
 placing her hope in the promise. 
 
 my Seed, 
 
 Through the tempestuous years that rain so thick 
 Betwixt my ghostly vision and thy face, 
 Let me have token ; for my soul is bruised 
 Before the serpent's head is. 
 
 In answer to this appeal, " a vision of Christ 
 appears in the midst of the zodiac, which pales before 
 the heavenly light." The vision rebukes the spirits of 
 the earth for the " cruel and unmitigated blame " they 
 have cast upon their masters. 
 
 This regent and sublime Humanity, 
 
 Though fallen, exceeds you ! This shall film your sun, 
 
 Shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud, 
 
 Turn back your rivers, footpath all your seas, 
 
 Lay flat your forests, master with a look 
 
 Your lion at his fasting. . . . 
 
 Over you 
 
 Eeceive man's sceptre, therefore be content 
 To minister with voluntary grace 
 And melancholy pardon every rite 
 And function in you, to the human hand. 
 
 He bids Adam be the spokesman of blessing to Eve. 
 
 Speak, Adam. Bless the woman, man ; 
 It is thine office. 
 
 Adam's blessing is in itself a beautiful and touching 
 poem, full of wise meaning. I abridge it very con- 
 siderably. 
 
 Eaise the majesties 
 
 Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved, 
 And front with level eyelids the To come, 
 And all the dark o' the world. Eise, woman, rise 
 
 2 
 
18 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 To thy peculiar and best altitudes 
 
 Of doing good and of enduring ill, 
 
 Of comforting for ill, and teaching good, 
 
 And reconciling all that ill and good 
 
 Unto the patience of a constant hope, 
 
 Eise with thy daughters ! If sin came by thee, 
 
 And by sin death, the ransom-righteousness, 
 
 The heavenly life, and compensative rest 
 
 Shall come by means of thee. Be satisfied ; 
 
 Something thou hast to bear through womanhood, 
 
 Peculiar suffering answering to the sin, 
 
 Some pang paid down for each new human life, 
 
 Some weariness in guarding such a life, 
 
 Some coldness from the guarded, some mistrust, 
 
 And pressures of an alien tyranny 
 
 With its dynastic reasons of larger bones 
 
 And stronger sinews. But, go to ! thy love 
 
 Shall chant itself its own beatitudes, 
 
 After its own life-working. A child's kiss, 
 
 Set on thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad ; 
 
 A poor man, served by thee, shall make thee rich ; 
 
 A sick man, helped by thee, shall make thee strong ; 
 
 Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
 
 Of service which thou renderest. . . . 
 
 Thy hand which plucked the apple, I clasp close, 
 
 I bless thee in the name of Paradise, 
 
 And by the memory of Edenic joys 
 
 Forfeit and lost 
 
 I bless thee to the desert and the thorns, 
 To the elemental change and turbulence, 
 And to the roar of the estranged beasts, 
 And to the solemn dignities of grief, 
 To each one of these ends and to their END 
 Of death and the hereafter. 
 
 The rest of the poem is taken up with prophetic 
 adumbration of the victory of Christ. Lucifer learns 
 that he shall be finally baffled, because the sorrow in 
 which he thought it impossible that God could share 
 
The Divine Man. 19 
 
 has been partaken of by the Divine Man, and Christ 
 has become " an exile from His heaven, to lead these 
 exiles homeward." 
 
 I cannot do justice to these poems without quoting 
 one or two additional passages illustrative of their 
 imaginative and intellectual power, and the strength, 
 blended with splendour, of their language. In a 
 passage as thoughtful as it is beautiful, words are put 
 into the mouth of Christ, describing the influence of 
 His life and death upon the human family. The poet 
 writes as one who believes the prophecy she records. 
 At this time Mrs. Browning's mind was thoroughly 
 imbued with what would be called evangelical the- 
 ology. The prophecy has, in great part, still to be 
 fulfilled, but in its fulfilment is the best hope of the 
 world. Christ speaks : 
 
 At last, 
 
 I, wrapping round Me your humanity, 
 "Which, being sustained, shall never break nor burn 
 Beneath the fire of Godhead, will tread earth, 
 And ransom you and it, and set strong peace 
 Betwixt you and its creatures. With My pangs 
 I will confront your sins ; and since those sins 
 Have sunken to all Nature's heart from yours, 
 The tears of My clean soul shall follow them, 
 And set a holy passion to work clear 
 Absolute consecration. In My brow 
 Of kingly whiteness shall be crowned anew 
 Your discrowned human nature. Look on Me ! 
 As I shall be uplifted on a cross 
 In darkness of eclipse and anguish dread, 
 So shall I lift up in My pierced hands, 
 Not into dark, but light not unto death, 
 But life, beyond the reach of guilt and grief, 
 The whole creation. Henceforth in My name 
 
 22 
 
20 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Take courage, O thou woman man, take hope ! 
 
 Your grave shall be as smooth as Eden's sward, 
 
 Beneath the steps of your prospective thoughts, 
 
 And, one step past it, a new Eden-gate 
 
 Shall open on a hinge of harmony, 
 
 And let you through to mercy. Ye shall fall 
 
 No more, within that Eden, nor pass out 
 
 Any more from it. In which hope, move on, 
 
 First sinners and first mourners. Live and love, 
 
 Doing both nobly, because lowlily ! 
 
 Live and work, strongly, because patiently ! 
 
 And, for the deed of death, trust it to God 
 
 That it be well done, unrepented of, 
 
 And not to loss. And thence, with constant prayers 
 
 Fasten your souls so high, that constantly 
 
 The smile of your heroic cheer may float 
 
 Above all floods of earthly agonies, 
 
 Purification being the joy of pain ! 
 
 It is written that the last enemy that shall be over- 
 come is Death. With sublime audacity the young 
 poet-woman imaginatively realises the taming and 
 slaying of the pale horse on which rides Death. 
 Christ " shall quell him with a breath, and shall lead 
 him where He will, with a whisper in the ear, full of 
 fear, and a hand upon the mane, grand and still." 
 What woman has ever lived except Mrs. Browning 
 that could have imagined and achieved the following 
 passage ? It contains some fantastic lines, but the 
 imagination of a great poet throbs audibly in it as a 
 whole. 
 
 Through the flats of Hades, where the souls assemble, 
 He will guide the Death-steed calm between their ranks, 
 While, like beaten dogs, they a little moan and tremble 
 To see the darkness curdle from the horse's glittering flanks. 
 Through the flats of Hades, where the dreary shade is, 
 
Death-steed. 21 
 
 Up the steep of heaven, will the Tamer guide the steed, 
 
 Up the spheric circles circle above circle, 
 
 We who count the ages shall count the tolling tread 
 
 Every hoof-fall striking a blinder, blanker sparkle 
 
 From the stony orbs, which shall show as they were dead, 
 
 All the way the Death-steed with tolling hoofs shall travel, 
 
 Ashen grey the planets shall be motionless as stones, 
 
 Loosely shall the systems eject their parts coeval, 
 
 Stagnant in the spaces, shall float the pallid moons ; 
 
 Suns that touch their apogees, reeling from their level, 
 
 Shall run back on their axles^in wild, low, broken tunes ; 
 
 Up against the arches of the crystal ceiling 
 
 From the horse's nostrils shall steam the blurting breath ; 
 
 Up between the angels pale with silent feeling, 
 
 Will the Tamer calmly lead the horse of Death ; 
 
 Cleaving all that silence, cleaving all that glory, 
 
 Will the Tamer lead him straightway to the Throne : 
 
 " Look out, O Jehovah, to this I bring before Thee 
 
 With a hand nail-pierced, I, who am Thy Son." 
 
 Then the Eye Divinest, from the Deepest, flaming 
 
 On the mystic courser, shall look out in fire ! 
 
 Blind the beast shall stagger where It overcame him, 
 
 Meek as lamb at pasture bloodless in desire 
 
 Down the beast shall shiver, slain amid the taming, 
 
 And, by Life essential, the phantasm Death expire. 
 
 Hitherto our quotations have been from the Drama 
 of Exile. The next is from The Seraphim. That 
 poem describes the emotions with which Zerah and 
 Ador, two of the heavenly host, contemplate the work 
 of Christ upon earth, and in particular the death upon 
 Calvary. One or two descriptive touches, rendering 
 the appearance of the crowd, are terrible in their 
 graphic vividness. 
 
 With the living's pride 
 They stare at those who die, who hang 
 In their sight and die. They bear the streak 
 
22 Elizabeth Barrett Broivning. 
 
 Of the crosses' shadow, black not wide, 
 To fall on their heads, as it swerves aside 
 
 When the victims' pang 
 
 Makes the crosses creak. 
 
 The thieves, penitent and impenitent, who were 
 crucified with Christ, are depicted. 
 
 Zerah. One 
 
 Is as a man who has sinned, and still 
 Doth wear the wicked will, 
 The hard malign life-energy, 
 Tossed outward, in the parting soul's disdain, 
 On brow and lip that cannot change again. 
 
 Ador. And one 
 
 Zerah. Has also sinned. 
 
 And yet (0 marvel !) doth the Spirit-wind 
 Blow white those waters ? Death upon his face 
 Is rather shine than shade, 
 A tender shine by looks beloved made. 
 He seemeth dying in a quiet place, 
 And less by iron wounds in hands and feet, 
 Than heart-broke by new joy too sudden and sweet. 
 
 Could anything be more tender in its loveliness than 
 the line, " He seemeth dying in a quiet place " ? 
 
 While the seraphs look upon the crucifixion, they 
 muse on the fact that, much as they and their angel 
 kindred may love God, they cannot love Him so well 
 as redeemed mankind. 
 
 Ador. Do we love not ? 
 
 Zerah. Yea, 
 
 But not as man shall ! Not with life for death, 
 New-throbbing through the startled being ! Not 
 "With strange astonished smiles, that ever may 
 Gush passionate like tears and fill their place ! 
 Nor yet with speechless memories of what 
 
Christ on the Cross. 23 
 
 Earth's winters were, enverduring the green 
 
 Of every heavenly palm, 
 
 Whose windless, shadeless calm 
 Moves only at the breath of the Unseen. 
 Oh, not with this blood on us and this face, 
 Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore 
 In our behalf, and tender evermore 
 With nature all our own, upon us gazing ! 
 Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising 
 Their unreproachful wounds, alone to bless. 
 
 Love Hun more, O man ! 
 
 Than sinless seraphs can. 
 
 The description of the moment when Christ dies, 
 and the earth is shrouded in darkness, is one of the 
 most sublime passages that has been written since the 
 death of Milton. 
 
 Zerah. The pathos hath the day undone : 
 The death-look of His eyes 
 Hath overcome the sun, 
 And made it sicken in its narrow skies. 
 Ador. Is it to death ? He dieth. 
 
 Zerah. Through the dark 
 
 He still, He only, is discernible 
 The naked hands and feet, transfixed stark, 
 The countenance of patient anguish white, 
 Do make themselves a light 
 
 More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell, 
 And therein do they shine. 
 
 The epilogue, in which the poet gently comments on 
 her own daring song, is full of grace and pathos. 
 
 Ah ! what am I 
 To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened, 
 
 Seraphic brows of light 
 And seraph language never used nor hearkened ? 
 
24 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Ah me ! What word that seraphs say could come 
 From mouth so used to sighs so soon to lie 
 Signless, because then breathless in the tomb ? 
 
 ****** 
 Forgive me, that mine earthly heart should dare 
 Shape images of unincarnate spirits, 
 And lay upon their burning lips a thought 
 Cold with the weeping which mine earth inherits ! 
 And though ye find in such hoarse music, wrought 
 To copy yours, a cadence all the while 
 Of sin and sorrow only pitying smile ! 
 
 Ye know to pity, well. 
 I, too, may haply smile another day 
 At the far recollection of this lay, 
 When God may call me in your midst to dwell, 
 To hear your most sweet music's miracle 
 And see your wondrous faces. May it be ! 
 For His remembered sake,^he Slain on rood, 
 Who rolled His earthly, garment red in blood 
 (Treading the wine-press) that the weajk, like me, 
 Before His heavenly throne should walk in white. 
 
 Such are the astonishing poems in which Elizabeth 
 Barrett Barrett, now above thirty, announced that 
 another great poet had arisen in England, a poet 
 of almost excessive fervour and intensity, whose 
 imagination would quail before nothing in heaven, 
 earth, or hell, and who possessed, at the same time, 
 the deepest tenderness that could dwell in a woman's 
 heart. Putting aside Dante and Milton, T know 
 nothing in religious poetry at all comparable, for 
 imaginative power, with the Drama of Exile and The 
 Seraphim. That they are imperishable is, I should 
 say, probable ; but the probability is clouded with a 
 doubt from the fact that they are conspicuously defec- 
 tive in one quality of great and deathless poetry, to 
 
The Defect of these Poems. 25 
 
 wit, simplicity. Able as she was to use " the mother 
 tongue of noble passion," the woman singer could not 
 perfectly trust to simple language. It would, perhaps, 
 be more correct to say that her imagination was too 
 vehement, too impetuous, to be restrained by judgment, 
 and that, like a strong, wild horse of the desert, when 
 first mounted, it took the bit in its teeth and ran away 
 with the rider. At all events, the imagery of these 
 poems, especially of the first, is so vaguely gorgeous 
 and erudite, the invention so elaborate and complex, 
 that many readers will be -permanently repelled 
 by them. "The sense reels," I wrote formerly, and 
 a new reading has not altered my opinion, " under the 
 bewildering pageantry of earth spirits, and bird spirits, 
 and river spirits, of zodiacs, and stars, and chorussing 
 angels; the mind is perplexed with gnomons, and 
 apogees, and vibrations, and infinites. One stares on 
 all this as one might on the foam, glorious in its 
 shivered snow and wavering irises, which roars and 
 raves round a coral reef. The vessel draws near the 
 reef, and many an eye looks into the foam ; but its 
 beauty fascinates only for a moment, and the sail fills, 
 and the island is left for ever. Never, perhaps, is it 
 known that in the heart of that island, hidden by the 
 torn fringes of tinted foam, there was soft green grass, 
 and a quiet, crystal fountain, and cottages smiling in 
 the light of flowers, and all the home affections." 
 
 I beg to express the earnest hope that my readers, 
 if they have not yet studied these memorable poems, 
 will not permit themselves- to be repelled by the 
 
26 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 demands they make upon the attention and the 
 thinking faculty. They bear throughout the impress 
 of an original mind and a sovereign imagination, and 
 the deep beating of a woman's heart makes rare, sweet 
 melody in them from first to last. Amid the stormy 
 grandeurs of their imagery, this deep music comes in 
 with enhanced effect, as the penetrating tenderness of 
 " Home, Sweet Home " might come in amid the melo- 
 dious crash and clamour of orchestral thunderings. 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 A VISION OF POETS, AND THE POET'S VOW. 
 
 IN A Vision of Poets and The Poet's Vow, the in- 
 fluence of Tennyson is traceable. If A Dream of 
 Fair Women and The Palace of A rt had never been 
 written, the likelihood is that neither would have seen 
 the light. And yet it is not easy to point out the 
 effect produced by Tennyson, for the poems are in 
 different measures from his, and the mode of treat- 
 ment in the respective works is diverse. The influence 
 is felt first, in cadences that recall Tennysonian 
 tones ; secondly, in the construction of one, at least, of 
 the poems ; and, thirdly, in their reasonings and con- 
 clusions. A Vision of Poets opens thus : 
 
 A poet could not sleep aright, 
 
 For his soul kept up too much light 
 
 Under his eyelids for the night. 
 
 And thus he rose disquieted 
 
 With sweet rhymes ringing through his head, 
 
 And in the forest wandered. 
 
 In Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women, the poet falls 
 asleep and straightway wanders in "an old wood." 
 The resemblance here is so close that, although Mrs. 
 
28 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Browning, in the subsequent arrangement of her 
 machinery, does not follow Tennyson, the recollec- 
 tion of it clings to the reader. I cannot say that, in 
 the invention and delineation of the visions which the 
 hero of Mrs. Browning's poems sees in the forest, she 
 is so felicitous as Tennyson. Again she lacks sim- 
 plicity. Her poem is too long, also, and she detracts 
 from the effect of stanzas of great power and splen- 
 dour by addition of others that are of far inferior 
 excellence. Nevertheless, there is in the piece the 
 vitality of genius. Several of the word-portraits of 
 " God's prophets of the Beautiful " are true to the life 
 and rich in suggestive meaning. 
 
 Here, Homer, with the broad suspense 
 Of thunderous brows, and lips intense 
 Of garrulous god-innocence. 
 
 The "broad suspense of thunderous brows " has, to 
 my thinking, more sound than sense ; but the " garru- 
 lous god-innocence " the child-like, joyous conscious- 
 ness that gods and heroes are inexpressibly interesting, 
 and worthy of being talked about and sung about 
 without end must strike every one who at all knows 
 the Homeric poems as singularly happy and accurate. 
 
 There Shakespeare ! on whose forehead climb 
 The crowns of the world. Oh, eyes sublime 
 With tears and laughter for all time ! 
 
 Turning again to the ancients, she throws a few 
 words on the page, and likeness after likeness starts up. 
 
 Hesiod old, 
 
 Who, somewhat blind and deaf and cold, 
 Cared most for gods and bulls. And bold, 
 
Prophets of the Beautiful. 29 
 
 Electric Pindar, quick as fear, 
 
 With race -dust on his cheeks, and clear 
 
 Slant startled eyes that seem to hear 
 
 The chariot rounding the last goal, 
 To hurtle past it in its soul. 
 And Sappho, with that gloriole 
 
 Of ebon hair on calmed brows 
 0, poet- woman ! none foregoes 
 The leap, attaining the repose ! 
 
 She throws Spenser into a group with Ariosto, and 
 adds a stanza which hardly does justice to Dante. 
 
 And Spenser drooped his dreaming head 
 (With languid sleep -smile you had said 
 From his own verse engendered) 
 
 On Ariosto's, till they ran 
 Their curls in one. The Italian 
 Shot nimbler heat of bolder man 
 
 From his fine lids. And Dante stern 
 And sweet, whose spirit was an urn 
 For wine and milk, poured out in turn. 
 
 We have sketches of Alfieri, Berni, Tasso, Kacine, 
 Corneille, Petrarch, Camoens, Calderon, De Vega, 
 Goethe, Schiller, Chaucer, and many more. I can 
 make room only for Milton, Burns, and Shelley. 
 
 Here Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim : 
 The shapes of suns and stars did swim 
 Like clouds from them, and granted him 
 
 God for sole vision. . . , 
 
 And Burns, with pungent passionings 
 Set in his eyes. Deep lyric springs 
 Are of the fire-mount's issuings. 
 
 And Shelley, in his white ideal, 
 All statue blind. 
 
30 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 There is immense ability crowded into these brief 
 limnings. The pungent passionings of Burns's eyes 
 the volcanic fire of soul from which gushed forth his 
 songs these are the descriptive strokes of one who 
 had looked into the very heart of the man. Scott saw 
 Burns once, but he never forgot his eyes, which 
 burned, says Sir Walter, like gig-lamps. The lines on 
 Shelley are as wonderful as any in the poem. " The 
 words contain," I said once, " the key to Shelley's 
 biography. It was precisely the dazzling radiance of 
 Shelley's ideal which struck him stone-blind to the 
 actual world." 
 
 As we proceed in our examination of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's poems, we find them becoming more human in 
 subject and more simple in treatment. Lucifer and 
 Gabriel and the Seraphim give place to earth-born 
 poets ; but even the poets form part of the pageantry 
 of a vision. In The Poet's Vow, however, we have 
 human personages, without any visionary or phantas- 
 magoric aids or hindrances to the imagination. At 
 the outset in the second and third stanzas of the 
 poem there occurs a brief but beautiful description of 
 evening. 
 
 The rowers lift their oars to view 
 
 Each other in the sea, 
 The landsmen watch the rocking boats 
 
 In a pleasant company, 
 While up the hill go gladlier still 
 
 Dear friends by two and three. 
 
 The peasant's wife hath looked without 
 Her cottage door and smiled, 
 
The Poet's Vow. 31 
 
 For there the peasant drops his spade 
 
 To clasp his youngest child 
 Which hath no speech, but his hands can reach 
 
 And stroke his forehead mild. 
 
 This picture of Nature's hushed landscape at the fall 
 of evening prepares us for the strikingly original con- 
 ception of a man a poet whose very serenity attests 
 the coldness of his heart. 
 
 You would not think that brow coiild e'er 
 
 Ungentle moods express : 
 Yet seemed it, in this troubled world, 
 
 Too calm for gentleness ; 
 When the very star, that shines from afar, 
 
 Shines trembling, ne'ertheless. 
 
 There was in his face none of that "softening light" 
 which the presence of others, awakening sympathy in 
 us, supplies. " None gazed within the poet's face; the 
 poet gazed in none ; " he had resolved to wean himself 
 from all association with the base brotherhood of man- 
 kind, to be rid of the " weights and shows of sensual 
 things,'* to hear no cry haunting the earth as with the 
 appeal of Abel's blood. Earth, he says, with all her 
 creatures, has been cursed in the curse of man ; but he 
 does not partake in the sin ; and, in sympathy with 
 Nature, he is sensible of "an holy wrath " that impels 
 him to break the bondage knitting him to his kind. 
 Accordingly he makes a vow, to this effect : 
 
 Hear me forswear man's sympathies, 
 
 His pleasant yea and no 
 His riot on the piteous earth 
 
 Whereon his thistles grow ! 
 His changing love with stars above ! 
 
 His pride with graves below ! 
 
32 Elizabeth Barrett Broioning. 
 
 Hear me forswear his roof by night, 
 
 His bread and salt by day, 
 His talkings at the wood-fire hearth, 
 
 His greetings by the way, 
 His answering looks, his systemed books, 
 
 All man, for aye and aye. 
 
 Alone with Nature, he expects that his purged heart, 
 " rent " from its human debasements, will drink of 
 Nature's wine of wonder and beauty, and that he will 
 share with clouds and trees and waters the blessing of 
 serenity which they had before earth was blasted by 
 Adam's sin. The mystic affection of Nature encircling 
 him will be better than that of child, friend, wife, or 
 countryman. 
 
 And ever, when I lift my brow 
 
 At evening to the sun, 
 No voice of woman or of child 
 
 Recording "Day is done," 
 Your silence shall a love express 
 
 More deep than such an one ! 
 
 Having determined irrevocably, he takes measures 
 to give effect to his resolution. Sharing his silver and 
 gold among his crowding friends, he finds his gifts 
 accepted with bland complacency, and his hand taken, 
 for the last time, " in a somewhat slacker hold." The 
 crowd having passed away, he has to deal with two 
 who remain, one of them his friend of friends among 
 men, the other his more than friend among women. 
 He proposes that his best friend shall wed Rosalind, 
 his "plighted bride," that his ancestral lands shall 
 serve her for dower, and that the pair shall neither 
 
Rosalind and Sir Roland. 33 
 
 remember nor lament him. Kosalind looks upon him 
 silently, with unspeakable meaning in her face, 
 
 Like a child that never knew but love, 
 Whom words of wrath surprise. 
 
 The tears come when she attempts to speak, but at 
 last her words make way, and she gently remonstrates 
 against his gospel of heartless pride. 
 
 I thought but I am half a child, 
 
 And very sage art thou 
 The teachings of the heaven and earth 
 
 Should keep us soft and low. 
 
 She spurns, as every true woman would, his con- 
 siderate offer of a livelihood. If Elaine cannot have 
 Lancelot, the knight may keep his proffered money. 
 Nor will Rosalind marry the respected friend to whom 
 her lover graciously hands her over. 
 
 I will not live Sir Eoland's bride 
 
 That dower I will not hold ! 
 I tread below my feet that go, 
 
 These parchments bought and sold. 
 The tears I weep are mine to keep, 
 
 And worthier than thy gold. 
 
 Sir Roland rebukes him in terms less touching, but 
 more sublime. 
 
 And thou, distant, sinful heart, 
 
 That climbest up so high, 
 To wrap and blind thee with the snows 
 
 That cause to dream and die 
 What blessing can from lips of man 
 
 Approach thee with his sigh ? 
 
 Ay ! what, from earth create for man, 
 And moaning in his moan ? 
 
34 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Ay ! what from stars revealed to man, 
 
 And man-named, one by one ? 
 Ay, more ! what blessing can be given, 
 Where the spirits seven do show in heaven 
 
 A MAN upon the throne ? 
 
 A man on earth He wandered once, 
 
 All meek and undefiled : 
 And those who loved Him, said " He wept " 
 
 None ever said He smiled, 
 Yet there might have been a smile unseen, 
 When He bowed His holy face, I ween, 
 
 To bless that happy child. 
 
 The poet persists in his purpose. If Rosalind and 
 Sir Eoland will not have his lands, the poor shall be 
 endowed with them. For his part, he betakes him 
 to the ruined hall of Courland, where bats cling to 
 the ceilings and lizards run on the floors, to live in 
 isolation from mankind. 
 
 Year after year passes on ; but whether it is that 
 Christians wend by to their prayers, or that bridal 
 parties trip along in festive array, or that little 
 children stand near the wall to see the green lizards, 
 he has no word, no blessing, no sympathy for any- 
 thing in human shape. 
 
 Rosalind, pining heart-broken, lies at last on her 
 death-bed. She then tells the " loving nurse " to 
 smooth her tresses when she is dead, to uplift her 
 hands, laying them, palm to palm, to place her on a 
 bier, and to put beneath her head a pillow formed of 
 flowers like those which she used to gather when she 
 and her poet-lover played as children in the woods. 
 When " the corpse 's smile " appeared on the face, the 
 
The Procession of the Corpse. 35 
 
 nurse was to place upon the breast a scroll, and " the 
 youngest children dear " were to carry the dead 
 Kosalind, not to the churchyard, but to the old hall 
 of Courland. 
 
 And up the bank where I used to sit 
 
 And dream what life would be, 
 Along the brook, with its sunny look 
 
 Akin to living glee, 
 O'er the windy hill, through the forest still, 
 
 Let them gently carry me. 
 
 ***** 
 
 And when withal they near the hall, 
 
 In silence let them lay 
 My bier before the bolted door, 
 
 And leave it for a day : 
 For I have vowed, though I am proud, 
 To go there as a guest in shroud, 
 
 And not be turned away. 
 
 These instructions are obeyed. The poet, secure at 
 midnight from human intrusion, unbolts his door, 
 looks out beneath the stars, and sees their cold light 
 on the face of the dead. 
 
 It lay before him, human-like, 
 
 Yet so unlike a thing ! 
 More awful in its shrouded pomp 
 
 Than any crowned king, 
 All calm and cold, as it did hold 
 
 Some secret, glorying. 
 
 A heavier weight than of its clay 
 
 Clung to his heart and knee, 
 As if those folded palms could strike, 
 
 He staggered groaningly, 
 And then o'erhung, without a groan, 
 The meek close mouth that smiled alone, 
 
 Whose speech the scroll must be. 
 
 32 
 
36 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 The words of the scroll are too many for quotation, 
 except in part. 
 
 I have prayed for thee with silent lips 
 
 In the anguish none could see ; 
 They whispered oft, " She sleepeth soft " 
 
 But I only prayed for thee. 
 
 Go to ! I pray for thee no more 
 
 The corpse's tongue is still. 
 Its folded fingers point to heaven, 
 
 But point there stiff and chill. 
 No farther wrong, no farther woe, 
 Hath license from the sin below 
 
 Its tranquil heart to thrill. 
 
 I charge thee, by the living's prayer, 
 
 And the dead's silentness, 
 To wring from out thy soul a cry 
 
 Which God shall hear and bless ! 
 Lest heaven's own palm droop in my hand, 
 And pale among the saints I stand, 
 
 A saint companionless. 
 
 The parallelism between the death of Rosalind and 
 the journey of her corpse to the hall of Courland and 
 the death of Elaine and the journey of her corpse to 
 Camelot, as detailed in one of Tennyson's Idylls, can 
 hardly escape notice. Mrs. Browning, however, was 
 first in the field, unless, indeed, the journey of the 
 dead Kosalind was suggested by the voyage of 
 the Lady of Shalott, which may, I think, be fairly 
 excluded from the list of probabilities. There can, at 
 all events, be no dispute as to the originality of Mrs. 
 Browning in relation to the part played by the corpse. 
 The dead Lady of Shalott has no scroll on breast or in 
 hand, and the scroll was laid by Mrs. Browning on the 
 breast of her Kosalind before the letter was put into 
 
The Poet Vanquished. 37 
 
 the dead hand of Elaine by Tennyson. Rosalind's 
 scroll, moreover, serves a more important purpose 
 than Elaine's letter. Elaine comes to take farewell of 
 Lancelot. She makes no complaint, utters no re- 
 proach, asks Lancelot to join others in praying for her 
 soul as "a knight peerless." The conception of an 
 appeal made by the dead to the living, as a means of 
 producing a complete change and transformation in 
 the latter, belongs exclusively to Mrs. Browning. The 
 appeal of the dead Rosalind proves irresistible. The 
 poet bows his face on the corpse in a paroxysm of 
 anguish and remorse. 
 
 'Twas a dread sight to see them so 
 For the senseless corpse rocked to and fro 
 With the wail of his living mind. 
 
 His " long-subjected humanness " asserted itself 
 with lion-like strength, "and fiercely rent its tenement 
 in a mortal agony." 
 
 I tell you, friends, had you heard his wail, 
 'Twould haunt you in court and mart, 
 
 And in merry feast until you set 
 Your cup down to depart 
 
 That weeping wild of a reckless child 
 From a proud man's broken heart. 
 
 Meanwhile the " worshipped earth and sky," the 
 stars and hills for which he had renounced human 
 fellowship, " looked on all indifferently." Finding no 
 solace" in these, he turned to his dead Rosalind and 
 died upon her breast : 
 
 For when they came at dawn of day 
 To lift the lady's corpse away, 
 Her bier was holding twain. 
 
38 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Tennyson, describing the temptation treated of in 
 The Palace of Art, says that " he that shuts love out, 
 in turn shall be shut out from love, and on her 
 threshold lie howling in outer darkness." The words 
 are an expressive statement of Mrs. Browning's thesis 
 in A Poet's Vow. But there is a difference in the way 
 in which, in the respective poems, the temptation is 
 yielded to. The " sinful soul " of Tennyson's allegory 
 turns from the crowd from the nation from the 
 general mass of mankind, but by no means relinquishes 
 humanity. She takes refuge in art, in literature, in 
 philosophy. She dwells with the great poetic makers 
 of all time. Sculpture and painting fill the corridors 
 of her palace with images, and light up its walls with 
 pictures. She hates mankind, but adores the select 
 few who have risen above the multitude, and the very 
 essence of her sin is the pride on which she values 
 herself as a sister of these. Mrs. Browning's poet 
 forsakes man altogether, his " systemed books " as 
 well as his popular follies, his poems and pictures as 
 well as his senates and market-places, and seeks, in 
 the companionship of Nature, a sympathy more pure* 
 lofty, and serene than humanity, high or low, can 
 yield. Her poem, therefore, is the ethical complement 
 of Tennyson's, and The Palace of Art and A Poet's 
 Vow form between them an exhaustive treatment, 
 under poetic symbols, of the cardinal sin of isolation 
 from human interests, duties, affections, joys, and 
 griefs. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE ROMAUNT OF 'MARGRET ISOBEL'S CHILD 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST- 
 BERTHA IN THE LANE. 
 
 THE Romaunt of Margret is cast, to some extent, 
 in the mould of the old ballads, to about the 
 same extent as Eossetti's Sister Helen, but it lacks 
 the simplicity of the deep-thoughted harpers and 
 minstrels whose reliques were collected by Bishop 
 Percy and Walter Scott. It is a mysterious, painful, 
 uncanny poem, suggestive of ghosts and haunted 
 river-sides, and telling, dimly and eerily, a tale of 
 love and suicide. A " fair ladye " sits by a river that 
 runs by a hill and through forest trees, dreaming 
 pleasantly of her lover. The darkness of night deepens 
 the black of her hair, " and the pale moonlight on her 
 forehead white like a spirit's hand is laid." Her shadow 
 lies on the river, steady and changeless while the river 
 never rests : 
 
 Most like a trusting heart 
 
 Upon a passing faith, 
 Or as, upon the course of life, 
 
 The steadfast doom of death. 
 
40 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 We now begin to feel that the forest is the scene 
 of some "enchantment drear." The lady's shadow 
 collects itself into a wraith or double. 
 
 It shaketh without wind, 
 
 It parteth from the tide, 
 It standeth upright in the cleft moonlight 
 
 It sitteth at her side. 
 
 Look in its face, ladye, 
 
 And keep thee from thy swound ! 
 With a spirit bold thy pulses hold, 
 
 And hear its voice's sound ! 
 
 For so will sound thy voice, 
 
 When thy face is to the wall ! 
 And such wiU be thy face, ladye, 
 
 When the maidens work thy pall ! 
 
 The lady and her ghostly double engage in talk, and 
 though it is difficult to assign a precise meaning to 
 the utterances of the wraith, they imply that, for some 
 too darkly-hinted reason, the lady has lost the supreme 
 and trustful love of her brother, her sister, and her 
 father, and that her chosen knight is dead. The 
 wraith, after telling her that those of her own blood 
 have ceased to love her, speaks of the absent 
 knight : 
 
 He loved but only thee ! 
 
 That love is transient, too, 
 The wild hawk's bill doth dabble still 
 
 I' the mouth that vowed thee true. 
 Will he open his dull eyes, 
 
 When tears fall on his brow ? 
 Behold, the death-worm to his heart 
 
 Is a nearer thing than thou. 
 
The Romaunt of Margret. 41 
 
 Accepting these intimations of her other self, the 
 lady decides that life is intolerable. 
 
 Her face was on the ground 
 
 None saw the agony ! 
 But the men at sea did that night agree 
 
 They heard a drowning cry. 
 And when the morning brake, 
 
 Fast rolled the river's tide, 
 With the green trees waving overhead, 
 
 And a white corse laid beside. 
 
 The gloomy intent of the whole poem seems to be 
 suggested in the last four lines. 
 
 O failing human love ! 
 
 O light by darkness known ! 
 false, the while thou treadest earth, 
 
 O deaf, beneath the stone ! 
 
 Whether the pride of the baron, her father, in whose 
 court are a hundred knights, had parted the lovers, we 
 are not distinctly told. As much may, however, be 
 inferred ; for while the brother and sister weep for the 
 lady and kiss her corpse, the baron stands "alone yet 
 proudly " in his hall. Pride and death have triumphed 
 over love. The poem displays imaginative power, but 
 the machinery, though perhaps in keeping with that 
 of the old folk-lore ballads, is grotesque. It is an 
 attempt to realise in poetic form the semi-delirious 
 dreamings of an unhappy lady before committing 
 suicide ; and it may be doubted whether such a subject 
 was worthy of Mrs. Browning. 
 
 In Isabel's Child our woman-poet is again at her 
 strongest. For torrent-like fulness of meaning, for 
 
42 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 rich and solemn swell of musical harmony, for the 
 compression that betokens maturity of power, for 
 truth of imaginative colouring, this poem is perhaps 
 superior to anything we have yet examined of her 
 work. She wrote it before her marriage, yet it seems 
 safe to say that the emotions of maternity were never 
 expressed with such impassioned tenderness. 
 
 The weary nurse has gone to rest, tired by an eight- 
 day watch, and now Isobel takes her babe on her own 
 knee, rejoicing inexpressibly in the thought that the 
 fever is waning, that the child is sleeping well in the 
 shadow of her smile. Outside, the sun is darkened as 
 if in strange eclipse, the forest and the clouds are rent 
 or tossed with storm, but the external noises only 
 deepen the silent joy of the mother's soul. 
 
 So motionless she sate, 
 The babe asleep upon her knees, 
 You might have dreamed their souls had gone 
 Away to things inanimate, 
 In such to live, in such to moan ; 
 And that their bodies had ta'en back, 
 In mystic change, all silences 
 That cross the sky in cloudy rack, 
 Or dwell beneath the reedy ground 
 In waters safe from their own sound. 
 
 Only she wore 
 
 The deepening smile I named before, 
 And that a deepening love expressed 
 And who at once can love and rest ? 
 
 Her smile was joyful in proportion to the anxiety 
 she had suffered in the eight-day watch, which, indeed, 
 had been " an eight-day weeping." The picture of the 
 mother and the child say, rather the group chiselled 
 
Isobel's Child. 43 
 
 by fine words as if in vivid marble is a thing to be 
 remembered. 
 
 Motionless she sate, 
 
 Her hair had fallen by its weight 
 
 On each side of her smile, and lay 
 
 Very blackly on the arm 
 
 Where the baby nestled warm, 
 
 Pale as baby carved in stone 
 
 Seen by glimpses of the moon 
 
 Up a dark cathedral aisle ! 
 
 But, through the storm, no moonbeam fell 
 
 Upon the child of Isobel 
 
 Perhaps you saw it by the ray 
 
 Alone of her still smile. 
 
 We now learn that, during the eight days of 
 watching, Isobel had prayed importunately that her 
 child might live. She had been bold in her prayer. 
 
 Oh, take not, Lord, my babe away 
 Oh, take not to Thy songful heaven, 
 The pretty baby Thou hast given. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Think, God among the cherubim, 
 
 How I shall shiver every day 
 
 In Thy June sunshine, knowing where 
 
 The grave-grass keeps it from his fair 
 
 Still cheeks ! and feel at every tread 
 
 His little body which is dead 
 
 And hidden in the turfy fold, 
 
 Doth make the whole warm earth a- cold ! 
 
 God, I am so young, so young 
 
 1 am not used to tears at nights 
 Instead of slumber nor to prayer 
 With sobbing lips and hands outwrung ! 
 
 * * * * * 
 Dear Lord, who spreadest out above 
 Thy loving, transpierced hands to meet 
 All lifted hearts with blessing sweet, 
 
44 Elizabeth Barrett Broivning. 
 
 Pierce not my heart, my tender heart, 
 Thou madest tender ! Thou who art 
 So happy in Thy heaven alway, 
 Take not mine only bliss away ! 
 
 Her petition is granted. The child is manifestly 
 recovering. But, with a touch of the supernatural, 
 which is well managed in the poem, the baby begins 
 to speak to Isobel and she listens. 
 
 mother, mother, loose thy prayer ! 
 Christ's name hath made it strong ! 
 
 It bindeth me, it holdeth me 
 With its most loving cruelty 
 From floating my new soul along 
 
 The happy, heavenly air ! 
 It bindeth me, it holdeth me 
 In all this dark, upon this dull 
 
 Low earth, by only weepers trod ! 
 It bindeth me, it holdeth me ! 
 Mine angel looketh sorrowful 
 
 Upon the face of God. 
 
 The child prevails. The prayer is recalled. When 
 the nurse, awakening in the morning sun, looks to the 
 mother, she sees the babe dead on Isobel' s arm. She 
 could utter no cry, so calm was the mother's face. 
 
 " Wake, nurse ! " the lady said : 
 " We are waking he and I 
 
 1 on earth, and he in sky ! 
 
 And thou must help me to o'erlay 
 With garment white this little clay, 
 Which needs no more our lullaby. 
 
 I changed the cruel prayer I made, 
 And bowed my meekened face, and prayed 
 That God would do His will ! and thus 
 He did it, nurse ! He parted us. 
 And His sun shows victorious 
 
Little Ellie. 45 
 
 The dead calm face, and I am calm; 
 And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm." 
 
 Resigned to wait until she shall meet her child in 
 heaven, she addresses herself to her earthly duties, 
 satisfied that God's will is more loving than hers. 
 
 The Eomance of the Swan's Nest is a brilliant little 
 poem, delicately light in its pictorial touch, pensively 
 gay in its musical cadence. It opens with a vignette 
 portrait of the heroine. 
 
 Little Ellie sits alone 
 'Mid the beeches of a meadow, 
 
 By a stream-side, on the grass, 
 
 And the trees are showering down 
 Doubles of their leaves in shadow, 
 
 On her shining face and hair. 
 
 She has thrown her bonnet by ; 
 And her feet she has been dipping 
 
 In the shallow water's flow 
 
 Now she holds them nakedly 
 In her hands, all sleek and dripping, 
 
 While she rocketh to and fro. 
 
 As she rocks, she thinks of a swan's nest, with two 
 precious eggs, which she has found among the reeds. 
 A vision of the knight who is to he her lover rises 
 before her. He will be a noble fellow, playing on 
 the lute to the enchantment of ladies, smiting with 
 the sword to the astonishment of men ; and his steed 
 is to be a red-roan steed of steeds, shod in silvei 
 and housed in blue. This paragon is to be sent by 
 little Ellie "to put away all wrong," and to empty the 
 quiver of the wicked. Three times he is to send his 
 
46 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 foot-page to Ellie for a word of comfort. She is to be 
 coy and proud. The first time she will send him a 
 white rose-bud ; the second a glove ; at the third time 
 of asking, she will permit him to return and claim her 
 hand. When he has come, and they are man and 
 wife, she will show him the swan's nest among the 
 reeds. Mrs. Browning shall tell the rest. 
 
 Little Ellie, with her smile 
 Not yet ended, rose up gaily , 
 
 Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe 
 
 And went homeward, round a mile, 
 Just to see, as she did daily, 
 
 What more eggs were with the two. 
 
 Pushing through the elm-tree copse, 
 Winding by the stream, light-hearted, 
 
 Where the osier pathway leads 
 
 Past the boughs she stoops and stops : 
 Lo ! the wild swan had deserted 
 
 And a rat had gnawed the reeds. 
 
 Ellie went home sad and slow. 
 If she found the lover ever, 
 
 With his red-roan steed of steeds, 
 
 Sooth I know not ! but I know 
 She could never show him never, 
 
 That swan's nest among the reeds ! 
 
 Bertha in the Lane calls for no special remark. 
 The heroine dies of a broken heart, because her 
 lover forsakes her for her younger sister. The tone of 
 the poem is oppressively sad. In Bertha the poet 
 depicts one of those weak, gentle, beautiful, ill-starred 
 persons, who seem born to make way for happier and 
 more potent natures. The following lines describe the 
 
Bertha in the Lane. 47 
 
 character with psychological exactness and fine poetic 
 imagery. It is Bertha who speaks, addressing the 
 sister who has been preferred by the lover. 
 
 I had died, dear, all the same- 
 Life's long, joyous, jostling game 
 Is too loud for my meek shame. 
 
 We are so unlike each other, 
 
 Thou and I, that none could guess 
 
 We were children of one mother, 
 But for mutual tenderness. 
 
 Thou art rose -lined from the cold, 
 
 And meant, verily, to hold 
 
 Life's pure pleasures manifold. 
 
 I am pale as crocus grows 
 
 Close beside a rose-tree's root ! 
 Whosoe'er would reach the rose, 
 
 Treads the crocus underfoot 
 JT, like May-bloom on thorn-tree 
 Thou, like merry summer bee ! 
 Fit, that I be plucked for thee. 
 
CHAPTEK V. 
 
 1 HER PHILANTHROPIC POETRY. THE RUNAWAY 
 SLAVE; THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 
 
 MKS. BKOWNING, as is attested by every one of 
 her works from which I have quoted, wrote 
 not under the impulse of mere art-enthusiasm, but in 
 the expression of emotions and convictions intensely 
 her own. It was natural for such a poet that the 
 great agitations of her time should draw responses 
 from her heart, and that, when she sympathised with 
 any movement for the bettering of mankind, and the 
 vanquishing of wrong, she should make her voice 
 heard in tones of thrilling melody above the clamours 
 of the conflict. 
 
 In the poem entitled The Runaway Slave at 
 Pilgrim's Point, she tells, in her own rapid, ve- 
 hement, suggestive manner, a tale of infinite cruelty 
 and wrong inflicted upon a woman slave. The piece 
 is thrown into the form of a monologue, the injured 
 slave being the narrator of her own sorrows. She 
 finds in her black colour an inevitable and terrible 
 curse, and wonders why, since the dark bird sings 
 merrily in the wood, and the darkest night is passed 
 
The Runaway Slave. 49 
 
 over by the sweetest stars, black human creatures 
 should seem so God-forsaken. 
 
 Indeed we live beneath the sky, 
 
 That great smooth Hand of God stretched out 
 On all His children fatherly 
 
 To save them from the dread and doubt 
 Which would be, if, from this low place, 
 All opened straight up to His face 
 
 Into the grand eternity. 
 
 And still God's sunshine and His frost, 
 They make us hot, they make us cold, 
 
 As if we were not black and lost : 
 
 And the beasts and birds, in wood and fold 
 
 Do fear and take us for very men ! 
 
 Could the weep -poor- will or the cat of the glen 
 Look into my eyes and be bold ? 
 
 But though the blue sky was above her head, "like 
 God's great pity," yet, when she and the slave youth 
 whom she loved prayed to God, no dew of blessing 
 had descended on them. 
 
 I look on the sky and the sea, 
 
 We were two to love, and two to pray, 
 
 Yes, two, O God, who cried to Thee, 
 Though nothing didst Thou say. 
 
 Coldly Thou sat'st behind the sun ! 
 
 And now I cry who am but one, 
 How wilt Thou speak to-day ? 
 
 They two were black. They " had no claim to love 
 and bliss." The oppressors "wrung" her cold hand 
 out of his. 
 
 They dragged him where ? I crawled to touch 
 His blood's mark in the dust ! 
 
 4 
 
50 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 To the murder of her lover " a deeper wrong " was 
 added. 
 
 Mere grief's too good for such as I, 
 
 So the white men brought the shame, ere long 
 To strangle the sob of my agony. 
 
 She had a child. Its whiteness pained her. When 
 she glanced on its face she saw a look that made her 
 mad, 
 
 The master's look, that used to fall 
 On my soul like his lash, or worse. 
 
 In her madness she was prompted to curse it ; 4o 
 save it from her curse, she strangled it. She wandered 
 in the forest till her madness passed away, and then 
 the pursuers came upon her. 
 
 I am not mad : I am black. 
 
 I see you staring in my face 
 I know you staring, shrinking back 
 
 Ye are born of the Washington-race : 
 And this land is the free America : 
 And this mark on my wrist (I prove what I say) 
 
 Ropes tied me up here to the flogging-place. 
 
 She dies cursing the white men in her " broken 
 heart's disdain," after calling the slaves to rise and end 
 what she has begun. This is an appalling story, 
 almost too haggard and hideous in its details for art, 
 but not too strongly coloured for reality, and not, I 
 think, open to legitimate objection as a contribution to 
 the literature of slave emancipation. If the anger 
 of the world is to be invoked against a wrong, 
 especially when that wrong is so ancient and so 
 firmly buttressed about by interests as was American 
 
The Cry of the Children. 51 
 
 slavery, its features must be portrayed in all their 
 blackness. 
 
 I am not prepared to say that there is enough of 
 intrinsic beauty, music, and power in this terrible 
 poem to ensure its long outliving the baneful system 
 which it did its part to overthrow / but there is 
 j nothing from Mrs. Browning's pen more inspired in its 
 * melody, or more glorious in its tragic beauty and 
 pathos, more instinct with what Mr. Buskin calls 
 the stuff of immortality, than that to which I next 
 call the reader's attention. I refer to the celebrated 
 piece in which she lent her advocacy to the cause of 
 the young creatures worn to an untimely death in 
 , English factories. The Cry of the Children is as sure 
 i to live as Hood's Song of the Shirt or Bridge of Sighs. 
 J It is composed in stanzas twelve lines long, each of 
 them coming like a great wave of rhythmic sound, 
 
 burdened with meaning and appeal, and breaking with 
 
 ) a power that must shake the flintiest heart. In the 
 ) first of them we feel that Mrs. Browning is in her 
 highest mood, like that of Deborah when she called 
 upon Israel, or that of the Delphic priestess when the 
 temple rang with the clamorous earnestness of her 
 message. \ 
 
 Do ye heaj4he children weeping, O my brothers, 
 
 Ere the sorrow conies with years ? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
 
 And that cannot stop their tears. 
 The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, 
 
 The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
 The young fawns are playing with the shadows, 
 
 The young flowers are blowing towards the west 
 
 42 
 
52 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 But the young, young children, O my brothers, 
 
 They are weeping bitterly ! 
 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
 
 In the country of the free. 
 
 They look up " with their pale and sunken faces," 
 and the anguish of hoary age " draws and presses 
 down the cheeks of infancy." They have taken but 
 few steps on the earth, yet they are already weary, 
 and their "grave-rest" is far to seek. They some- 
 times, indeed, die when still children ; hut why, they 
 ask, should they wish to live ? When " little Alice '' 
 died, they looked into the pit in which she was laid, 
 and saw no room in it for work. None would cry to 
 her, as she slept in that bed, " Get up, little Alice ! it 
 is day." If they saw her, they would not know her, 
 for she has been long enough away from work to 
 let a smile grow upon her face. " It is good when it 
 happens," say the children, "that we die before 
 our time." In vain you call them into the fields to 
 play. 
 
 " For oh," say the children, " we are weary, 
 
 And we cannot run or leap 
 If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 
 
 To drop down in them and sleep. 
 Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping 
 
 We fall upon our faces trying to go ; 
 And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, 
 
 The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. 
 For all day we drag our burden tiring 
 
 Through the coal-dark underground 
 Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron 
 
 In the factories round and round. 
 
The Cry of the Children. 53 
 
 " For, all day the wheels are droning, turning 
 
 Their wind comes in our faces 
 Till our hearts turn our heads, with pulses burning, 
 
 And the walls turn in their places 
 Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling 
 
 Turns the long light that drops adown the wall 
 Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling 
 
 All are turning, all the day, and we with all 
 And all day the iron wheels are droning ; 
 
 And sometimes we could pray, 
 ' O ye wheels ' (breaking out in a mad moaning) 
 
 Stop ! be silent for to-day ! ' " 
 
 Vain, also, is it to tell the children to pray. The 
 metallic motion and clang around them make their 
 voices inaudible to the men who are near them, and 
 how could God hear? Two words only they re- 
 member in the nature of prayer, and these " Our 
 Father " they utter at midnight as a charm. Mrs. 
 Browning informs us in a footnote that this was an 
 historical fact. If God heard the words, He would 
 surely, think the little ones, send them some assuage* 
 ment of their anguish. 
 
 " But no ! " say the children, weeping faster, 
 
 " He is speechless as a stone ; 
 And they tell us of His image is the master 
 
 Who commands us to work on." 
 " Go to ! " say the children, "up in heaven, 
 
 Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. 
 Do not mock us ; grief has made us unbelieving 
 
 We look up for God, but tears have made us blind." 
 Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, 
 
 O my brothers, what ye preach ? 
 For God's possible is taught by His world's loving 
 
 And the children doubt of each. 
 
 It is some consolation, after reading these terrible 
 
54 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 lines, to know that, in this case also, Mrs. Browning's 
 words were not thrown away, and that the imperious 
 cry of England's relenting heart quelled and over- 
 came that false and remorseless logic false because 
 inhuman which would deliver over children to 
 the taskmaster, secure that mere considerations of 
 the taskmaster's interest would sufficiently protect 
 them. 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 LYBIC PENGILLINGS. 
 
 WITH a sense of relief, however, we turn from 
 these melancholy strains to such bright poetic 
 pencillings as A Child Asleep, The Sea-Mew, and To 
 Flush, My Dog. In all of these there is an undertone 
 of pathos, but no more than suffices to give tone and 
 modulation to their delicate mirthfulness. The 
 sleeping child is a subject that has often been 
 attempted both in sculpture and in painting. No 
 hand has touched it with more tender felicity than 
 Mrs. Browning's. 
 
 How he sleepeth ; having drunken 
 
 Weary childhood's mandragore ! 
 
 From his pretty eyes have sunken 
 
 Pleasures to make room for more 
 Sleeping near the wither'd nosegay which he pulled the day before. 
 
 Nosegays ! leave them for the waking : 
 Throw them earthward where they grew. 
 
 Dim are such beside the breaking 
 
 Amaranths he looks unto 
 Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do. 
 
 Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden 
 
 From the palms they sprang beneath, 
 Now perhaps divinely holden, 
 
 Swing against him in a wreath 
 
 We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his 
 breath. 
 
56 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 The light and joyful spirit of the verses seems to 
 be associated rather with fancy than with earnest 
 imagination, but fancy attains to something of 
 solemnity and sacredness when it takes such flights as 
 we have in the two verses that follow. 
 
 Softly, softly ! make no noises ! 
 
 Now he lieth dead and dumb 
 Now he hears the angels' voices 
 Folding silence in the room 
 
 Now he muses deep the meaning of the Heaven-words as they 
 come. 
 
 Speak not ! He is consecrated 
 
 Breathe no breath across his eyes. 
 Lifted up and separated 
 
 On the hand of God he lies, 
 In a sweetness beyond touching, held in cloistral sanctities. 
 
 The Sea-Mew is one of the most perfect in form of 
 Mrs. Browning's productions. It is a brief ballad- 
 lyric narrating how the young sea-mew lay dreaming 
 on the waves, " and throbbing to the throbbing sea," 
 how he was carried to a garden, and how he died 
 there. I quote three of the verses. 
 
 We were not cruel, yet did sunder 
 
 His white wing from the blue waves under, 
 
 And bound it, while his fearless eyes 
 
 Shone up to ours in calm surprise, 
 As deeming us some ocean wonder ! 
 
 We bore our ocean bird unto 
 
 A grassy place, where he might view 
 
 The flowers that curtsey to the bees, 
 
 The waving of the tall green trees, 
 The falling of the silver dew. 
 
Flush. 57 
 
 But flowers of earth were pale to him 
 Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim ; 
 And when earth's dew around him lay, 
 He thought of ocean's winged spray, 
 And his eye waxed sad and dim. 
 
 With the human touch the human agony passed 
 upon him, and looking up to the waveless sky of blue 
 he died. 
 
 Flush, a dog presented to Mrs. Browning by her 
 friend, Miss Mitford, was her faithful attendant in the 
 sick-room during a long illness. It belonged, Mrs. 
 Browning tells us in a footnote, to a beautiful race of 
 dogs, rendered famous by Miss Mitford in England 
 and America. " The Flushes," she adds, " have their 
 laurels as well as the Caesars, the chief difference (at 
 least the very head and front of it) consisting, perhaps, 
 in the bald head of the latter under the crown." The 
 picture of her own Flush places the dog visibly 
 before us. 
 
 Like a lady's ringlets brown, 
 Flow thy silken ears adown 
 
 Either side demurely 
 Of thy silver-suited breast, 
 Shining out from all the rest 
 
 Of thy body purely. 
 
 Darkly brown thy body is, 
 Till the sunshine striking this 
 
 Alchemise its dulness, 
 When the sleek curls manifold 
 Flash all over into gold 
 
 With a burnished fulness. 
 
58 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Underneath my stroking hand, 
 Startled eyes of hazel bland 
 
 Kindling, growing larger, 
 Up thou leapest with a spring, 
 Full of prank and curveting, 
 
 Leaping like a charger. 
 
 Leap ! thy broad tail waves a light ; 
 Leap ! thy slender feet are bright, 
 
 Canopied in fringes. 
 Leap those tasselled ears of thine 
 Flicker strangely, fair and fine, 
 
 Down their golden inches. 
 
 These are admirably graphic lines, worthy of being 
 set beside those in which Burns commemorates his 
 "friend and comrade" Luath. But the climax of 
 interest, beauty, and pathos is not reached until the 
 poet describes the service rendered by Flush in her 
 sick-room. 
 
 Other dogs may be thy peers 
 
 Haply in these drooping ears, 
 
 And this glossy fairness. 
 
 But of thee it shall be said, 
 This dog watched beside a bed 
 
 Day and night unweary, 
 Watched within a curtained room, 
 Where no sunbeam brake the gloom 
 
 Bound the sick and dreary. 
 
 Other dogs in thymy dew 
 
 Tracked the hares and followed through 
 
 Sunny moor or meadow 
 This dog only crept and crept 
 Next a languid cheek that slept, 
 
 Sharing in the shadow. 
 
Flush. 59 
 
 And this dog was satisfied 
 
 If a pale thin hand would glide 
 
 Down his dew-laps sloping, 
 Which he pushed his nose within, 
 After, platforming his chin 
 
 On the palm left open. 
 
 Among the dogs of literature, Flush will have a 
 place of honour till the English language is forgotten. 
 In the long illness of the poet, which originated in 
 the rupture of a blood-vessel in her lungs, and was 
 brought to a dangerous crisis at Torquay by the 
 drowning of her favourite brother, whose boat was 
 upset before her eyes, Flush contributed more perhaps 
 than Plato and ^Eschylus, whose works would be thrust 
 beneath the pillow to escape the prying glance of her 
 physician, to cheer her spirits and restore her health. 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 
 
 IF Mrs. Browning's intelligent readers were asked 
 to name her most characteristic poem, they would 
 probably fix upon Lady Geraldine's Courtship. The 
 choice would lie between that and The Duchess May. 
 The finest wine of her genius, the intensest elixir of 
 her poetic sympathy, the very essence of her womanly 
 pride, and not less of her womanly ecstasy of self- 
 surrendering humility, as well as her most original 
 imagery, puissant thought, and splendid language, are 
 present in both poems. I should not, for my own 
 part, undertake to say which of the two is the more 
 characteristic; but I should pronounce it impossible 
 for any one to have a right insight into these two 
 without possessing a fairly accurate idea of the dis- 
 tinctive character of her genius. 
 
 Lady Geraldine's Courtship belongs to the same class 
 of poems as Locksley Hall. It is a story of love, and 
 its love-story is delineated in connection with certain 
 
 1 social truths or doctrines which the poet intends to 
 teach. Of these doctrines little is expressly said, 
 
Lady Geraldine's Courtship. 61 
 
 but it is nevertheless from the bearing of the poems 
 upon them that their chief significance is derived. 
 Lady Geraldine's Courtship and Locksley Hall are 
 profoundly democratic in spirit. They belong to the 
 period when the atmosphere of our island was still 
 tingling with the Eeform Bill agitation ; when the 
 hope and aspiration of ardent spirits were stirred with 
 visions of class reconciled to class ; of high and low, 
 rich and poor, warming towards each other in the 
 glow of a common brotherhood; of all distinctions 
 being effaced except those between honest men and 
 knaves, between base men and honourable. " Cursed," 
 says Tennyson in Locksley Hall, " be the social lies 
 that warp us from the living truth ; " " cursed be the 
 gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool." 
 Love, asserting its God-given power and right to make 
 two hearts happy, and to make their love, united in 
 marriage, a fountain of home-happiness for many, is 
 in that poem baffled by worldly pride. In Lady 
 Geraldine's Courtship the same doctrine of the right 
 divine of love to set its foot on the neck of pride is 
 poetically preached in Mrs. Browning's manner. Let 
 us read, to begin with, her sketch of the personages 
 who are the sole actors in the tale, no other persons 
 being so much as named, although the shadowy 
 presence of some others is indicated. 
 
 There's a lady an Earl's daughter, she is proud and she is noble, 
 And she treads the crimson carpet, and she breathes the per- 
 fumed air, 
 
 And a kingly blood sends glances up her princely eye to trouble, 
 And the shadow of a monarch's crown is softened in her hair. 
 
62 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 She has halls among the woodlands, she has castles by the breakers, 
 She has farms and she has manors, she can threaten and com- 
 mand, 
 
 And the palpitating engines snort in steam across her acres, 
 As they mark upon the blasted heaven the measure of the land. 
 
 There are none of England's daughters who can show a prouder 
 
 presence ; 
 
 Upon princely suitors praying she has looked in her disdain : 
 She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants ; 
 What was I that I should love her save for competence to 
 pain? 
 
 I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement, 
 
 As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things. 
 
 Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to my abasement, 
 In her lovely silken murmur, like an angel clad in wings ! 
 
 These words purport to be part of a letter addressed 
 by the poet, Bertram, to his "friend and fellow- 
 student." He proceeds with his description of the 
 lady, and at last names her. 
 
 Many vassals bow before her as her carriage sweeps their doorways ; 
 
 She has blest their little children, as a priest or queen were she ! 
 Far too tender, or too cruel far, her smile upon the poor was, 
 
 For I thought it was the same smile which she used to smile 
 on me. 
 
 She has voters in the Commons, she has lovers in' the palace 
 And of all the fair Court-ladies, few hath jewels half as fine : 
 
 Oft the prince has named her beauty 'twixt the red wine and the 
 
 chalice : 
 Oh, and what was Jto love her ? my beloved, my Geraldine ! 
 
 Being a poet, however, he " could not choose but 
 love her," since poets are born to love all things set 
 above them, all things good and fair, and the Muses 
 are nymphs of the mountain, not of the valley. As a 
 well-reputed poet, he was admitted to rich men's 
 
Lady Geraldine's Courtship. 63 
 
 tables, but even the courtesies he experienced made 
 him feel the distance that separated him from his 
 patrons. They talked of their moors, whispering now 
 and then in insolently condescending terms of their 
 plebeian guest. 
 
 Quite low-born ! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by Nature, 
 
 And we make a point of asking him, of being very kind : 
 You may speak, he does not hear you ; and, besides, he writes no 
 
 satire, 
 
 All these serpents kept by charmers leave their natural sting 
 behind. 
 
 The scorn of these worldlings he encountered with 
 equal scorn, and might have repaid it in glance or 
 word, if Lady Geraldine had not suddenly stepped into 
 the circle and invited him to Wycombe Hall, her 
 mansion in Sussex. This invitation he accepted. 
 Results followed. 
 
 Oh, the blessed woods of Sussex, I can hear them still around me, 
 With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the wind ! 
 
 Oh, the cursed woods of Sussex ! where the hunter's arrow found 
 
 me, 
 When a fair face and a tender voice had made me mad and blind ! 
 
 The second of these lines is exceedingly fine; 
 but, on the whole, they recall too vividly the 
 change that passed on the moorland and the 
 shore " Oh, the dreary, dreary moorland ! Oh, the 
 barren, barren shore ! " when Amy, in Locksley 
 Hall, became unkind. The parallel is by no means 
 exact, yet the suggestion of Tennyson's passage is 
 inevitable. 
 
64 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 A few stanzas further on, we meet with another 
 Tennysonian parallel. Bertram describes Geraldine 
 as he saw her when first her beauty compelled him to 
 love. 
 
 Thus, her foot upon the new-mown grass bareheaded with the 
 flowing 
 
 Of the virginal white vesture gathered closely to her throat, 
 With the golden ringlets in her neck just quickened by her going, 
 
 And appearing to breathe sun for air and doubting if to float, 
 With a branch of dewy maple, which her Tight hand held above her, 
 
 And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her and the 
 
 skies, 
 As she turned her face in going, thus, she drew me on to love her, 
 
 And to worship the divineness of the smile hid in her eyes. 
 
 The lines in Tennyson, of which these remind me, 
 occur in The Gardener's Daughter. 
 
 He cried, " Look ! look ! " Before he ceased I turned, 
 And, ere a star can wink, beheld her there. 
 For up the porch there grew an Eastern rose, 
 That, flowering high, the last night's gale had caught, 
 And blown across the walk. One arm aloft- 
 Gowned in pure white, that fitted to the shape 
 Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood. 
 A single stream of all her soft brown hair 
 Pour'd on one side : the shadow of the flowers 
 Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering 
 Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist 
 Ah, happy shade and still went wavering down, 
 But, ere it touched a foot that might have danced 
 The green sward into greener circles, dipt, 
 And mixed with shadows of the common ground ! 
 But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunn'd 
 Her violet eyes, and all her Hebe bloom, ' 
 And doubled his own warmth against her lips, 
 And on the bounteous wave of such a breast 
 As never pencil drew. Half light, half shade, 
 She stood, a sight to make an old man young. 
 
Symbol and Substance. 65 
 
 Is it a mere trick of the associative faculty which 
 connects these two passages Mrs. Browning's and 
 Tennyson's? I should not allege that Mrs. Browning 
 was conscious of imitating; and the passages might 
 be cited to illustrate the difference in the literary 
 execution of the two poets : Tennyson minute, patient, 
 copious in detail, laying on touch after touch with 
 the calmness of a painter in his studio, Mrs. Brown- 
 ing giving comparatively few touches, and throwing 
 these upon the canvas with impetuous, hurrying 
 speed. Nevertheless, the decisive feature in both 
 descriptions is the branch held in the hand of the 
 lady ; and I cannot help thinking that, whether Mrs. 
 Browning knew it or not, the maple branch was held 
 aloft by Geraldine, because the rose branch had been 
 held aloft by Alice. 
 
 Lady Geraldine frequently favoured Bertram with 
 her conversation, and their talk was apt to turn on 
 high themes, such as the relation of "symbols" to their 
 "essential meaning." They were evidently disposed 
 to agree with the author of Sartor Eesartus, that the 
 truth embodied in symbols by the men of old has in 
 our time outgrown, in various instances, the embody- 
 ing sign. Bertram, a poet of Eadical tendencies, 
 thinks that we have too much symbol, more of 
 symbol than of substance. Geraldine admits that, 
 wherever you go in these British Islands, you find 
 names for things, shows for actions, money pass- 
 ing itself off for human worth ; but she will not grant , 
 that all has, as yet, " run to symbol." Were that the 
 
 5 
 
66 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 case, the world would be a book not worth reading, 
 which she would toss aside. Talk like this, more in- 
 structive than exhilarating, was diversified by lighter 
 entertainment. 
 
 Sometimes on the hillside, while we sate down in the gowans, 
 With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before, 
 
 And the river running under, and across it from the rowans 
 
 A brown partridge whirring near us till we felt the air it bore, 
 
 There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems 
 
 Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own ; 
 
 Bead the pastoral parts of Spenser or the subtle interflowings 
 Found in Petrarch's sonnets here's the book the leaf is folded 
 down ! 
 
 Or at times a modern volume, Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted 
 
 idyl, 
 
 Hewitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie, 
 Or from Browning some " Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down 
 
 the middle, 
 Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity ! 
 
 He describes her talk, which was gravely gay and 
 sportively earnest, the root striking deep into sense 
 and meaning, as if "to justify the foliage and the 
 waving flowers above." She was inclined to agree 
 with Bertram that we people of the nineteenth 
 century, with our science and our engines, think 
 too much of ourselves, and fancy that we are more 
 in advance of our fathers than may really be the case. 
 Four noble stanzas occur here, noble at once in 
 thought and imagination, on which a long essay 
 might be written without exhausting their wealth of 
 suggestion. 
 
The Age. 67 
 
 And her custom was to praise me when I said, The age culls 
 
 simples, 
 With a broad clown's back turned broadly to the glory of the 
 
 stars. 
 We are gods by our own reck'ning, and may well shut up the 
 
 temples, 
 And wield on, amid the incense-steam, the thunder of our cars. 
 
 For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self-admiring, 
 With, at every mile run faster, " O the wondrous, wondrous age ! " 
 
 Little thinking if we work our SOULS as nobly as our iron, 
 Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage. 
 
 Why, what is this patient entrance into Nature's deep resources, 
 But the child's most gradual learning to walk upright without 
 
 bane ? 
 When we drive out, from the cloud of steam, majestical white 
 
 horses, 
 
 Are we greater than the first men who led black ones by the 
 mane ? 
 
 If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars in rising, 
 If we wrapped the globe intensely with one hot electric breath, 
 
 'Twere but power within our tether no new spirit-power com- 
 prising 
 And in life we were not greater men, nor bolder men in death. 
 
 A grand thought, and as true as it is grand ! The 
 scientific achievement of our time, magnificent as it 
 has been in its own field, must, if it is to be of the 
 highest value, be but a prelude to those spiritual 
 searchings which alone are distinctive of mankind. 
 In the cultivation of those physical sciences whose 
 aim and end is to increase the convenience of life, to 
 supply the wants of the body and exercise the faculties 
 of the brain, we do nothing different in kind, though 
 of course immensely different in degree, from what the 
 chaffinch does in building its nest. Our "tether " is 
 
 52 
 
68 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 longer than the chaffinch's, but if we know nothing 
 except what physical science reveals to us, we have no 
 " spirit-power," and are no nearer the Eternal and the 
 Divine. Mrs. Browning clearly agrees with Tenny- 
 son that physical science, be its contributions to our 
 bodily service what they may, cannot satisfy the spirit 
 of man ; and the experience of our age, which, with 
 all its engines and all its luxuries, speaking across 
 oceans and piercing mountains, is infinitely sad, 
 appears to confirm this view of the case. Atheism 
 now loudly proclaims itself a doctrine of despair. 
 Shelley's dawn-dream of a happy earth, the "reality 
 of heaven," has been succeeded by the clamorous 
 anguish that announces our world as the reality of hell. 
 Bertram loved Geraldine, but did not permit himself 
 to believe that he did so with any " idiot hope " of ever 
 possessing her. The stag, however, vainly tries to go 
 on grazing with a great gun- wound in his throat. It 
 "reels with sudden moan." So did Bertram. What 
 brought matters to a crisis was that he happened, 
 being forced to it by circumstances, to overhear a 
 haughty nobleman make a proposal of marriage to the 
 lady. She receives the suitor with coldness, but, in 
 repelling him, says something which stings Bertram 
 to madness. He whom she marries shall, she declares, 
 be noble and rich, and she will " never blush to think 
 how he was born." In other words, interprets the 
 agitated Bertram, she will marry no plebeian, she can 
 respect only rank and wealth, and as I have neither 
 purse nor pedigree, she scorns to look at me. " Mad " 
 
Bertram and Geraldine. 69 
 
 or "inspired" by this persuasion he gives us leave 
 to choose which of these epithets we think most 
 appropriate to his state of mind, and I unhesitatingly 
 choose the former he dashed into the lady's pre- 
 sence and made a few observations. In the course of 
 these, he "plucked up her social fictions " and " trod 
 them down with words of shaming." A sample of 
 what he said is included in the letter to his friend 
 and fellow-student. 
 
 " For myself I do not argue," said I, " though I love you, madam, 
 But for better souls that nearer to the height of yours have 
 trod 
 
 And this age shows, to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam, 
 Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God. 
 
 " Learn more reverence, madam, not for rank or wealth that 
 
 needs no learning ! 
 That comes quickly quick as sin does ! ay, and culminates in 
 
 sin ; 
 But for Adam's seed, MAN ! Trust me, 'tis a clay above your 
 
 scorning, 
 
 With God's image stamped upon it, and God's kindly breath 
 within. 
 
 " Have you any answer, madam? Irmy spirit were less earthy 
 If its instrument were gifted with a better silver string 
 
 I would kneel down where I stand, and say Behold me ! I am 
 
 worthy 
 Of thy loving, for I love thee ! I am worthy as a king. 
 
 "As it is your ermined pride, I swear, shall feel this stain upon 
 
 her, 
 That I, poor, weak, tost with passion, scorned by me and you 
 
 again, 
 Love you, madam dare to love you to my grief and your dis- 
 
 honour 
 To my endless desolation, and your impotent disdain ! " 
 
 ,1 UNIVERSITY 
 
70 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 At last he stopped. She looked up, with wonder 
 and tears in her eyes, and said only " Bertram ! " 
 Thereupon he fainted, and when he came to himself 
 he was in his own room, and sought relief to his 
 feelings by expressing them in the letter into which 
 we have been looking. That finished, Mrs. Browning 
 herself takes up the tale. 
 
 As Bertram leant backward in his chair, his lips 
 still quivering with love and grief, he became aware 
 of a vision of a lady, first standing silent between 
 the purple lattice-curtains, then gradually approaching 
 him. The form, the features, the eye, the brow, the 
 lip were Geraldine's, but he could not believe that 
 they were corporeal. 
 
 Said he "Wake me by no gesture, sound of breath or stir of 
 
 gesture ; 
 
 Let the blessed apparition melt not yet to its divine ! 
 No approaching hush ! no breathing ! or my heart must swoon to 
 
 death in 
 The too utter life thou bringest thou dream of Geraldine ! " 
 
 Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling 
 But the tears ran over lightly from her eyes, and tenderly ; 
 
 " Dost thou, Bertram, truly love me ? Is no woman far above me 
 Found more worthy of thy poet-heart than such a one as I? " 
 
 **-;*#'* 
 
 Softened, quickened to adore her, on his knees he fell before her, 
 And she whispered low in triumph "It shall be as I have 
 sworn! 
 
 Very rich he is in virtues, very noble, noble, certes ; 
 And I shall not blush in knowing that men call him lowly born." 
 
 These lovers were presumably married, and we are 
 free to suppose that they lived happily ever after; 
 
A Poetical Marriage. 71 
 
 but, if they did, Bertram must have been a very true 
 poet indeed, and Lady Geraldine an uncommonly sen- 
 sible woman. The piece, however, is not to be tried 
 by prosaic rules. It is poetry, and not prose. You do 
 not expect the cloud-flocks of the West Wind, that 
 look so beautiful on the blue fields of the sky, to yield 
 you woollen coats and saddle of mutton. Lady 
 Geraldine' s Courtship is steeped in melody, the 
 language, the imagery, the sentiment, the thought, 
 all instinct with music, floating and flowing and 
 rippling along in an element of liquid harmony and 
 modulated brilliance. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 THE RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 
 
 WHILE declining to adjudicate between master- 
 pieces, I confess that the poem which most 
 closely connects itself with Mrs. Browning in my 
 own mind the poem on which my imagination 
 dwells most wonderingly, and to which my heart 
 clings most fondly is The Rhyme of the Duchess 
 May. Its blemishes are mere motes in the sunlight 
 of its general power. Its artistic unity and com- 
 pleteness are not less remarkable than its strong 
 drawing and vivid local colour. In this, as in other 
 instances, the critic of Mrs. Browning is called to dis- 
 criminate between two things : the realistic basis, and 
 the imaginative form. No poet deals more realistically 
 with passion than Mrs. Browning, she feels and gives 
 its living throb with the penetrating vehemence, the 
 fiery tenderness of Burns ; but the imaginative drapery 
 in which she clothes her conceptions is apt to be loose- 
 flowing and gorgeous as mist kindled by lightnings and 
 rent by storms. In the Duchess May the passion of 
 wifely devotion is shown in its intensest yet most real 
 
The Duchess May. 73 
 
 fervour, triumphing in death, triumphing over death ; 
 but the imaginative form and covering in which this 
 central passion is wrapped may be held to be some- 
 what wildly romantic. 
 
 The poem opens with the description of a country 
 churchyard, in which the bell tolls slowly for the dead. 
 Six willow trees grow on its north side, their shadows, 
 as they rock solemnly in the wind, slanting across the 
 graves. On the south and the west runs a small river, 
 and through the willow branches you see hills, whence 
 the river comes out of the distance. The poet sits amid 
 the stillness of the graves, broken only by the knelling 
 of the death-bell and the low voices of tree and river, 
 and reads the " ancient rhyme," the " tale of life and 
 sin," which follows. The effect of the tolling of the 
 bell is aimed at by iteration, in each triplet, of the 
 words, " Toll slowly." 
 
 We are at once hurried into the main current of 
 interest. The Castle of Linteged rises suddenly before 
 us, built from nothing by the wand of the poetical 
 magician. 
 
 Down the sun dropt large and red, on the towers of Linteged, 
 
 Toll slowly. 
 Lance and spear upon the height, bristling strange in fiery light, 
 
 While the castle stood in shade. 
 There the castle stood up black, with the red sun at its back, 
 
 ToU slowly. 
 Like a sullen smouldering pyre, with a top that flickers fire, 
 
 When the wind is on its track. 
 
 That crimson background, with the tower cut out 
 black against it, gives tone to the whole picture about 
 
74 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 to be unfolded. Not the pencil of Tintoret, not the 
 pen of Dante, ever struck a truer note of imaginative 
 harmony. 
 
 The Duchess May was the ward of her uncle, the 
 old Earl of Leigh, who betrothed her in her childhood, 
 for the sake of her gold, to his son, Lord Leigh. On 
 coming of age she disliked the young lord, haughtily 
 defied both him and his father, and bestowed her hand 
 upon Sir Guy of Linteged. After the marriage the 
 bridal train, pursued by the Leighs, rode off at mid- 
 night, through storm and rain, for the Castle of 
 Linteged. 
 
 And the bridegroom led the flight on his red-roan steed of might, 
 
 Toll slowly. 
 And the bride lay on his arm, still, as if she felt no harm, 
 
 Smiling out into the night. 
 
 These lines suggest the contrast of passion which, 
 in its essential unity, delineates and defines the 
 personality of the lady : defiance of kindred, scorn of 
 all terrors of midnight and storm, dauntless courage 
 and inflexible pride, where love is to be fought for 
 and vindicated perfect rest, submission, confidence, 
 halcyon repose, as of a sea-bird on its native wave, as 
 of a child on the breast of its mother, in the encircling 
 arms of love accepted and returned. 
 
 Sir Guy and his wife reach the castle in safety, and 
 for three months the very elixir of happiness is theirs. 
 Then Lord Leigh the rejected suitor advances with 
 an overpowering force, and, after a fortnight's siege, 
 the castle is about to fall into his hands. Sordid and 
 
The Duchess May. 75 
 
 implacable, he will wed his betrothed, whether she 
 loves him or hates him, and though he must reach her 
 across the corpse of her present husband. In this she 
 is resolved, through life and death, to foil him. Attired 
 in purple robes, her ducal coronet on her brow, she 
 looks down upon him from the wall, smiting him with 
 her scorn. 
 
 Meanwhile Sir Guy has been superintending opera- 
 tions in the east tower, the highest of all. He sees 
 that there is no hope, and, bethinking him that he 
 alone stands between his wife and followers and safety, 
 determines to put an end to his life. The Duchess 
 May, he is content to think, though loving him truly, 
 will get over her distress, soothed and well-entreated 
 by his victorious foes, and will make shift with Lord 
 Leigh after all. Is she not a woman ? 
 
 She will weep her woman's tears, she will pray her woman's 
 prayers, 
 
 Toll slowly; 
 But her heart is young in pain, and her hopes will spring again 
 
 By the sun time of her years. 
 
 He binds his men by oath not to strike a blow that 
 night. He then demands of his two faithfullest knights 
 that, as a last service, they will lead the good steed, 
 ridden by him in that unforgotten night-journey, up 
 the turret-stair to the top of the east tower. His pur- 
 pose is to mount the horse, make it leap from the wall, 
 and thus to die on his war-steed. But the Duchess May 
 has a heart as strong and proud as his. She will show 
 her husband what lightnings may lurk amid the soft- 
 
76 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 ness of a woman's tears. As the knights are goading 
 the horse up the stair, she comes from her chamber 
 and inquires into their errand. They tell her that, in 
 an hour, the breach will be complete, and that her 
 lord, wild with despair, is about to leap from the 
 castle-wall. For a moment the sweetness of love past 
 and the bitterness of present anguish overcome her : she 
 bows her head, and tear after tear is heard falling on the 
 ground. The knights, good-hearted but not gentle with 
 the gentleness of chivalry, rudely assay to comfort her. 
 
 Get thee in, thou soft ladye ! here is never a place for thee ! 
 
 ToU slowly. 
 Braid thy hair and clasp thy gown, that thy beauty in its moan 
 
 May find grace with Leigh of Leigh. 
 
 But her tears have fallen. She is herself again. 
 Love's pride has set its iron heel on love's tenderness. 
 
 She stood up in bitter case, with a pale yet steady face, 
 
 Toll slowly, 
 
 Like a statue thunderstruck, which, though quivering, seemed to 
 look 
 
 Eight against the thunder-place. 
 
 She takes from the knights the rein of the horse. 
 He now needs no goading. 
 
 Soft he neighed to answer her, and then followed up the stair, 
 
 For the love of her sweet look. 
 
 On the east tower, high'st of all there where never a hoof did 
 fall, 
 
 Toll slowly, 
 Out they swept, a vision steady, noble steed and lovely lady, 
 
 Calm as if in bower or stall. 
 
 The wife has said in her heart that, if her husband 
 leaps from the castle-wall, she will leap also. He 
 
The Leap. 77 
 
 endeavours, with, frantic earnestness, to urge the horse 
 over alone, but she will not quit her hold, and entreats 
 him to take her with him. The breach falls in as she 
 pleads, and the crash of wall and window, the shouts 
 of foemen and the shrieks of the dying, rise in one roar 
 around the pair. Then love prevails. In vain does 
 Sir Guy wrench her small hands twice and thrice in 
 twain. She clings to him as in a swoon of agonised 
 determination. At last, when the horse, rearing on 
 the edge of the precipitous battlement, could no longer 
 be stopped, " she upsprang, she rose upright," she 
 took her seat beside her husband. 
 
 And her head was on his breast, where she smiled as one at rest, 
 
 Toll slowly. 
 
 " Ring, " she cried, " O vesper bell, in the beechwood's old 
 chapelle ! 
 
 But the passing bell rings best." 
 
 They have caught out at the rein, which Sir Guy threw loose in 
 vain, 
 
 Toll slowly. 
 For the horse in stark despair, with his front hoofs poised in air, 
 
 On the last verge rears amain. 
 Now he hangs the rocks between and his nostrils curdle in, 
 
 Toll slowly, 
 Now he shivers head and hoof and the flakes of foam fall off ; 
 
 And his face grows fierce and thin ! 
 And a look of human woe from his staring eyes did go, 
 
 Toll slowly ; 
 And a sharp cry uttered he, in a foretold agony 
 
 Of the headlong death below. 
 
 And, "Ring, ring, thou passing bell," still she cried, "i' the old 
 chapelle." 
 
 Toll slowly. 
 
 Then back-toppling, crashing back, a dead-weight flung out to 
 wrack, 
 
 Horse and riders overfell. 
 
78 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 No sterner realism than we have in this description 
 is possible. The horse is frightfully, yet literally, true 
 to life. Mrs. Browning once more proves that it is 
 on the rugged crags of reality that imagination preens 
 her wings for flight into the ideal. The human passion 
 described is also, doubt it not, true to fact : Mrs. 
 Browning's heart sympathetically thrilled with it, as 
 she lit that smile on the face of the bride, sinking into 
 the abyss of death in her husband's arms : with all 
 her gentleness, Mrs. Browning could have smiled that 
 smile, and leaped from that wall ! Woman's love can 
 make of the chariot of death a car of victory ; amid 
 the flames of the funeral pyre it can find the softest 
 bed. 
 
 The Duchess May is one of the most admirably 
 drawn figures that ever came from the pencil of art. 
 Every line is so definite, yet so delicate in its curva- 
 ture ; every tint so clear and warm, yet so soft in its 
 blending, so fine in its gradation. Her external 
 attributes her haughtiness, her beauty, her queen- 
 liness of mien and manner, are touched in with the 
 airy vividness of Scott : her inmost heart is laid 
 bare, her womanly tenderness, unfathomable as the 
 blue wells of the sky, her womanly pride, her womanly 
 ecstasy of self-sacrifice, with, I speak deliberately, 
 the power of a Shakespeare. In some respects she 
 reminds one of Scott's Die Vernon, in some of 
 Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. Had the Duchess May 
 been the heroine of a three- volume novel, Shirley 
 might indeed have played her part indifferently well, 
 
Peace at Last. 79 
 
 though some additional brightening, and softening, 
 and warming some tones and touches from Dorothea 
 Brooke, the loveliest of all George Eliot's female 
 characters would have been required even by Char- 
 lotte Bronte's glorious Yorkshire lass. In one word, 
 the Duchess May must be ranked with the Juliets and 
 Desdemonas, beyond any flight of Walter Scott or 
 Charlotte Bronte, and perhaps not to be adequately 
 portrayed in any novel or drama with a pleasant 
 ending, but only where tragedy in sceptred pall 
 sweeps by. 
 
 The wild ancient Rhyme having sung itself out, we 
 return to the calm of the churchyard, and are re- 
 minded of a serenity enveloping and subduing all 
 passion. The poet fixes her eye on a little grave 
 beneath a willow tree, on which is engraved an in- 
 scription stating that it is the grave of a child of 
 three years. She draws, with rapid, vivid, graphic 
 touches, suggesting rather than detailing, a con- 
 trast between the passage of the child-soul to heaven, 
 encompassed by star- wheels and angel wings, and 
 the passionate dashing up of those frantic lovers 
 against the thick-bossed shield of God's judgment. 
 
 Now, your will is all unwilled now, your pulses are all stilled, 
 
 Toll slowly. 
 Now, ye lie as meek and mild (whereso laid) as Maud the child, 
 
 Whose small grave was lately filled. 
 Beating heart and burning brow, ye are very patient now, 
 
 Toll slowly. 
 
 And the children might be bold to pluck the king-cups from your 
 mould, 
 
 Ere a month had let them grow. 
 
80 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 And so the poem ends in rest. The Rhyme, with 
 its passion and its change, comes between the stillness 
 before and after, like a meteor between two calm 
 celestial spaces, leaving us in silent wonder at its 
 artistic symmetry, its flawless unity, gazing up into 
 the heavenly blue which overarches its volcanic 
 fires. 
 
 \ 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 POEMS OF AFFECTION. 
 
 AMONG rough-and-ready tests of greatness there 
 is none, I think, more practically useful and 
 trustworthy than that of width of range. The poet 
 who has but one tune one niood of feeling one line 
 of thought one kind of imagery one type of cha- 
 racter even though excellent within his restricted 
 field, will hardly be pronounced a supreme singer. 
 The uniformity of Dante's temper ever intense, ever 
 austere detracts from his greatness, and is perhaps 
 the chief reason why, though unsurpassed in particular 
 delineation or in sheer imaginative might, he is 
 admittedly a less poet than Homer or Shakespeare. 
 We have seen that Mrs. Browning embraces in her 
 poetic range at least two well-marked and diverse 
 moods of thought and sympathy. She is passionately 
 addicted to romance, and loves the pageantry of fancy 
 and imagination ; yet her tenderness, her capacity 
 of interpreting, in fine sympathetic music, the simplest * 
 joys of the heart and the home, is as notable as her . 
 
 6 
 
82 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 delight in those visions of the imagination in which 
 romance verges on extravagance. By the tenderness 
 of her genius she infused into the tale of Adam and 
 Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden, a human 
 interest that penetrates the heart far more thrillingly 
 than the stately strain of Milton ; and, in her shorter 
 poems, we perpetually come upon lines and stanzas 
 imhued with that domestic sentiment, that home-bred 
 feeling, at which some sneer, but of which others are 
 justly proud, as a characteristic of English society. 
 It is in the pure sincerity of her heart that she asks, 
 
 What music certes can you find 
 As soft as voices which are kind ? 
 
 In the simply beautiful verses on the coronation and 
 the wedding of Queen Victoria, she thus lays her 
 poetical charge upon the bridegroom : 
 
 And since, Prince Albert, men have called thy spirit high and rare, 
 And true to truth and brave for truth as some at Augsburg were, 
 We charge thee by thy lofty thoughts, and by thy poet-mind 
 Which not by glory and degree takes measure of mankind, 
 Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring, 
 And hold her uncrowned womanhood to be the royal thing. 
 
 The verses on Napoleon are fine throughout, breath- 
 ing a noble spirit of patriotism, which refuses to find 
 satisfaction in the vengeance taken by England on a 
 fallen foe ; but perhaps their finest stanza is that in 
 which the poet, though sternly declining to pronounce 
 a judgment generally favourable to Napoleon, yet 
 discerns one thing that entitles him to honour. 
 
Poeni'S of Affection. 83 
 
 I do not praise this man : the man was flawed 
 
 For Adam much more, Christ ! his knee, unbent 
 
 His hand, unclean his aspiration, pent 
 
 Within a sword-sweep pshaw ! but since he had 
 
 The genius to be loved, why, let him have 
 
 The justice to be honoured in his grave. 
 
 does not say very much not too much, at 
 all events about her years of childhood ; but the 
 glimpses we have of them are always bright and 
 always tender. 
 
 Nine green years had scarcely brought me 
 
 To my childhood's haunted spring : 
 
 I had life like flowers and bees 
 
 In betwixt the country trees ; 
 And the sun the pleasure taught me 
 
 Which he teacheth everything. 
 
 If the rain fell, there was sorrow ; 
 
 Little head leant on the pane, 
 
 Little finger drawing down it 
 
 The long trailing drops upon it, 
 And the " Eain, rain, come to-morrow," 
 
 Said for charm against the rain. 
 
 Is not that a life-like picture, touched in with the 
 delicate accuracy of those wonderful old Dutchmen, 
 the Mierises, Dows, Maases, and yet with something 
 in it that reminds us of the sentiment of Edouard 
 Frere ? Still lovelier is the following : 
 
 I hear the birthday's noisy bliss, 
 
 My sisters' woodland glee, 
 My father's praise I did not miss, 
 When stooping down he cared to kiss 
 
 The poet at his knee. 
 
 I cannot remember any passage in which she has. 
 
 62 
 
84 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 spoken of her childhood except in terms of deep 
 though pensive joyfulness ; and the opening lines in 
 A Rhapsody of Life's Progress may be looked upon as 
 an authentic summing-up of its general impressions. 
 
 We are born into life it is sweet, it is strange ! 
 We lie still on the knee of a mild mystery, 
 
 Which smiles with a change ! 
 
 But we doubt not of changes, we know not of spaces, 
 The heavens seem as near as our own mother's face is, 
 And we think wo could touch all the stars that we see. 
 
 Nor need we doubt that the affections formed in that 
 early time retained their hold on her heart during life, 4 
 and that it is her own feeling towards old friends 
 that she expresses in this impassioned stanza from 
 Confessions. 
 
 The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep day and 
 
 night ; 
 
 Their least step on the stair still throbs through me, if ever so light ; 
 Their least gift, which they left to my childhood in long ago years, 
 Is now turned from a toy to a relic, and gazed at through tears. 
 
 The Lines on Mrs. Hemans, those on L. E. L.'s Last 
 Question, and those on Cowper's Grave, may be referred 
 to as further illustrating Mrs. Browning's tender- 
 ness ; but of these minor pieces, in none, perhaps, does 
 she attain to so sweet a harmony of beauty and music 
 as in that entitled The Sleep. In this poem and 
 the remark may be applied to these smaller pieces 
 generally the mannerism, which undeniably charac- 
 terises her larger poems, falls almost wholly away, 
 and she speaks in that common language which, if 
 
The Sleep. 85 
 
 only the poet can use it, lays a mightier spell upon the 
 heart than the most ingenious and surprising artifice. 
 The poem to which she prefixes those infinitely beau- 
 tiful words of the psalm, " He giveth His beloved, 
 sleep," may be regarded as a hymn or paraphrase, 
 founded on the Scriptural expression. All my pre- 
 vious quotations from Mrs. Browning have been 
 fragmentary, and, therefore, necessarily inadequate, if 
 not unjust; for fragments cannot convey a just idea 
 of the unity of the wholes from which they are taken. 
 For this, if for no other reason, I shall quote the 
 poem entire. 
 
 Of all the thoughts of God that are 
 Borne inward unto souls afar, 
 
 Along the Psalmist's music deep, 
 Now tell me if that any is, 
 For gift or grace, surpassing this 
 
 " He giveth His beloved, sleep " ? 
 
 What would we give to our beloved ? 
 The hero's heart, to be unmoved, 
 
 The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep, 
 The patriot's voice, to teach and rouse, 
 The monarch's crown, to light the brows ? 
 
 "He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 What do we give to our beloved ? 
 A little faith all undisproved, 
 
 A little dust to overweep, 
 And bitter memories to make 
 The whole earth blasted for our sake. 
 
 " He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 " Sleep soft, beloved ! " we sometimes say, 
 But have no tune to charm away 
 
 Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep ; 
 
86 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 But never doleful dream again 
 Shall break the happy slumber when 
 * He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 O earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
 men, with wailing in your voices ! 
 O delved gold, the wailers heap ! 
 
 strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
 God strikes a silence through you all, 
 
 And "giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 His dews drop mutely on the hill, 
 His cloud above it saileth still, 
 
 Though on its slope men sow and reap. 
 More softly than the dew is shed, 
 Or cloud is floated overhead, 
 
 " He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 Yea, men may wonder when they scan 
 A living, thinking, feeling man 
 
 Confirmed in such a rest to keep, 
 But angels say and through the word 
 
 1 think their happy smile is heard 
 " He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 For me, my heart that erst did go 
 Most like a tired child at a show, 
 
 That sees through tears the jugglers leap, 
 Would now its wearied vision close, 
 Would childlike on His love repose, 
 
 Who "giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 And, friends, dear friends, when it shall be 
 That this low breath is gone from me, 
 
 And round my bier ye come to weep, 
 Let one, most loving of you all, 
 Say, " Not a tear must o'er her fall 
 
 He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 HER LOVE SONNETS. 
 
 WE saw from a couple of lines in Lady 
 Geraldine's Courtship, that the poetical genius 
 of Robert Browning had made a deep impression upon 
 Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. Whether those lines, 
 which must have been gratifying in no ordinary degree 
 to a young man, gave occasion to the acquaintance 
 that sprang up between the two poets I cannot tell ; 
 but all the world knows that the mysteriously named 
 Portuguese Sonnets, which appear at the end of the 
 second volume of Mrs. Browning's Poems (edition of 
 1853), have for their subject the wooing and being 
 wooed of those distinguished persons. The interest of 
 the sonnets is enhanced by the circumstance that Miss 
 Barrett passed a considerable number of years in a 
 sickroom, and that the courtship was carried on during 
 her period of convalescence. They are characterised 
 by a profound sincerity, which may possibly have 
 interfered with their literary elaboration, and their 
 perfection as works of art ; for the singer, conscious 
 that she was not only dramatically, but actually in 
 
88 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 love, may have been afraid to give her imagination 
 wing in the expression of her rapture. 
 
 In the first, the lover is represented as entering the 
 shadowed room of the invalid while she muses tear- 
 fully on the darkness that has been cast by her malady 
 across her life. She is aware that " a mystic shape " 
 moves behind her, and draws her backward by the hair. 
 The idea is, of course, taken from the famous passage 
 in the Iliad, in which Athene takes Achilles gently, yet 
 overpoweringly, by his yellow hair. The sonnet ends 
 with these three lines : 
 
 And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, 
 
 " Guess now who holds thee ? " " Death ! " I said. 
 
 But, there 
 The silver answer rang, " Not Death, but Love." 
 
 She is far from sure, however, that Love, not Death, 
 will bear her from that chamber. In the next sonnet 
 she tells her proposed deliverer that God may have 
 said "Nay" to the deliverance, and that "Nay is 
 worse from God than from all others." In the third 
 she sinks to a lower vein, and reflects that her lover, 
 exalted by his reputation, is in a higher social position 
 than she. 
 
 Thou, bethink thee, art 
 A guest for queens to social pageantries, 
 With gages from a hundred brighter eyes 
 Than tears even can make mine, to ply thy part 
 Of chief musician. What hast tJiou to do 
 With looking from the lattice-lights at me, 
 A poor, tired, wandering singer ? 
 
 Continuing in this mood, she tells him, in plain 
 terms, that she cannot smile upon him. " Stand 
 
Love Sonnets. 89 
 
 further off, then. Go!" She reiterates the command 
 in another sonnet ; but confesses that she will never 
 again be as she was before; never will she lift her 
 hand so serenely in the sunshine as when she had not 
 yet felt the touch of his palm upon it. Her determi- 
 nation, of course, does not prove irrevocable. We 
 learn, in the seventh of the series, that, since she heard 
 ''the footsteps" of her lover's "soul" steal between 
 her and death, she has been " caught up into love and 
 taught the whole of life in a new rhythm." The " cup 
 of dole " which God had given her has become sweet. 
 
 The names of country, heaven, are changed away 
 For where thou art or shalt be, there or here ; 
 And this this lute and song loved yesterday, 
 (The singing angels know) are only dear, 
 Because thy name moves right in what they say. 
 
 Clearly there is some hope for a lover whose lady 
 says this. In the ninth she recurs to her unworthiness. 
 She will not soil his purple with her dust. She cannot 
 deny, however, that she loves him. This is a con- 
 fession of some importance, and we are not surprised 
 to find that she dwells on it a little. In the tenth 
 sonnet she plucks up heart considerably, reflecting 
 that her love qualifies her unworthiness ; and a noble 
 poem, with true love beating like a melodious pulse in 
 every line, is the result. 
 
 Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed 
 And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, 
 Let temple burn, or flax an equal light 
 Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed. 
 And love is fire : and when I say at need 
 
90 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 I love thee mark ! I love thee ! in thy sight 
 
 I stand transfigured, glorified aright, 
 
 With conscience of the new rays that proceed 
 
 Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low 
 
 In love, when love the lowest : meanest creatures 
 
 Who love God, God accepts while loving so. 
 
 And what I feel, across the inferior features 
 
 Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show 
 
 How that great work of Love enhances Nature's. 
 
 These lines will recall to many the parallel passage 
 in In Memoriam, in which Tennyson, while confessing 
 his inability to meet his Arthur on a level of intel- 
 lectual equality, asserts the greatness of his love. 
 
 I loved thee, spirit, and love, nor can 
 The soul of Shakespeare love thee more. 
 
 There is no reason, however, to doubt that emotional 
 power is normally, though perhaps not invariably, 
 proportioned to intellectual power, and that only a 
 Shakespeare could either think or love like Shake- 
 speare. The lady continues to betray something of 
 coyness. "I stand unwon, however wooed." She 
 loves, but renounces. She may as well tell him, 
 nevertheless, on what grounds, if he must love her, 
 she chooses to be loved. A delicately beautiful sonnet 
 carries this love-message. 
 
 If thou must love me, let it be for naught 
 Except for love's sake only. Do not say, 
 " I love her for her smile her look her way 
 Of speaking gently for a trick of thought 
 That falls in well with mine, and certes brought 
 A sense of pleasant ease on such a day " 
 For these things in themselves, Beloved, may 
 
Love Sonnets. 91 
 
 Be changed, or change for thee and love so wrought 
 May be unwrought so. Neither love me for 
 Thine own dear pity'sjwiping my cheeks dry 
 Since one might well forget to weep who bore 
 Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby. 
 But love me for love's sake, that evermore 
 Thou may'st love on through love's eternity. 
 
 In yet another she lingers hesitating, and will not 
 abandon her attitude of loving renunciation. In the 
 sixteenth, however, she gives way. The lover has 
 overcome ! He has prevailed against her fears, and 
 may throw the purple of his kingliness around her ! 
 
 Beloved, I at last record 
 
 Here ends my doubt ! If thou invite me forth, 
 I rise above abasement at the word. 
 Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth. 
 
 An exultant sonnet follows, in which she lauds the 
 poetry of her lover. 
 
 My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes 
 God set between His After and Before, 
 And strike up and strike off the general roar 
 Of the rushing worlds, a melody that floats 
 In a serene air purely. 
 
 She asks him how he will have her " for most use," 
 since God has devoted her to the service of waiting on 
 him. 
 
 A hope, to sing by gladly ? or a fine, 
 
 Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse ? 
 
 A shade, in which to sing, of palm or pine ? 
 
 A grave on which to rest from singing ? Choose. 
 
 Are not these lines exquisitely appropriate to a 
 
92 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 woman-poet addressing her accepted lover, who is also 
 a poet ? It is pleasant, all the same, to be reminded 
 that in this ideal courtship there were some incidents 
 of a sort met with on more ordinary occasions of the 
 kind. The lady gave her lover a lock of hair, and 
 commemorated the event in a sonnet, in which the 
 undertone of sadness that may generally be heard in 
 Mrs. Browning's poetry is clearly audible. 
 
 I never gave a lock of hair away 
 
 To a man, Dearest, except this to thee, 
 
 Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully 
 
 I ring out to the full brown length and say, 
 
 " Take it." My day of youth went yesterday ; 
 
 My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee, 
 
 Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree, 
 
 As girls do, any more. It only may 
 
 Now shade, on two pale cheeks, the marks of tears, 
 
 Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside 
 
 Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral shears 
 
 Would take this first, but love is justified ; 
 
 Take it thou, finding pure, from all those years, 
 
 The kiss my mother left here when she died. 
 
 In return the poet-lover gives her a lock from his 
 head. It is " purply black." She suggests that the 
 shade of the poet's bay-crown lies on it, it is so dark 
 and places it on her heart, to be warm with her love 
 until she grows cold in death. In the next she 
 continues the expression of her love and pride, won- 
 dering how, although he was in the world a year ago, 
 it had been possible that she was unconscious of his 
 presence. " Atheists," she says, " are as dull, who 
 cannot guess God's presence out of sight." The 
 thought has probably occurred to many fond lovers 
 
Love Sonnets. 93 
 
 " How strange that we were both in the world so long 
 without being aware of each other's existence ! " but 
 I do not remember seeing it elsewhere expressed in 
 verse or prose. Having put love's chalice to her lips, 
 she will now drink of it boldly. She tells her lover to 
 repeat, again and again, that he loves her. She cares 
 not though it may seem a "cuckoo-strain," for she 
 will have the air filled with it as the vales are filled 
 with the voice of the blithe bird of spring. You 
 cannot have too many stars, or too many flowers, or 
 too many assurances of love. 
 
 Say them dost love me, love me, love me toll 
 The silver iterance ! only minding, Dear, 
 To love me also in silence, with thy soul. 
 
 The same strain of proud and exultant joy in love 
 and the loved one is continued through several 
 spirited and splendid sonnets. The sadness in them 
 is but a dark background to the rainbow of their joy. 
 She tells him in one of the noblest of the series, 
 which I must quote entire, that her chamber had 
 been peopled by visions before he came. 
 
 I lived with visions for my company 
 
 Instead of men and women, years ago, 
 
 And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know 
 
 A sweeter music than they played to me. 
 
 But soon their trailing purple was not free 
 
 Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow, 
 
 And I myself grew faint and blind below 
 
 Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU did'st come to be, 
 
 Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts, 
 
 Their songs, their splendours (better, yet the same, 
 
94 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 As river- water hallowed into fonts) 
 
 Met in thee, and from out thee overcame 
 
 My soul with satisfaction of all wants 
 
 Because G-od's gifts put man's best dreams to shame. 
 
 There are forty-three of these sonnets, and I had 
 marked several others for extract ; but my desire is 
 to quote only enough to create in the reader an im- 
 portunate wish for more. A very beautiful one de- 
 scribes the love-letters she had received, or, rather, 
 chronicles a few of them in the order of ascending in- 
 tensity of love. It would be too cruel to forbear 
 quoting the thirty-eighth, which contains an account of 
 three kisses which the lover had the bliss of bestowing 
 upon the lady. 
 
 First time he kissed me, he but only kissed 
 
 The fingers of this hand wherewith I write, 
 
 And ever since it grew more clean and white, 
 
 Slow to world -greetings, quick with its " Oh, list," 
 
 When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst 
 
 I could not wear here plainer to my sight, 
 
 Than that first kiss. The second passed in height 
 
 The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed, 
 
 Half falling on the hair. beyond meed ! 
 
 That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown, 
 
 With sanctifying sweetness, did precede. 
 
 The third upon my lips was folded down 
 
 In perfect, purple state ! since when, indeed, 
 
 I have been proud and said, " My love, my own." 
 
 But the sonnet which of all the forty-three attests, 
 to my thinking, most explicitly, that tenderness of 
 domestic sympathy, that intense feeling of home joys, 
 that loving remembrance of the friends of her child- 
 
Love Sonnets. 95 
 
 hood, which characterises Mrs. Browning, is the thirty- 
 fifth; I quote part of it. 
 
 If I leave all to thee, wilt thou exchange 
 And be all to me ? Shall I never miss 
 Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss 
 That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange, 
 When I look up, to drop on a new range 
 Of walls and floors another home than this ? 
 Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is 
 Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change ? 
 
 So far as I know, there is not in the history of lite- 
 rature a parallel instance to the marriage of Elizabeth 
 Barrett Barrett and Robert Browning. Poets both of 
 undoubted genius, they were yet of markedly diverse 
 genius. Their harmony may, on that account, have 
 been only the more complete. In the works of Mr. 
 Browning are to be found many references to Mrs. 
 Browning, all couched in terms of ardent affection. 
 More than once, indeed, when she is the subject of his 
 verse, he seems to pass into a less rugged, a more 
 tenderly melodious and chastened, mood of literary 
 execution than that in which he usually works. 
 We have nothing from his pen more delicate in its 
 beauty than the One Word More, in which he dedicates 
 to her his series of poems called Men and Women. 
 Here are a few of the most quotable, not by any 
 means the best, of the lines. 
 
 Love, you saw me gather men and women, 
 Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 
 Enter each and all, and use their service, 
 Speak from every mouth, the speech, a poem. 
 
96 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 
 Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving : 
 I am mine and yours the rest be all men's, 
 Karshook, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty. 
 Let me speak this once in my true person, 
 Not as Lippo, Koland, or Andrea, 
 Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence 
 Pray you, look on these my men and women, 
 Take and keep my fifty poems finished ; 
 Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also ! 
 Poor the speech ; be how I speak, for all things. 
 
 Once he permits us to glance into the sacred privacy 
 of his evening home. His " perfect wife " sits " read- 
 ing by firelight," her " great brow " propped by " the 
 spirit small hand " a vignette picture that vividly 
 reminds us of those of herself in her girlish verses, as 
 she sat studying by the side of her favourite brother. 
 
CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 POEMS OF PATRIOTIC SYMPATHY. 
 
 WE saw how nobly Mrs. Browning responded to 
 the highest sentiments, the most heroic 
 endeavours, of her time, in connection with the 
 movement for the abolition of slavery, and with the 
 general philanthropic impulse and effort to alleviate 
 the distress of factory operatives, of overworked 
 children, and of all men and women into whose soul 
 the iron of luxurious, indifferent, cruel civilisation had 
 too deeply entered. The Cry of the Children is part of 
 the inspired poetry of our age, a word of God in a 
 very strict and solemn sense. Similar in spirit, though 
 not so deeply imbued with immortal fire, is A Song for 
 the Ragged Schools of London. It was written in 
 Rome, and the locality lends colour to the poem. 
 
 I am listening here in Rome, 
 
 And the Eomans are confessing, 
 " English children pass in bloom, 
 
 All God ever made for blessing. 
 
 " Angli angeli ! (resumed 
 
 From the mediaeval story) 
 Such rose angelhoods, emplumed 
 
 In such ringlets of pure glory! " 
 
98 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Can we smooth down the bright hair, 
 
 O my sisters, calm, unthrilled in 
 Our hearts' pulses ? Can we bear 
 The sweet looks of our own children, 
 
 While those others, lean and small, 
 
 Scurf and mildew of the city, 
 Spot our streets, convict us all, 
 
 Till we take them into pity ? 
 
 In this instance, too, Mrs. Browning's appeal has 
 not been without effect. England has heard the cry 
 of the children both in the factory and in the street ; 
 and if all has not yet been done that ought to be done, 
 a great improvement has been effected upon the state 
 of things as it was five-and-twenty years ago. 
 
 Her heart and brain were large enough not only for 
 the cause of social and philanthropic reform, but for 
 that of political advancement. She sympathised 
 ardently with the Italians in their cherished hope of 
 breaking the chains that bound them under many 
 rulers, and of asserting their independence, unity, and 
 freedom as a nation. When Napoleon III. crossed 
 the Alps to strike the first decisive blow on behalf of 
 Italy, she hailed him in an enthusiastic Ode, which 
 one now reads with mixed feelings, dubious whether 
 the poet, seeing the Emperor in the halo of his Italian 
 policy, did not ascribe to him some merits and virtues 
 that history will not concede. At all events, it has 
 proved a true prophecy in recognising the expedition 
 of the French Emperor as the beginning of a new 
 era for Italy. In the first stanza the poet describes 
 his elevation to the throne. 
 
Napoleon III. 99 
 
 Emperor, Emperor ! 
 
 From the centre to the shore 
 
 From the Seine back to the Rhine, 
 Stood eight millions up and swore 
 
 By their manhood's right Divine 
 So to elect and legislate, 
 
 This man should renew the line 
 Broken in a strain of fate 
 And leagued kings at Waterloo, 
 
 When the people's hands let go. 
 
 The eight millions shouted. Thinkers stood aside 
 to let the nation decide. Some hated the new fact ; 
 some quailed ; some cursed ; some wept. The poet 
 was silent. 
 
 That day I did not hate, 
 
 Nor doubt, nor quail, nor curse. 
 I, reverencing the people, did not bate 
 My reverence of their deed and oracle, 
 Nor vainly prate 
 
 Of better and of worse, 
 Against the great conclusion of their will. 
 
 Liberals too often forget that it is a sin against free- 
 dom to drown in floods of flattery all acknowledgment 
 of the faults and shortcomings whereby nations have 
 contributed to their own undoing. No one could 
 rejoice more heartily in the establishment of the 
 French Kepublic than I do ; but the enormous majori- 
 ties by which the French people first called Napoleon 
 III. to the Presidency, and then confirmed him on the 
 throne, ought not to be swept from the historical 
 memory. It is well that Mrs. Browning has put them 
 on record. 
 
 72 
 
100 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Nevertheless, she did not feel herself called upon to 
 celebrate or to sanction what had been done. 
 
 O voice and verse 
 
 Which God set in me to acclaim and sing 
 Conviction, exaltation, aspiration, 
 We gave no music to the patent thing, 
 Nor spared a holy rhythm to throb and swim 
 About the name of him 
 Translated to the sphere of domination 
 
 By democratic passion. 
 I was not used, at least, 
 
 Nor can be, now or then, 
 To stroke the ermine beast 
 
 On any kind of throne, 
 
 (Though builded by a nation for its own), 
 And swell the surging choir for kings of men 
 " Emperor 
 Evermore." 
 
 Now, however, when he leaves " the purple throng 
 of vulgar monarchs," and assays to help "the broken 
 hearts of nations to be strong," she, a poet of the 
 people, meets him on the Alpine snows, and finds him 
 "great enough to praise." Eeflecting on the hesita- 
 tion, if not the express disapproval, with which 
 English statesmen had regarded the Emperor's Italian 
 enterprise, she addresses him thus : 
 
 An English poet warns thee to maintain 
 God's word, not England's : let His truth be true, 
 And all men liars ! with His truth respond 
 To all men's lie. 
 
 The work was, indeed, but half done. Selfish and 
 cruel principalities and powers stepped in to arrest the 
 emancipation of Italy. But the poet expresses conn- 
 
Italian Freedom. 101 
 
 dence that the imperfection of what has been done will 
 one day be removed, and with this prophecy, long since 
 fulfilled, she concludes her Ode : 
 
 Courage, whoever circumvents ! 
 
 Courage, courage, whoever is base ! 
 
 The soul of a high intent, be it known, 
 
 Can die no more than any soul 
 
 Which God keeps by Him under the throne ; 
 
 And this, at whatever interim, 
 Shall live, and be consummated 
 
 Into the being of deeds made whole. 
 
 Courage, courage ! Happy is he, 
 Of whom (himself among the dead 
 And silent), this word shall be said: 
 That he might have had the world with him, 
 But chose to side with suffering men, 
 And had the world against him when 
 
 He came to deliver Italy. 
 " Emperor 
 Evermore." 
 
 The two last words are repeated at the end of every 
 stanza. Their effect will now strike some as ludicrous 
 and some as melancholy. It remains true, however, 
 that Napoleon III.'s Italian expedition was one of 
 the soundest bits of work done in the recent political 
 history of Europe. 
 
 If Napoleon III. was drawn aside by priests and 
 women from his onward path as deliverer of Italy, 
 it was not to Mrs. Browning that he could look for 
 any sympathy in his weakness. The Jesuits and the 
 Papacy have had few more fervent or more frank 
 detesters than she. In common with a host of able 
 men and women of her generation, she inherited, from 
 
102 Elizabeth Barrett Broivning. 
 
 the great Evangelical party of fifty or sixty years ago, 
 not only its moral vehemence, but its cordial hatred of 
 Popery. We find this in Carlyle, Macaulay, Stephen, 
 Henry Rogers, Thackeray, Browning, and even in 
 Tennyson, though in this last it has been kept under 
 careful restraint. That habit of euphuistic reference 
 to the Eoman Church, that ecstasy of admiration for 
 Dr. Newman, with which we are now so well 
 acquainted, belong to a new generation, a generation 
 delicate in its culture and refined in its feelings, but 
 hardly, perhaps, dowered with the intellectual bone 
 and sinew of the earlier race. 
 
 Mrs. Browning's poem, entitled A View Across 
 the Eoman Campagna, in which she addresses the 
 Pope, or the Papacy, in language of keen imagina- 
 tive scorn, would now be considered, in polite 
 literary circles, very bad form. The lines, however, 
 are fine, and there are some of us who would 
 not yet be ashamed to confess sympathy with their 
 spirit. The poet pictures to herself the Papacy as 
 a great ship, tempest-tossed on the sea of the 
 Campagna. In order that this idea may not seem to 
 us too bold, and also that its expressiveness may be 
 felt, we shall do well to read Mr. Ruskin's descrip- 
 tion of the plain of the Campagna. " Perhaps," says 
 that prose-poet, "there is no more impressive scene 
 on earth than the solitary extent of the Campagna of 
 Rome under evening light. Let the reader imagine 
 himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and 
 motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into 
 
The Roman Campagna. 103 
 
 this wild and wasted plain. The earth yields and 
 crumbles beneath his feet, tread he never so lightly, 
 for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the 
 dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long, knotted 
 grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and 
 the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the 
 banks of ruin that lift themselves to the sunlight. 
 Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if 
 the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep ; scat- 
 tered blocks of black stone four-square, remnants of 
 mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon 
 them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous 
 haze stretches level against the desert, veiling its 
 spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red 
 light rests like dying fire on defiled altars. The blue 
 ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against the solemn 
 space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark 
 clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the 
 Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, the 
 shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the 
 darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral 
 mourners, passing from a nation's grave." 
 
 Such is the sea on which floats the ship of Mrs. 
 Browning's poem. It opens thus : 
 
 Over the dumb Campagna- sea, 
 
 Out in the offing through mist and rain, 
 
 Saint Peter's Church heaves silently 
 Like a mighty ship in pain, 
 Facing the tempest with struggle and strain. 
 
 Motionless waifs of ruined towers, 
 Soundless breakers of desolate land : 
 
104 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 The sullen surf of the mist devours 
 
 That mountain -range upon either hand, 
 Eaten away from its outline grand. 
 
 And over the dumb Campagna-sea 
 
 Where the ship of the Church heaves on to wreck, 
 Alone and silent as God must be, 
 
 The Christ walks. Ay, but Peter's neck 
 
 Is stiff to turn on the foundering deck. 
 
 Peter, Peter ! If such be thy name, 
 
 Now leave the ship for another to steer, 
 
 And proving thy faith evermore the same, 
 
 Come forth, tread out through the dark and drear, 
 Since He who walks on the sea is here. 
 
 But the modern Peter does not move. He is no 
 longer rash, " as in old Galilee." He will not quit the 
 good things of temporal power, and content himself 
 with the homely fare of fishermen, even though Christ 
 be of the party. 
 
 Peter, Peter ! He does not stir ; 
 
 His nets are heavy with silver fish ; 
 He reckons his gains, and is keen to infer 
 
 " The broil on the shore, if the Lord should wish ; 
 
 But the sturgeon goes to the Caesar's dish." 
 
 Many voices would now be raised in protest against 
 the next verse, in which the Papacy is accused of 
 having bent the knee to Mammon. 
 
 Peter, Peter ! thou fisher of men, 
 Fisher of fish wouldst thou live instead ? 
 
 Haggling for pence with the other Ten, 
 Cheating the market at so much a head, 
 Griping the bag of the traitor Dead. 
 
 Whether there is or is not justice in this charge, I 
 
Mother and Poet. 105 
 
 shall not decisively say. My own feeling is that it is 
 exaggerated. Avarice does not seem to rue to have 
 been one of the eminent vices of the Papacy. The 
 Church of Eome has not stooped to barter freedom for 
 endowment. 
 
 The last verse is prophetic of woe to the Papacy ; 
 but the Church of Kome has outlived many grim 
 prognostications. 
 
 At the triple crow of the Gallic cock 
 Thou weep'st not, thou, though thine eyes be dazed : 
 
 What bird comes next in the tempest-shock ? 
 Vultures ! see, as when Komulus gazed, 
 To inaugurate Eome for a world amazed ! 
 
 Mrs. Browning watched the course of the Italian 
 war with an interest that may be imagined, and 
 celebrated some of its heroic and touching incidents. 
 One of these gave occasion to the piece entitled 
 Mother and Poet, written at Turin after Gaeta was 
 taken. I shall quote a few of the stanzas, they tell 
 their own tale. A patriot mother had sent her two 
 sons to the war. 
 
 At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled 
 With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how 
 
 They both loved me ; and, soon coming home to be spoiled, 
 In return would fan off every fly from my brow 
 With their green laurel-bough. 
 
 Then was triumph at Turin : " Ancona was free ! " 
 And some one came out of the cheers in the street, 
 
 With a face pale as stone, to say something to me, 
 My Guido was dead ! I fell down at his feet, 
 While they cheered in the street. 
 
106 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 I bore it ; friends soothed me ; my grief looked sublime 
 As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained 
 
 To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time 
 When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained 
 To the height he had gained. 
 
 And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong 
 Writ now but in one hand, " I was not to faint, 
 
 One loved me for two would be with me ere long : 
 And Viva V Italia ! Tie died for, our saint, 
 Who forbids our complaint." 
 
 My Nanni would add, " He was safe, and aware 
 
 Of a presence that turned off the balls was imprest 
 
 It was Guido himself who knew what I could bear, 
 And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed, 
 To live on for the rest." 
 
 On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line 
 Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta : Shot. 
 Tell his mother. Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother, not 
 
 "mine," 
 No voice says " My mother " again to me. What ! 
 
 You think Guido forgot ? 
 ****** 
 
 Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east, 
 And one of them shot in the west by the sea. 
 
 Both ! both my boys ! If in keeping the feast 
 You want a great song for your Italy free, 
 Let none look at me. 
 
 Speaking generally of Mrs. Browning's political 
 poetry, I should pronounce it inferior, viewed as poetry* 
 to most of her other work. Splendid as eloquence, it 
 has not quite the poetic perfection of form. Its moral 
 qualities are inestimable. 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 AURORA LEIGH. 
 
 THE most extensive of all Mrs. Browning's poems 
 is Aurora Leigh, and its acceptance with readers 
 of poetry has been attested by the sale of many editions. 
 The poet, in dedicating it to her " dearest cousin and 
 friend," John Kenyon, in 1856, describes it as "the most 
 mature " of her works, and the one in which she has 
 expressed her "highest convictions upon Life and Art.'' 
 It is a tale in nine Books, and may, with some indefi- 
 niteness, yet reasonable accuracy, be pronounced a 
 modern epic, of which the central figure is a woman, 
 and whose theme is social amelioration. Not arms 
 and the man, but social problems and the woman, are 
 sung by Mrs. Browning, and whether she solves the 
 problems or not, it must be admitted that she has 
 produced a taking and beautiful poem. I have always 
 felt that it had defects, some of them serious, but each 
 new reading has heightened my conception of its 
 power and splendour. The pitch of its intensity, 
 sustained from beginning to end, is astonishing in a 
 
108 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 work not much shorter than Paradise Lost. There 
 is no straining ; nothing to hint that the poet 
 worked with difficulty ; and yet the richness of colour 
 and strength of imaginative fire are such as we should 
 look for in brief lyrical effusions rather than in a long 
 narrative poem. In the rapidity and animation of the 
 style the quick succession of incident, the sense of 
 motion everywhere the book recalls the manner of 
 Homer. It is instinct with music. We feel that the 
 poet does not recite, she sings. In its rich and ringing 
 melody, as well as- in its warm imaginative glow, it is 
 superior to George Eliot's Spanish Gipsy. 
 
 The first Book introduces us to the heroine. She is 
 a poet, and speaks for herself. " I who have written 
 much in prose and verse for others' uses will write 
 now for mine." That Aurora Leigh is, to some extent, 
 what Mrs. Browning was, cannot, I think, be doubtful ; 
 but I am convinced that we should err if we looked 
 upon the resemblance between the two as very close. 
 This heroine is not less a creation of her mind than 
 the Duchess May or the Lady Geraldine, in both of 
 whom, we may be sure, there are traces, and deep 
 traces, of herself. Aurora is half-Italian by blood, and 
 is not only born, but brought up till she is thirteen, in 
 Italy ; and the poet gives good heed to the fact that 
 there is an Italian element in her character. Her 
 father was an English gentleman of property, her 
 mother a Florentine. The latter had died when 
 Aurora was four years old. The mother's death suggests 
 some priceless lines on mother's love, in which we 
 
Mother's Love. 109 
 
 seem to put our ear to Mrs. Browning's heart and hear 
 its beating. 
 
 I felt a mother-want about the world, 
 
 And still went seeking, like a bleating lamb 
 
 Left out at night, in shutting up the fold, 
 
 As restless as a nest- deserted bird 
 
 Grown chill through something being away, though what 
 
 It knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was born 
 
 To make my father sadder, and myself 
 
 Not over-joyous, truly. Women know 
 
 The way to rear up children (to be just), 
 
 They know a simple, merry, tender knack 
 
 Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, 
 
 And stringing pretty words that make no sense, 
 
 And kissing full sense into empty words ; 
 
 Which things are corals to cut life upon, 
 
 Although such trifles. .... 
 
 . Fathers love as well 
 
 Mine did, I know, but still with heavier brains, 
 And wills more consciously responsible, 
 And not as wisely, since less foolishly ; 
 So mothers have God's licence to be missed. 
 
 Her father was an " austere Englishman," who, 
 " after a dry lifetime spent at home in college-learning, 
 law, and parish talk," fell suddenly in love with a girl 
 whom he saw in an Italian church, and married her. 
 When she died, he had her picture painted. The face, 
 throat, and hands having heen finished, her chamber- 
 maid, " in hate of the English-fashioned shroud," 
 insisted that she should be clad in "the last brocade 
 she dressed in at the Pitti." The effect was "very 
 strange/' The whiteness of the corpse-face, the red 
 stiff silk of the dress, impressed the imagination of 
 the child, and she would sit for hours upon the floor, 
 
110 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 staring at the picture. As she grew in years, and was 
 taught by her father to read a variety of books, she 
 associated whatever she read with the richly-dressed 
 figure and dead-face, and it became to her the 
 emblem of " the incoherences of change and death," 
 mixed and merged in the fair " mystery of perpetual 
 life." When this had continued for nine years, her 
 father also died, and she was sent to England. 
 
 Coming from the Italian home of her childhood, 
 Aurora Leigh thought England a poor affair. 
 
 The train swept us on. 
 
 Was this my father's England ? The great Isle ? 
 The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship 
 Of verdure, field from field, as man from man. 
 
 Her aunt received her without much show of 
 affection. 
 
 I think I see my father's sister stand 
 
 Upon the hall-step of her country-house 
 
 To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm, 
 
 Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight, 
 
 As if for taming accidental thoughts 
 
 From possible pulses; brown hair pricked with grey 
 
 By frigid use of life (she was not old, 
 
 Although my father's elder by a year); 
 
 A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines ; 
 
 A close, mild mouth, a little soured about 
 
 The ends, through speaking unrequited loves, 
 
 Or peradventure niggardly half-truths ; 
 
 Eyes of no colour, once they might have smiled, 
 
 But never, never have forgot themselves 
 
 In smiling ; cheeks, in which was yet a rose 
 
 Of perished summers, like a rose in a book, 
 
 Kept more for ruth than pleasure, if past bloom, 
 
 Past fading also. 
 
 There is a fleering, flippant tone in Aurora's descrip- 
 
Aurora's Aunt. Ill 
 
 tion of her aunt, which, "betrays a coldness in the region 
 of the heart constituting a very serious charge against 
 the heroine. The half-contemptuous, knowing air of 
 what follows is new in the poetry, as it was foreign 
 to the character, of Mrs. Browning. 
 
 The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts 
 Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats, 
 Because we are of one flesh after all, 
 And need one flannel (with a proper sense 
 Of difference in the quality) and still 
 The book-club, guarded from your modern trick 
 Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease, 
 Preserved her intellectual. She had lived 
 A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage, 
 Accounting that to leap from perch to perch 
 Was act and joy enough for any bird. 
 
 At the first moment of seeing Aurora the aunt 
 "seemed moved," kissed the girl, though with " cold 
 lips," and suffered her to cling affectionately. But her 
 demeanour suddenly changed. Having taken her niece 
 into her own room, she revealed the true state of her 
 
 feelings. 
 
 With some strange spasm 
 
 Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my hands 
 Imperiously, and held me at arm's length, 
 And with two grey-steel, naked-bladed eyes 
 Searched through my face ay, stabbed it through and 
 
 through, 
 
 Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to find 
 A wicked murderer in my innocent face, 
 If not here, there, perhaps. Then, drawing breath, 
 She struggled for her ordinary calm, 
 And missed it rather, told me not to shrink, 
 As if she had told me not to lie or swear. 
 " She loved my father, and would love me too 
 As long as I deserved it." Very kind. 
 
112 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Aurora explains her aunt's proceedings by saying 
 that she had thought to find traces of her Italian 
 mother in her face. 
 
 My aunt 
 
 Had loved my father truly as she could, 
 And hated, with the gall of gentle souls, 
 My Tuscan mother, who had fooled away 
 A wise man from wise courses, a good man 
 From obvious duties. 
 
 Whatever her prejudice against mother or child, the 
 aunt failed in no duty to Aurora, giving proof, on the 
 contrary, of sincere and considerate affection. She 
 was not what a mother would have been ; yet a kind- 
 hearted girl would have felt towards her more like a 
 daughter than Aurora felt. The sole excuse doubt- 
 less an import ant- excuse for her bitterness, was her 
 aunt's angry feeling towards her mother. 
 
 The girl was educated according to her aunt's views 
 of what befitted an English lady. 
 
 I learnt the Collects and the Catechism, 
 The Creeds, from Athanasius back to Nice, 
 The Articles, the Tracts against the times. 
 
 The italicised word is Mrs. Browning's pointed 
 estimate of the Anglo-Catholic revival under Newman, 
 Manning, and Pusey. Aurora learned classic French, 
 German, a little algebra, a little geometry, a very 
 little science, a good deal of genealogical history and 
 geographical detail, much music, drawing, dancing, 
 glass-spinning, bird-stuffing, flower-modelling in wax, 
 " because she liked accomplishments in girls." 
 
Eomney Leigh. 113 
 
 And last 
 
 I learnt cross-stitch, because she did not like 
 To see me wear the night with empty hands, 
 A-doing nothing. 
 
 This education was torture to our heroine. " Certain 
 of your feebler souls go out in such a process ; many 
 pine to a sick, inodorous light." She neither died nor 
 pined into insipidity, hut showed that she had a will, 
 and managed to have a way, of her own. The 
 situation was not without its assuagements. There 
 was Eomney Leigh, for example, her cousin, whom 
 she "used as a sort of friend." He was a few years 
 her senior, but still young too young, indeed, to be, 
 as he was, master of the estate of Leigh Hall, the 
 sense of his responsibilities in relation to which made 
 him precociously grave and earnest. He would cross 
 the hills with gifts of grapes from his hot-houses, a 
 book in his hand, which, when Aurora lifted the 
 cover, was sure to be statistico-philanthropical. The 
 aunt was indulgent in connection with the intercourse 
 of the cousins. 
 
 She almost loved him, even allowed 
 
 That sometimes he should seem to sigh my way ; 
 
 It made him easier to be pitiful, 
 
 And sighing was his gift. So, undisturbed 
 
 At whiles she let him shut my music up, 
 
 And push my needles down, and lead me out 
 
 To see in that south angle of the house 
 
 The figs grow black as if by a Tuscan rock, 
 
 On some light pretext. She would turn her head 
 
 At other moments, go to fetch a thing, 
 
 And leave me breath enough to speak with him. 
 
 This was rather tenderly considerate in so austere a 
 
114 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 lady. Might not Aurora have spared one kind word 
 for an old maid who, whatever her faults, had the 
 redeeming quality of knowing when she was in the 
 way, and taking herself out of it? On the state of 
 the girl's feelings towards Eomney himself, we are not, 
 at this stage of the narrative, favoured with definite 
 information. One symptom is interesting : the skilful 
 in love-lore will interpret it for themselves. 
 
 Once, he stood so near 
 He dropped a sudden hand upon my head, 
 Bent down on woman's work, as soft as rain ; 
 But then I rose and shook it off as fire, 
 The stranger's touch that took my father's place 
 Yet dared seem soft. 
 
 At all events, Romney contributed to the enliven- 
 ment of Aurora's existence. She gradually found that 
 life might be endurable even in chilly England, and 
 under the auspices of an unsympathising aunt. She 
 had a little room for herself, embosomed, like a finch's 
 nest, in greenery. You could not put your head out 
 at the window without getting " a dash of dawn-dew 
 from the honeysuckle." Does not the reader feel its 
 freshness? Beyond the elms you saw the low hills 
 behind which " Cousin Eomney 's " chimneys sent up 
 the blue smoke in fine wreaths. 
 
 Far above, a jut of table-land, 
 A promontory without water, stretched. 
 You could not catch it if the day were thick, 
 Or took it for a cloud ; but otherwise 
 The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve, 
 And use it for an anvil till he had filled 
 The shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts, 
 
English Scenery. 115 
 
 And proved he need not rest so early : then 
 When all his setting trouble was resolved 
 In a trance of passive glory, you might see 
 In apparition on the golden sky 
 (Alas, my Giotto's background !) the sheep run 
 Along the fine clear outline, small as mice 
 That run along a witch's scarlet thread. 
 
 We may, I think, take it for granted that Mrs. 
 Browning was here poetically painting directly from 
 nature, and that she saw those minute sheep cut out 
 in black against the sunset. It is due both to artists 
 and poets to trust them, though the particular appear- 
 ances which they chronicle may not have fallen within 
 one's own observation. It is only under rare atmo- 
 spheric conditions that the sheep on the headland 
 could have been seen with Mrs. Browning's bodily 
 eye; but the mind's eye sees them with vivid dis- 
 tinctness, and dwells on them with keen delight. 
 That is enough. 
 
 Aurora is at her best in describing scenery, and she 
 describes England better than Italy. She has a store 
 of sonorous phrases, and of imposing, far-fetched 
 imagery, at the service of Italian landscape; but, for all 
 the loudness of her praise of Italian hills and skies, we 
 feel that her heart is in England. She tries to be 
 smart and satirical in depicting her father's country, 
 but soon gets into a more genial mood. 
 
 On English ground 
 
 You understand the letter, ere the fall, 
 How Adam lived in a garden. All the fields 
 Are tied up fast with hedges, nosegay-like ; 
 
 82 
 
116 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 The hills are crumpled plains, the plains, parterres, 
 
 The trees, round, woolly, ready to be clipped ; 
 
 And if you seek for any wilderness 
 
 You find at best a park. A nature tamed 
 
 And grown domestic like a barn-door fowl, 
 
 Which does not awe you with its claws and beak, 
 
 Nor tempt you to an eyrie too high up, 
 
 But which, in cackling, sets you thinking of 
 
 Your eggs to-morrow at breakfast, in the pause 
 
 Of finer meditation. Kather say 
 
 A sweet familiar nature, stealing in 
 
 As a dog might, or child, to touch your hand 
 
 Or pluck your gown, and humbly mind you so 
 
 Of presence and aifection. 
 
 This is, at best, cool and qualified commendation ; 
 but, a few pages on, she drops the flippant air, and 
 writes with lyric ecstasy. 
 
 I learnt to love that England. Very oft, 
 Before the day was born, or otherwise 
 Through secret windings of the afternoons, 
 I threw my hunters off and plunged myself 
 Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag 
 Will take the waters, shivering with the fear 
 And passion of the course. And when, at last 
 Escaped so many a green slope built on slope 
 Betwixt me and the enemy's house behind 
 I dared to rest or wander like a rest 
 Made sweeter for the step upon the grass 
 And view the ground's most gentle dimplement 
 (As if God's finger touched, but did not press 
 In making England!), such an up and down 
 Of verdure nothing too much up or down, 
 A ripple of land ; such little hills, the sky 
 Can stoop to tenderly, and the wheatfields climb ; 
 Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises, 
 Fed full of noises by invisible streams ; 
 
 
English Landscape. 117 
 
 And open pastures, where you scarcely tell 
 White daisies from white dew, at intervals 
 The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out 
 Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade 
 I thought my father's land was worthy, too, 
 Of being my Shakespeare's. 
 
 Walking in such scenes with Cousin Komney and his 
 friend the rising painter, Vincent Carrington, Aurora 
 would be the gayest of the party, telling her cousin, 
 when he sighed about the distresses of the poor, that 
 howsoever the world might go ill, "the thrushes still 
 sang in it." He bore with her " in melancholy 
 patience, not unkind; " and thus encouraged, she 
 sketched the bright side of things with a warmth of 
 colour which, if it will not convince many that fever, 
 cancer, madness, pestilence, or starvation are evils to 
 be vanquished by songs and smiles, must have been 
 charming to Bomney, and is charming to us. 
 
 I flattered all the beauteous country round, 
 As poets use, the skies, the clouds, the fields, 
 The happy violets hiding from the roads, 
 The primroses run down to, carrying gold, 
 The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out 
 Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths 
 'Twixt dripping ash-boughs, hedges all alive 
 With birds, and gnats, and large white butterflies, 
 Which look as if the May-flower had caught life 
 And palpitated forth upon the wind, 
 Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist, 
 Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills, 
 And cattle grazing in the watered vales, 
 And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods, 
 And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere, 
 Confused with smell of orchards. 
 
118 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 These descriptions of English landscape have not 
 the minute elaboration of Tennyson, nor the vague 
 sympathy, partly mystical, partly pantheistic, with 
 nature, of Wordsworth, but they evince an unaffected 
 heartiness, a buoyancy of loving joy, which neither 
 Tennyson nor Wordsworth can rival. Cowper was as 
 honest in his affection for English landscape and 
 Cowper was a very masterly describer, but the move- 
 ment of his genius was slower, his fancy less brilliant, 
 his imagination less powerful, his sense of melody and 
 rhythm in words feebler, than Mrs. Browning's. In 
 melodious word-painting of English lowland country, 
 she is unrivalled. 
 
 One morning, Aurora, gambolling like a Dryad 
 among trees and flowers, had just selected for herself 
 an ivy- wreath to bind across her brow, when she was 
 aware of " Cousin Komney." It was her birthday, 
 and he had come presumably to congratulate her on 
 the occasion. He had something more to say, how- 
 ever, and he edged towards his purpose by telling 
 Aurora that he had found, beside the stream, a book 
 of hers a book of poems. He had, he said, not read 
 a word of it, but he nevertheless took the liberty to 
 advise her to forswear poetical composition. They 
 chatted lightly on this subject for a few moments, 
 when he suddenly said, " Aurora ! " There must have 
 been something significant in the tone, for girls are 
 not usually startled when their cousins call them by 
 their names ; and yet, says our heroine, " there I 
 stopped short, breath and all." Komney thereupon 
 
A Strange Wooer. 119 
 
 kindly but long-windedly proposed that his cousin 
 should give up poetry and take to world-regeneration 
 instead, with him for guide, philosopher, and hushand. 
 His allusion to her poetry, which, remember, he had 
 not been curious enough to read (Aurora, if at all 
 like other girls and boys that write verses, would 
 have pardoned him a good deal of boldness in doing 
 that), is not felicitous. 
 
 T|ae chances are that, being a woman, young 
 And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes, 
 You write as well, and ill, upon the whole, 
 As other women. If as weh 1 , what then ? 
 If even a little better still, what then ? 
 
 In the second book or canto of a poem-novel, the 
 hero maybe expected to be almost impossibly maladroit ; 
 but I hope, for the honour of mankind, that no actual 
 human being has ever been capable of anything so 
 stupid as this. Eomney proceeds to demonstrate to 
 Aurora that women have no serious chance of doing 
 good except by helping men to do it, explaining to his 
 cousin her constitutional incapacity to attain high 
 excellence with a glibness which might have fitted him 
 to become an efficient lecturer against woman's rights. 
 Hear him on woman's bondage to personal feeling. 
 
 You generalise, 
 
 Oh, nothing ! not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts, 
 So sympathetic to the personal pang, 
 Close on each separate knife-stroke, yielding up 
 A whole life at each wound, incapable 
 Of deepening, widening a large lap of life 
 To hold the world-full woe. The human race 
 To you means such a child, or such a man, 
 
120 Elizabeth Barrett Broioning. 
 
 You saw one morning waiting in the cold, 
 Beside that gate, perhaps. You gather up 
 A few such cases, and, when strong, sometimes 
 Will write of factories and of slaves, as if 
 Your father were a negro, and your son 
 A spinner in the miUs. 
 
 He goes on, in a long-winded manner, to infer that, 
 when the woes of communities have to be dealt with, 
 women are necessarily weak. The world the general 
 body of mankind remains uncomprehended by them, 
 and must remain uninfluenced. Women 'may be 
 doting mothers, good wives, but they cannot save 
 nations, or write true poems. Pausing in his 
 harangue, he lets his cousin speak five words, and 
 then starts again, entreating her, since she is fit for 
 better things, such as marrying him, not "to play at 
 art, as children play at swords." With delicate face- 
 tiousness, he puts himself in the position of a critic 
 reviewing Aurora's poems. 
 
 Oh, excellent ! 
 
 What grace ! what facile terms ! what fluent sweeps ! 
 
 What delicate discernment almost thought ! 
 
 The book does honour to the sex, we hold. 
 
 Among our female authors we make room 
 
 For this fair writer, and congratulate 
 
 The country that produces in these times 
 
 Such women, competent to spell. 
 
 It is a grave objection to the poem that these words 
 are put into the mouth of a proposing lover. Such 
 violation of probability exceeds the utmost licence 
 permissible to art. Romney Leigh is not, in my 
 opinion, a happily conceived figure. The character is 
 such as, outside the circles of amiable and interesting 
 
JRomney Leigh. 121 
 
 lunacy, can hardly be supposed to exist. It is at best 
 a type of nineteenth-century enthusiasm, not of per- 
 manent human nature. But I am not sure that 
 anything in the delineation of Eomney violates pro- 
 bability quite so harshly and his career trenches on 
 probability at several points as his prefacing an offer 
 of his hand to Aurora with a ponderous argument that 
 her sex is incapable and herself a goose. With a sense 
 of relief, we find at last that she cuts short his oration. 
 
 " Stop there !" 
 
 I answered burning through his thread of talk 
 With a quick flame of emotion. 
 
 She tells him that she does not want praise, that she 
 would rather dance on the tight-rope to amuse chil- 
 dren at fairs, than write verse for men in a frivolous 
 spirit. He breaks in again to ask her to choose 
 nobler work in marrying him, and expatiates on the 
 miseries that call for alleviation. She reminds him 
 sharply that he has been demonstrating to her that 
 women are unfit for the work of social improvement, 
 and would like to know how, if she is too weak to 
 stand alone, she can bear him leaning on her shoulder. 
 This makes him speak rather more civilly. 
 
 " Aurora, dear, 
 
 And dearly honoured " he pressed in at once 
 With eager utterance " you translate me ill. 
 I do not contradict my thought of you, 
 Which is most reverent, with another thought 
 Found less so. If your sex is weak for art 
 (And I who said so, did but honour you, 
 By using truth in courtship), it is strong 
 For life and duty." 
 
122 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 The apology will not stand examination. He had 
 pronounced women incapable of generalisation in any 
 form, and he was logically bound to affirm that her 
 strength for life and duty could be manifested only in 
 so far as she strengthened him for undertakings to 
 which men alone are competent. This Aurora per- 
 ceives ; and replies to his offer of his hand, that he 
 loves " not a woman, but a cause ; " his wife was to be 
 a helpmate, not an end in herself. 
 
 " Your cause is noble, your ends excellent, 
 But I, being most unworthy of these and that, 
 Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell." 
 
 He continues to plead. Making more amends for 
 his disparagement of her sex, he informs her, rather 
 to our surprise, that he holds " the woman to be 
 nobler than the man." Women can love better than 
 men can, and love " generates the likeness of itself 
 through all heroic duties." Still, the nobleness of 
 woman is to find scope only through her love for man, 
 and Aurora will not accept this condition of being 
 useful. She has her duty, she tells him, as well as he, 
 a duty which she can perform, though unmarried. As 
 a poet, she works in the ideal; and life, she insists, 
 would become vile and despicable unless men were 
 taught by poets to aspire to the ideal. He may scorn 
 her art, but she loves it, and will cling to it. Presently 
 their aunt appears, and bids Aurora ask Komney to 
 finish the talk indoors. He answers for her that his 
 cousin has dismissed him, and abruptly takes leave. 
 To her aunt, looking for explanation, Aurora says 
 
An Explanation. 123 
 
 bitterly that lie had come to take her " into service as 
 a wife," and that she had refused him. An important 
 conversation between aunt and niece ensues, and we 
 are favoured with information which throws light upon 
 the character of the former and upon the prospects of 
 the latter. 
 
 The aunt explains that, if not from the point of 
 view of romantic eighteen, yet from that of sober and 
 judicious fifty-five, there were powerful arguments in 
 favour of Bomney's proposal. Were she, the aunt, to 
 die, Aurora would be destitute. 
 
 Without a right to crop 
 A single blade of grass beneath these trees, 
 Or cast a lamb's small shadow on the lawn, 
 Unfed, unfolded. 
 
 Her father's Italian marriage had cost his daughter 
 her inheritance. By a clause in the entail excluding 
 offspring by a foreign wife, the estates passed to 
 Eomney Leigh. But Vane Leigh, Komney's father, 
 aware of this, had written to Aurora's father, so soon 
 as he heard that a daughter was born to him, asking the 
 child in marriage for his son. This letter may be sup- 
 posed to have set the father's mind at rest, and there 
 the matter had been left ; but now, if the girl in her 
 wilfulness turned from Komney, she would not only 
 bring poverty on herself, but defeat the family plans. 
 What, asked the aunt, would she be at ? 
 
 You must have 
 
 A pattern lover sighing on his knee : 
 You do not count enough a noble heart, 
 
124 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Above book-patterns, which this very morn 
 Unclosed itself, in two dear father's names, 
 To embrace your orphaned life ! fie, fie ! But stay, 
 I write a word, and counteract this sin. 
 
 Aurora entreats her, with passionate earnestness, to 
 do nothing of the kind. Her soul at least, she says, is 
 not a pauper; she can live her soul's life without alms, 
 and if she must die in making the attempt, she is not 
 afraid to die. What could a prosaic old lady say to 
 a poetical young niece in this frame of mind? It 
 turns out that the aunt knows the time of day with 
 remarkable accuracy. 
 
 She seized my hands with both hers, strained them fast, 
 
 And drew her. probing and unscrupulous eyes 
 
 Eight through me, body and heart. "Yet, foolish Sweet, . 
 
 You love this man. I have watched you when he came, 
 
 And when he went, and when we've talked of him : 
 
 I am not old for nothing ; I can tell 
 
 The weather-signs of love you love this man." 
 
 Who would have thought that the venerable maiden 
 had so much wit in her ! A burning blush upon Aurora's 
 cheek and brow witnesses to the correctness of her 
 observation ; but the girl loudly accuses the blush of 
 
 treason and falsehood. 
 
 I attest 
 
 The conscious skies, and all their daily suns, 
 I think I loved him not, nor then, nor since, 
 Nor ever. Do we love the schoolmaster, 
 Being busy in the woods ? much less, being poor, 
 The overseer of the parish ? Do we keep 
 Our love to pay our debts with ? 
 
 She then becomes so violent that her aunt drops her 
 hands and ceases to smile. 
 
Authorship. 125 
 
 " We'll leave Italian manners, if you please. 
 I think you had an English father, child, 
 And ought to find it possible to speak 
 A quiet ' yes ' or ' no ' like English girls, 
 Without convulsions. In another month 
 We'll take another answer . . . no, or yes." 
 With that, she left me in the garden walk. 
 
 When a month had gone by, all was changed. The 
 aunt had died suddenly, leaving Aurora her furniture 
 and three hundred pounds. Romney vainly tries to 
 convince his cousin that her legacy was thirty thou- 
 sand pounds, which sum he had intended to present 
 to his aunt, with a view to its being left to Aurora. 
 They part. She betakes herself to London, trusting 
 to her pen for a livelihood, and soon makes her way, if 
 not to fortune, at least to fame. We are favoured with 
 samples of the criticism published upon her writings. 
 
 My critic Hammond flatters prettily, 
 And wants another volume like the last. 
 My critic Belfair wants another book 
 Entirely different, which will sell (and live ?) 
 A striking book, yet not a startling book, 
 The public blames originalities, 
 (You must not pump spring-water unawares 
 Upon a gracious public, full of nerves ) 
 Good things, not subtle, new yet orthodox, 
 As easy reading as the dog-eared page 
 That's fingered by said public, fifty years, 
 Since first taught spelling by its grandmother, 
 And yet a revelation in some sort ! 
 That's hard, my critic Belfair ! 
 
 The criticism of Belfair is one which in substance 
 has been probably made oftener than any other on the 
 works both of Mrs. Browning and Mr. Browning. 
 
126 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 It is indeed difficult more difficult in the present day 
 than it ever was before, on account of the enormous 
 amount of passably good literature to be original 
 without being extravagant, to attract by sheer weight 
 or worth of matter, presented with classic quietness 
 of style, instead of by some "trick of singularity." 
 But it remains a truth of universal application 
 that mannerism, obscurity, eccentricity are notes, 
 at best, of genius of the second order, and that 
 simplicity and clearness are notes of genius of the 
 first. 
 
 Seven years had come and gone. The life in the 
 country, which had at times been irksome when 
 Aurora's aunt pressed on her with her rules and re- 
 strictions, had begun to grow dear to memory, with 
 mellow radiance in the lights and softness in the 
 shadows. Any friend who could recall to her mind 
 little matters of that time was welcome. 
 
 A hedgehog in the path, or a lame bird 
 
 In those green country walks, in that good time, 
 
 When certainly I was so miserable, 
 
 I seem to have missed a blessing ever since. 
 
 She worked in a chamber up three flights of stairs, 
 and found the smoky sunsets and weltering fogs of 
 London not unpropitious to poetical composition. 
 
 .*> 
 
 I worked the short days out, and watched the sun 
 
 On lurid morns or monstrous afternoons, 
 
 Like some Druidic idol's fiery brass, 
 
 With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat, 
 
 In which the blood of wretches pent inside 
 
 Seemed oozing forth to incarnadine the air, 
 
Lady Waldemar. 127 
 
 Push out through fog with his dilated disc, 
 And startle the slant roofs and chimney-pots 
 With splashes of fierce colour. 
 
 She " worked with patience, which is almost power." 
 Being poor, she was " constrained, for life, to work 
 with one hand for the booksellers," while working 
 with the other for herself and art. She wrote for 
 cyclopaedias, magazines, reviews, weekly papers. 
 
 I wrote tales beside, 
 
 Carved many an article on cherry-stones 
 To suit light readers, something in the lines 
 Eevealing, it was said, the mallet-hand, 
 But that, I'll never vouch for. What you do 
 For bread, will taste of common grain, not grapes, 
 Although you have a vineyard in Champagne. 
 
 She became known, and great folks asked her to 
 their entertainments, to do service in capacity of 
 lioness. 
 
 One day an extremely aristocratic person found her 
 way up the three pairs of stairs, and announced her- 
 self as Lady Waldemar. She is described as typical 
 of high-born English dames, gentle because so proud, 
 too high above the common world to be put out 
 by anything in it, with low voice and gracious and 
 conciliating manner. We are privileged to listen to a 
 protracted conversation between her and Aurora. Her 
 ladyship announces that she is in* love with Komney 
 Leigh. Her first husband had died while she was 
 still young, and she might marry a marquis when she 
 chose, but Eomney Leigh's name was good, his means 
 were excellent, and in fact she was as mad with love 
 
128 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 as he was with philanthropy. Then follows a passage 
 which I should be very sorry to consider a successful 
 imitation of the talk of English ladies in the rank of 
 Lady Waldemar. A critic is bound to show his author 
 at the worst, or nearly at the worst, as well as at what 
 he deems the best, and therefore I shall quote the 
 lines. Lady Waldemar speaks. 
 
 Of a truth, Miss Leigh, 
 I have not, without struggle, come to this. 
 I took a master in the German tongue, 
 I gamed a little, went to Paris twice ; 
 But, after all, this love ! You eat of love, 
 And do as vile a thing as if you ate 
 Of garlic which, whatever else you eat, 
 Tastes uniformly acrid, till your peach 
 Beminds you of your onion. Am I coarse ? 
 Well, love's coarse, nature's coarse ah, there's the rub ! 
 We fair, fine ladies, who park out our lives 
 From common sheep-paths, cannot help the crows 
 From flying over we're as natural still 
 As Blowsalinda. Drape us perfectly 
 In Lyons velvet, we are not, for that, 
 Lay-figures, look you ! we have hearts within, 
 Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts, 
 As ready for distracted ends and acts 
 As any distressed sempstress of them all 
 That Bomney groans and toils for. We catch love 
 And other fevers in the vulgar way. 
 Love will not be outwitted by our wit, 
 Nor outrun by our equipages: mine 
 Persisted, spite of efforts. All my cards 
 Turned up but Bornney Leigh ; my German stopped 
 At germane Wertherism ; my Paris rounds 
 Beturned me from the Champs Elysees just 
 A ghost, and sighing like Dido's. I came home 
 Uncured convicted rather to myself 
 Of being in love in love ! That's coarse, you'll say. 
 I'm talking garlic. 
 
Lady Waldemar. 129 
 
 No Englishwoman who had any pretensions to the 
 name of lady could express herself in terms like these. 
 
 Lady Waldemar proceeds to inform Aurora that 
 Eomney Leigh was about to inaugurate a new era 
 by marrying Marian Erie, a needlewoman, and thus 
 reconciling class to class. To this match Lady 
 Waldemar vehemently objected, and her purpose in 
 visiting Aurora was, she signified, to enlist her assist- 
 ance in dissuading Bomney, or the needlewoman, 
 from the perpetration of such an absurdity, Our 
 heroine refuses to interfere, and lets Lady Waldemar 
 know her determination to this effect with consider- 
 able sharpness. Her ladyship makes her infer- 
 ences, and, in retiring, lets fly this Parthian shaft 
 at Aurora : 
 
 Farewell, then. Write your books in peace, 
 As far as may be for some secret stir 
 Now obvious to me, for, most obviously, 
 In coming hither I mistook the way. 
 
 That is to say, Lady Waldemar formed the opinion 
 arrived at by Aurora's aunt respecting the state of 
 that young lady's feelings towards her cousin. Miss 
 Leigh's conduct after Lady Waldemar had gone was, 
 to say the least, not inconsistent with this view. Two 
 hours afterwards she has penetrated to St. Margaret's- 
 court, the hideous den, or rookery, in which Bomney's 
 affianced bride was to be found. There are dismal 
 places in London, inhabited by a miserable and half- 
 savage population ; but Mrs. Browning's description 
 of St. Margaret's-^court is exaggerated beyond all 
 
 9 
 
130 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 bounds of credibility, and reads like a caricature of 
 Dickens. I shall quote part of the passage, but with- 
 out marking the division into lines. Edgar Poe, a 
 critic of fine discrimination, proposes, as a sound test 
 of the poetical quality of verse, to print it in the form 
 of prose, and to take note whether it is melodious or 
 is not. 
 
 " Within St. Margaret's-court I stood alone, close- 
 veiled. A sick child, from an ague-fit, whose wasted 
 right hand gambled 'gainst his left with an old brass 
 button in a blot of sun, jeered weakly at me as I 
 passed across the uneven pavement ; while a woman, 
 rouged upon the angular cheek-bones, kerchief torn, 
 thin dangling locks, and flat, lascivious mouth, cursed 
 at a window both ways, in and out, by turns some 
 bed-rid creature and myself, ' Lie still there, 
 mother! liker the dead dog you'll be to-morrow. 
 What, we pick our way, fine madam, with those 
 damnable small feet ! We cover up our face from 
 doing good, as if it were our purse ! What brings 
 you here, my lady? Is't to find my gentleman who 
 visits his tame pigeon in the eaves ? Our cholera 
 catch you with its cramps and spasms, and tumble 
 up your good clothes, veil and all, and turn your 
 whiteness dead-blue.' I looked up ; I think I could 
 have walked through hell that day, and never flinched. 
 ' The dear Christ comfort you,' I said, * you must 
 have been most miserable to be so cruel ' and I 
 emptied out my purse upon the stones : when , as I 
 had cast the last charm in the cauldron, the whole 
 
\ 
 
 St. Margaret's Court. 131 
 
 court went boiling, bubbling up, from all its doors 
 and windows, with a hideous wail of laughs and roar 
 of oaths, and blows perhaps. I passed too quickly for 
 distinguishing, and pushed a little side-door hanging 
 on a hinge, and plunged into the dark, and groped and 
 climbed the long, steep, narrow stair 'twixt broken rail 
 and mildewed wall that let the plaster drop to startle 
 me in the blackness. Still, up, up ! So high lived 
 Eomney's bride." 
 
 I think my readers will agree with me that, if we 
 had not seen this in the form of poetry, we might have 
 had some difficulty in distinguishing it from prose. 
 
 Marian Erie the needlewoman of St. Margaret 's- 
 court, whom Eomney Leigh intended to marry for the 
 benefit of mankind was not beautiful. You could 
 not say whether her complexion was white or brown 
 it changed like a mist, " according to being shone 
 on more or less." Her hair had the same peculiarity 
 of dubious tint. It 
 
 Ban its opulence of curls 
 
 In doubt 'twixt dark and bright, nor left you clear 
 To name the colour. 
 
 A small head, cheeks rather too thin, but dimpled, 
 milky little teeth, and an infantile smile, complete the 
 description of Komney's choice. That any good in the 
 way of social reconcilement or the elevation of the 
 masses could result from such a marriage is a thesis 
 so obviously absurd that argument on the subject were 
 thrown away. Eomney's scheme can be accounted for 
 
 92 
 
132 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 only on one supposition that his extreme softness of 
 heart had resulted in, or had always "been accompanied 
 by, softness of head. 
 
 The character of Marian Erie is conceived on a 
 principle so frequently exemplified by Dickens that 
 it may be called the principle of the Dickens ideal. 
 The conditions of birth and up-bringing are depicted 
 as all but impossibly bad, and the human flower comes 
 up amid squalor, hardship, and neglect, radiantly pure 
 as a lily in paradise. Oliver Twist, born in a work- 
 house, reared under the auspices of Noah Claypole, 
 Fagin, and the Dodger, proves to be a pattern of in- 
 destructible goodness. Marian Erie, the child of a 
 father and a mother who reached the utmost limits of 
 depravity, grew up with the qualities of an angel. 
 Such an occurrence is not impossible. There are 
 Oliver Twists and Marian Erles in the world. But 
 ignorance, poverty, paternal and maternal wickedness 
 and neglect, would be less malignant evils than they 
 are if such characters, resisting evil as asbestos resists 
 fire, were not very uncommon ; and it is generally felt 
 that, in poems and novels, these immaculate person- 
 ages are mere lay-figures, like the shepherds and 
 shepherdesses of the stage, in whose delineation no 
 very shrewd or searching knowledge of human nature 
 is displayed. 
 
 Marian Erie was born upon " the ledge of Malvern 
 Hill to eastward, in a hut, built up at night to evade 
 the landlord's eye, of mud and turf." Her father did 
 random jobs which steadier workmen despised, looked 
 
Marian's Parents. 133 
 
 after swine on commons, picked hops, assisted Welsh 
 
 horse-dealers 
 
 When a drove 
 
 Of startled horses plunged into the mist 
 Below the mountain-road, and sowed the wind 
 With wandering neighings. 
 
 He drank, slept, cursed his wife when there was no 
 money to buy drink; and the woman " heat her baby 
 in revenge for her own broken heart." The little girl 
 picked up some knowledge at a Sunday-school, and 
 felt vaguely that there was " some grand blind love" 
 in the heavens when the sun dazzled her eyes. One 
 day her mother, who had just been badly beaten, tried 
 to introduca her to a life of infamy. Shrieking with 
 horror, she started away and bounded down the hill- 
 side. 
 
 They yelled at her, 
 
 As famished hounds at a hare. She heard them yell, 
 She felt her name hiss after her from the hills, 
 Like shot from guns. On, on. And now she had cast 
 The voices off with the uplands. On. Mad fear 
 Was running in her feet and killing the ground ; 
 The white roads curled as if she burnt them up, 
 The green fields melted, wayside trees fell back 
 To make room for her. Then her head grew vexed, 
 Trees, fields, turned on her, and ran after her ; 
 She heard the quick pants of the hills behind. 
 The keen air pricked her neck. She had lost her feet, 
 Could run no "more, yet, somehow, went as fast 
 The horizon, red 'twixt steeples in the east, 
 So sucked her forward, forward, while her heart 
 Kept swelling, swelling, till it swelled so big 
 It seemed to fill her body ; then it burst, 
 And overflowed the world^and swamped the light, 
 " And now I am dead and safe," thought Marian Erie 
 She had dropped, she had fainted. 
 
134 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Marian never saw her mother again. Picked out of 
 a ditch by a passing waggoner, she was carried to a 
 hospital in London. That was exactly the kind of 
 place in which she was likely to fall under the notice 
 of Konmey Leigh. It would not have been easy for 
 him to go lower in the social scale in order to find a 
 bride who, as his wife, might represent the common 
 people standing on a level of perfect equality with the 
 ladies and gentlemen of England. The marriage was 
 to be celebrated in the aristocratic chapel of St. 
 James's. Eomney Leigh invited a brilliant circle 
 of peers, peeresses, and leaders in society to witness 
 the ceremony, not forgetting to ask Marian's fellow- 
 inmates of St. Margaret 's-court to grace the wedding, 
 and feast thereafter on Hampstead-heath. Under 
 these circumstances, the party assembled in the 
 church was of a very unusual kind. 
 
 Of course the people came in uncompelled, 
 
 Lame, blind, and worse sick, sorrowful, and worse, 
 
 The humours of the peccant social wound 
 
 All pressed out, poured out upon Pimlico, 
 
 Exasperating the unaccustomed air 
 
 With hideous interfusion : you'd suppose 
 
 A finished generation, dead of plague, 
 
 Swept outward from their graves into the sun, 
 
 The moil of death upon them. What a sight ! 
 
 A holiday of miserable men 
 
 Is sadder than a burial-day of kings. 
 
 They clogged the streets, they oozed into the church 
 
 In a dark, slow stream, like blood. To see that sight, 
 
 The noble ladies stood up in their pews, 
 
 Some pale from fear, a few as red for hate, 
 
 Some simply curious, some just insolent. 
 
The Wedding Guests. 135 
 
 And some in wondering scorn, " What next ? What next? " 
 
 These crushed their delicate rose-lips from the smile 
 
 That misbecame them in a holy place, 
 
 With broidered hems of perfumed handkerchiefs ; 
 
 Those passed the salts with confidence of eyes 
 
 And simultaneous shiver of moire silk ; 
 
 While all the aisles, alive and black with heads, 
 
 Crawled slowly toward the altar from the street, 
 
 As bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a hole 
 
 With shuddering involutions, swaying slow 
 
 From right to left, and then from left to right, 
 
 In pants and pauses. What an ugly crest 
 
 Of faces rose upon you everywhere 
 
 From that crammed mass ! You did not usually 
 
 See faces like them in the open day : 
 
 They hide in cellars, not to make you mad 
 
 As Komney Leigh is. Faces ! O my God, 
 
 We call those, faces ? Men's and women's, ay, 
 
 And children's ; babies, hanging like a rag 
 
 Forgotten on their mother's neck poor mouths, 
 
 Wiped clean of mother's milk by mother's blow, 
 
 Before they are taught her cursing. 
 
 It is not without rather severe disappointment that 
 on examining Aurora Leigh with more care and 
 closeness than I had brought to the task for many 
 years, I have found the poem so much more faulty 
 than previous readings led me to expect. The 
 metaphoric richness, the wealth of picturesque phrase 
 and coloured word, the animation, and even, on the 
 whole, the melody, of Aurora Leigh are heyond praise. 
 But it lacks modulation, variety, repose. There are, 
 indeed, passages in which the thoughts and images 
 fairly float themselves away in the sphere-dance of 
 harmony ; wonderful passages, in which it is again 
 demonstrated that true melody in language is but the 
 
136 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 rhythmic cadence natural to a mood of imaginative 
 thought, sufficiently elevated, calm, and mighty. But 
 over wide spaces of the poem the ear finds no delight. 
 The crowding, the vehemence, the feverish haste and 
 impatience, which so frequently characterise Mr. 
 Kingsley's novels, can hardly fail to be recalled by 
 many passages. The heroine invariably talks like 
 one of Mr. Kingsley's characters. There is a lack 
 of tenderer strains to refresh and relieve the ear; 
 the atmosphere wants calm, the landscape wants per- 
 spective. 
 
 But it is with the poorness of the human element 
 throughout the poem that I have, in the last reading, 
 been most painfully impressed. I am indeed not so 
 sure as I once was that Bomney Leigh could not 
 have existed. He had a bee in his bonnet, but genius 
 may be combined with almost lunatic unpracticality. 
 But Marian Erie is a fancy portrait, and Lady Walde- 
 mar is an impossibility. The only personages in 
 the poem whose existences are thoroughly realised 
 are Aurora and the aunt. Agreeable or disagreeable, 
 Aurora has poetic vitality. Mrs. Browning made use, 
 without question, of her own experiences, in deline- 
 ating the successful authoress ; and though we cannot 
 impute to Aurora the high qualities of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, or to Mrs. Browning the flightiness and flip- 
 pancy and tone of conventional satire of her heroine, 
 there are unmistakable traits of reality in the girl. 
 The aunt, too, is a typical English lady of a certain 
 class, and might, with more patient finish and more 
 
Defects of "Aurora Leigh." 137 
 
 tender and intelligent sympathy, have been a lovely 
 figure. But Marian Erie has no life that we can 
 call her own. She is, and does, what the poet- 
 novelist wants, neither more nor less, exactly as a 
 woman of wood, in an artist's studio, wears black or 
 white, red or green, a widow's cap or a huntress's 
 feather, according to the painter's design and grouping. 
 Lady Waldemar is not only an extravagant caricature 
 of aristocratic coarseness in speech, but superficial 
 and incorrect as a study of human nature. It was 
 most unlikely that she should have fallen in love with 
 such a man as Bomney Leigh, yet a woman's 
 freakishness may account for that ; but has a clever, 
 unprincipled, strong-willed, intriguing woman no 
 cunning? Could Lady Waldemar have been so 
 childishly maladroit and indelicate, as to let both 
 Aurora and Marian into the secret of her love ? In 
 real life such an one as Lady Waldemar would be the 
 last person in the world to wear her heart upon her 
 sleeve. 
 
 If the individuals described in the poem yield so 
 little satisfaction', the classes described make no 
 amends. Mrs. Browning fails both with the aristocracy 
 and with the poor. We have seen her account of the 
 reception met with by Aurora when she visited Marian 
 Erie in St. Margaret's-court, and her description of 
 the crowd of poor people assembled in the chapel of 
 St. James's to see Komney Leigh wed his plebeian 
 bride. That Aurora should have been insulted in 
 entering a house in St. Margaret's-court is of course 
 
138 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 possible ; but I think that all who have engaged in 
 visiting the poor in their own dwellings will admit that 
 such an occurrence is in a high degree improbable. It 
 cannot be said of the English poor that they are slow 
 to recognise the wish to do them good, or to recipro- 
 cate kindly feeling. The hideous badness, the rabid 
 ill-temper, attributed to the crowd that went from St. 
 Giles's to see Marian Erie married to Romney Leigh, 
 prove that Mrs. Browning had no real knowledge of 
 the London poor. Romney Leigh, a gentleman of 
 birth and wealth, spending his money for the benefit 
 of the destitute and miserable, and proposing to show 
 his sense of the brotherhood of humanity by marrying 
 a needlewoman, would have been the darling of the 
 multitude. They would have thought him a fool, but 
 would have loved him for all that. Instead of coming 
 to the wedding in foul rags, they would have come in 
 the best things they could buy, beg, or borrow. They 
 and their babies would have been well washed at 
 least ; . their faces would have been as red as cherries 
 or strawberries with satisfaction and jollity ; their 
 temper would have been in a state of radiant good- 
 ness, not only on account of the delightful wedding 
 and the expected feast, but from that appreciation of 
 the humour of the whole affair which a London 
 crowd would assuredly have, displayed. Had such a 
 celebration as the marriage of Romney Leigh and 
 Marian Erie ever taken place, the appearance of the 
 crowd would most certainly have suggested to no one 
 that " you had stirred up hell to heave its lowest dreg 
 
Aristocratic Talk. 139 
 
 fiends uppermost." The absence of the element of 
 humour in Mrs. Browning's mental composition is 
 painfully conspicuous in these delineations, and is 
 indeed fatal to their success. 
 
 So much for the class represented in this marriage 
 on the side of Marian Erie. Now for the class repre- 
 sented by Bomney Leigh. Aurora was placed by the 
 bridegroom beside the altar-stair, " where he and 
 other noble gentlemen and high-born ladies waited 
 for the bride." Noble gentleman and high-born 
 ladies, the friends of Eomney Leigh, ought to have 
 been favourable representatives of the English 
 aristocracy. Some of them, however, had been asked 
 to be present by Lady Waldemar, and the reader can 
 make what allowance he pleases for their talk on 
 that account. Let us take a sample of it. 
 
 It was early : there was time 
 For greeting and the morning's compliment ; 
 And gradually a ripple of women's talk 
 Arose and fell, and tossed about a spray 
 Of English s's, soft as a silent hush, 
 And, notwithstanding, quite as audible 
 As louder phrases thrown out by the men. 
 " Yes, really, if we've need to wait in church, 
 We've need to talk there."" She ? 'Tis Lady Ayr, 
 In blue not purple ! that's the dowager." 
 " She looks as young." " She flirts as young, you mean. 
 Why, if you had seen her upon Thursday night, 
 You'd call Miss Norris modest."" You again ! 
 I waltzed with you three hours back. Up at six, 
 Up still at ten : scarce time to change one's shoes. 
 I feel as white and sulky as a ghost, 
 So pray don't speak to me, Lord Belcher." " No, 
 I'll look at you instead, and it's enough 
 
140 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 While you have that face." " In church, my lord ! fie, fie I " 
 " Adair, you stayed for the Division ? " " Lost 
 By one." " The devil it is ! I'm sorry for 't. 
 
 And if I had not promised Mrs. Grove " 
 
 " You might have kept your word to Liverpool." 
 
 " Constituents must remember, after all, 
 
 We're mortal." " We remind them of it." " Hark, 
 
 The bride comes ! Here she comes, in a stream of milk ! " 
 
 " There ! Dear, you are asleep still ; don't you know 
 
 The five Miss Granvilles ? Always dressed in white 
 
 To show they're ready to be married." " Lower ! 
 
 The aunt is at your elbow." " Lady Maud, 
 
 Did Lady Waldemar tell you she had seen 
 
 This girl of Leigh's ? " " No, wait. 'Twas Mrs. Brookes 
 
 Who told me Lady Waldemar told her 
 
 No, 'twasn't Mrs. Brookes." 
 
 Such tattle, whether uttered by aristocrats or by 
 democrats, was surely not worthy of poetical record, 
 and we may, I think, cherish the belief that it is 
 impossibly vulgar and impossibly trivial. 
 
 With no better entertainment than such conversa- 
 tion, the ladies and gentlemen naturally grew impa- 
 tient for the appearance of Marian Erie, and for the 
 commencement of the ceremony. At length Komney 
 stood forward, a letter in his hand, and, with face of 
 appropriate ghostliness and ghastliness, announced 
 that the girl had disappeared and that there would be 
 no marriage. " I am very weak," he said, which was 
 true. " I meant but only good," he added, which was 
 also true, but little to the purpose. 
 
 My friends, you are all dismissed. Go, eat and drink 
 According to the program me, and farewell. 
 
 So curt a dismissal was barely courteous, and the 
 crowd, tired with waiting, did not receive it favour- 
 
In the Church. 141 
 
 ably. The cry rose that the girl had had foul play. 
 One Amazon of logical mind thought that the thing 
 was too plain to be doubted. 
 
 Disappear ! 
 
 Who ever disappears except a ghost ? 
 And who believes a story of a ghost ? 
 I ask you, would a girl go off, instead 
 Of staying to be married ? A fine tale ! 
 A wicked man, I say, a wicked man ! 
 For my part I would rather starve on gin 
 Than make my dinner on his beef and beer. 
 
 To this woman the crowd gave assent. A rush 
 was made upon Eomney. Clamour of battle and 
 noise as of fifty Donnybrooks arose in the church. 
 Fine ladies shrieked or swooned, or " madly fled " 
 and fell, " trod screeching underneath the feet of 
 those who fled and screeched." Hearing the wild 
 cries of the mob, inciting itself to pull down Bomney 
 and' kill him, Aurora rushes into the middle of the 
 fray, to save him, or rather would have done so, 
 had she not been caught back by some one. The 
 rest goes without saying. She fainted; the police 
 succeeded in quelling the tumult ; and the sublime 
 scheme for the union of class with class went the 
 way of all soap-bubbles. Romney, who was only too 
 good so good as to be good for nothing, says the 
 shrewd Spanish proverb modestly accused himself of 
 having been the ruin of his banished bride. 
 
 The poor child ! 
 
 Poor Marian ! 'twas a luckless day for her, 
 When first she chanced on my philanthropy. 
 
 Where'all is improbable to the verge of pantomime, 
 
142 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 it seems idle to specify any one improbability ; but it 
 is difficult to imagine anything more unlikely to 
 happen than that Marian Erie should have left 
 Eomney in the lurch on the eve of her marriage. She 
 always speaks of him with ardent enthusiasm ; his 
 step on the stair is music to her ear ; she has no term 
 to suit him but angel ; and yet a few glozing words 
 from Lady Waldemar suffice to persuade her to leave 
 the country without bidding him good-bye. Marian 
 Erie would not only have been devoid of feminine 
 ambition, pride, hope, and passion, but would have 
 been more stupidly blind to Lady Waldemar's motives 
 than any daughter of Eve, not a born idiot, could be, 
 if she had permitted the fine lady to cheat her so 
 easily out of a husband. Of course the pretext was 
 that Eomney would be unhappy with Marian and 
 supremely happy with Lady Waldemar; but she 
 would be a strange woman who could be persuaded by 
 a rival that the man who had chosen her must be 
 wretched in spite of her wifely devotion to him, and 
 that she could never be happy as his wife. It is im- 
 portant to observe also that, in arguing Marian into 
 the desertion, Lady Waldemar gives no proof of that 
 inexpressible adroitness of logic and rhetoric, by which 
 Shakespeare enables us to understand how his bad 
 people carry out their plots. And even if we grant 
 that Lady Waldemar might have prevailed upon 
 Marian Erie to decline the match, is it credible that 
 her ladyship would have timed the explosion for the 
 wedding-day, thus giving the utmost publicity to 
 
Improbability of the Plot. 143 
 
 the affair? Would she, last of all, have allowed 
 Marian to inform Romney of her departure in a 
 letter in which Lady Waldemar was said to have 
 come nine times to see her, and was unmistakahly 
 referred to as an " over-generous friend," who had 
 promised to care for Marian and keep her happy? 
 Having condescended to steep the incidents and 
 characters of a sensation novel in the empyrean 
 colours of her genius, Mrs. Browning does not manage 
 her plot with the ingenuity of a tenth-rate novelist. 
 
 Aurora now addresses herself with fresh earnestness 
 to literature, but she is haunted more than ever hy the 
 thought of Romney. She has come round to her 
 lover's opinion, which also was Goethe's, that women 
 work for the individual or for the family, not for 
 the race, an opinion which, as we saw, she formerly 
 renounced and resented. 
 
 There it is ; 
 
 We women are too apt to look to one, 
 Which proves a certain impotence in art. 
 We strain our natures at doing something great, 
 Far less because it's something great to do, 
 Than, haply, that we so commend ourselves 
 As being not small, and more appreciable 
 To some one friend. 
 
 She determines that she will work as a true artist. 
 She will " have no traffic with the personal thought in 
 Art's pure temple." She will aim, as men aim, at the 
 highest excellence, and if she fail, she bids her critics 
 tell her so, and honour her " with truth, if not with 
 praise." Then she dashes into criticism of her own 
 
144 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 works, and her criticism is, as usual, masterly. The 
 following passage will bear a second or even a third 
 reading. It presents Mrs. Browning's view of art as 
 concerned essentially with reality, not with the fan- 
 tastic architecture of the brain, even if that architec- 
 ture is so beautiful as the mythology of Greece, a 
 view which she had already embodied in her noble 
 poem on the gods of Hellas. The passage touches also 
 upon the doctrine of poetic symbolism in its applica- 
 tion to the world and all that it contains ; every flower, 
 and star, and stream being, for the poet, a word or 
 text in a volume filled with glorious emblems. 
 
 In that descriptive poem called " The Hills " 
 
 The prospects were too far and indistinct. 
 
 'Tis true my critics said, " A fine view that ! " 
 
 The public scarcely cared to climb the book 
 
 For even the finest ; and the public's right 
 
 A tree's mere firewood, unless humanised ; 
 
 Which well the Greeks knew when they stirred the bark 
 
 With close-pressed bosoms of subsiding nymphs, 
 
 And made the forest-rivers garrulous 
 
 With babble of gods. For us, we are called to mark 
 
 A still more intimate humanity 
 
 In this inferior nature, or ourselves 
 
 Must fall like dead leaves trodden under foot 
 
 By veritable artists. Earth, shut up 
 
 By Adam, like a fakir in a box 
 
 Left too long buried, remained stiff and dry, 
 
 A mere dumb corpse, till Christ the Lord came down, 
 
 Unlocked the doors, forced open the blank eyes, 
 
 And used His kingly chrisms to straighten out 
 
 The leathery tongue turned back into the throat ; 
 
 Since when she lives, remembers, palpitates 
 
 In every limb, aspires in every breath, 
 
 Embraces infinite relations. Now 
 
Philosophical Criticism. 145 
 
 We want no half-gods, Panomphoean Joves, 
 
 Fauns, Naiads, Tritons, Oreads, and the rest, 
 
 To take possession of a senseless world 
 
 To unnatural vampire-uses. See the earth 
 
 The body of our body, the green earth 
 
 Indubitably human, like this flesh 
 
 And these articulated veins through which 
 
 Our heart drives blood ! There's not a flower of spring 
 
 That dies ere June but vaunts itself allied 
 
 By issue and symbol, by significance 
 
 And correspondence, to that spirit- world 
 
 Outside the limits of our space and time 
 
 Whereto we are bound. Let poets give it voice 
 
 With human meanings ; else they miss the thought, 
 
 And henceforth step down lower, stand confessed 
 
 Instructed poorly for interpreters, 
 
 Thrown out by an easy cowslip in the text. 
 
 Even so my pastoral failed ; it was a book 
 
 Of surface-pictures pretty, cold, and false 
 
 With literal transcript the worse done, I think, 
 
 For being not ill- done. Let me set my mark 
 
 Against such doings, and do otherwise. 
 
 This strikes me. If the public whom we know, 
 
 Could catch me at such admissions, I should pass 
 
 For being right modest. Yet how proud we are, 
 
 In daring to look down upon ourselves ! 
 
 She proceeds to discuss the question of the fitness 
 of the present age to he poetically treated. " Thinkers 
 scout " our time, and poets abound " who scorn to 
 touch it with a finger-tip." They call it an age of 
 pewter, of scum, of mere transition. All this she 
 declares to he the wrong thinking that makes poor 
 poems, and she illustrates, by a very fine poetical 
 figure, the tendency of the people of each successive 
 age to think their own age trivial. 
 
 Every age, 
 Through being held too close, is ill-discerned 
 
 10 
 
146 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 By those who have not lived past it. We'll suppose 
 
 Mount Athos carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed, 
 
 To some colossal statue of a man : 
 
 The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear, 
 
 Had guessed as little of any human form 
 
 Up there, as would a flock of browsing goats. 
 
 They'd have, in fact, to travel ten miles off 
 
 Or ere the giant image broke on them, 
 
 Full human profile, nose and chin distinct, 
 
 Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky, 
 
 And fed at evening with the blood of suns ; 
 
 Grand torso, hand, that flung perpetually 
 
 The largess of a silver river down 
 
 To all the country pastures. 'Tis even thus 
 
 With times we live in, evermore too great 
 
 To be apprehended near. 
 
 She bids poets, if they can sing at all, sing " this 
 live, throbbing age, that brawls, cheats, maddens, 
 calculates, aspires." For her own part, she says that 
 she worked with the true earnestness of the artist. 
 " With no amateur's irreverent haste and busy idle- 
 ness," did she produce her book. Not failing of recog- 
 nition, and partially succeeding in what she aimed at, 
 she nevertheless was sad. The womanhood in her 
 called and craved for something more than art, for 
 affection, for love, for home. 
 
 O supreme Artist, who as sole return 
 
 For all the cosmic wonder of Thy work, 
 
 Demandest of us just a word, a name, 
 
 " My Father ! " Thou hast knowledge, only Thou, 
 
 How dreary 'tis for women to sit still 
 
 On winter nights by solitary fires, 
 
 And hear the nations praising them far off, 
 
 Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love, 
 
 Our very heart of passionate womanhood, 
 
Fame and Love. 147 
 
 Which could not beat so in the verse without 
 Being present also in the unkissed lips, 
 And eyes undried because there's none to ask 
 The reason they grow moist. 
 
 To sit alone, 
 
 And think, for comfort, how, that very night, 
 Affianced lovers, leaning face to face 
 With sweet half-listenings for each other's breath, 
 Are reading haply from some page of ours, 
 To pause with a thrill, as if their cheeks had touched, 
 When such a stanza, level to their mood, 
 Seems floating their own thought out " So I feel 
 For thee " " And I, for thee : " this poet knows 
 What everlasting love is ! how, that night, 
 A father, issuing from the misty roads 
 Upon the luminous round of lamp and hearth 
 And happy children, having caught up first 
 The youngest there until it shrunk and shrieked 
 To feel the cold chin prick its dimples through 
 With winter from the hills, may throw i' the lap 
 Of the eldest (who has learnt to drop her lids 
 To hide some sweetness newer than last year's) 
 Our book and cry, "Ah you, you care for rhymes ; 
 So here be rhymes to pore on under trees, 
 When April comes to let you ! I've been told 
 They are not idle as so many are, 
 But set hearts beating pure as well as fast : 
 It's yours, the book ; I'll write your name injt, 
 That so you may not lose, however lost 
 In poet's lore and charming reverie, 
 The thoughts of how your father thought of you 
 In riding from the town." 
 
 Fame "the love of all " is, the woman-poet admits, 
 " but a small thing to the love of one." The love of Kom- 
 ney seemed meanwhile to be finally lost to Aurora by 
 his marriage to Lady Waldemar, which she believed to 
 have taken place about this time or soon after. She 
 resolved to leave England and revisit her native Italy, 
 
 102 
 
148 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 taking Paris in her way. In Paris she meets with 
 Marian Erie. The girl had been subjected to infamous 
 treatment, and, without any fault of hers, had become 
 a mother. The woman to whose care Lady Waldemar 
 had committed her had turned out to be diabolically 
 bad, but there is no reason to suppose that the worst 
 horror in Marian's tragedy had been contemplated by 
 her ladyship. Aurora and Marian go on to Italy in 
 company. The lines descriptive of Aurora's night- 
 watch on deck, as she sails along the Mediterranean 
 coast and looks out for Italy, are, like all the descrip- 
 tive passages in this book, full of the loveliest poetry. 
 
 I sate upon the deck and watched all night, 
 And listened through the stars for Italy. 
 Sate silent : I could hear my own soul speak, 
 And had my friend, for Nature comes sometimes 
 And says, "I am ambassador for God." 
 I felt the wind soft from the land of souls ; 
 The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight, 
 One straining past another along the shore, 
 The way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts 
 Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas 
 And stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak 
 They stood : I watched beyond that Tyrian belt 
 Of intense sea betwixt them and the ship, 
 Down all their sides the misty olive-woods 
 Dissolving in the weak congenial moon, 
 And still disclosing some brown convent-tower 
 That seems as if it grew from some brown rock, 
 Or many a little lighted village, dropt 
 Like a fallen star, upon so high a point, 
 You wonder what can keep it in its place 
 From sliding headlong with the waterfalls 
 Which drop and powder all the myrtle-groves 
 With spray of silver. Thus my Italy 
 Was stealing on us. Genoa broke with day ; 
 
How To Read "Aurora Leigh." 
 
 The Doria's long pale palace striking out 
 
 From green hills in advance of the white town, 
 
 A marble finger dominant to ships, 
 
 Seen glimmering through the uncertain gray of dawn. 
 
 How Eomney follows Aurora and Marian to Italy 
 how he still proposes to marry Marian how Aurora 
 and he continue at cross purposes with each other 
 how Marian declines to accept Bomney a second time 
 and how the cousins at last make it up, and finish 
 the poem with a burst of commonplaces, gloriously 
 versified, about " the love of wedded souls " my 
 readers must learn for themselves. Perhaps it would 
 be no bad advice to those who wish to make Aurora 
 Leigh the means of knowing Mrs. Browning in her 
 strength and not in her weakness, to dip into it here 
 and there, to dwell upon its poetic beauty as distin- 
 guished from its qualities as a novel, and thus to get 
 rid of its plot altogether. You cannot read in it too 
 often you are in no danger of exhausting its 
 treasures ; but you may read it too long at a time. 
 There is no end to its good things its pithy, epigram- 
 matic sayings, its felicities of metaphor and picture. 
 
 Wolffs an atheist ; 
 And if the Iliad fell out, as he says, 
 By mere fortuitous concourse of old songs, 
 We'll guess as much, too, for the universe. 
 
 A tree's mere firewood, unless humanised. 
 
 Let us pray 
 God's grace to keep God's image in repute. 
 
 Art's the witness of what IS 
 
 Beyond this show. If this world's show were all, 
 Mere imitation would be all in Art. 
 
150 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars, 
 Impatient that we're nothing. 
 
 Art is much, but love is more. 
 O Art, my Art, thou'rt much, but Love is more ! 
 Art symbolises heaven, but Love is God 
 And makes heaven. 
 
 Here is a metaphysical snatch, in which metaphysics 
 and poetry are so mixed and mingled, and yet so fitly 
 wedded together, that we can hardly tell which is 
 crimson and which cloud : 
 
 No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee 
 
 But finds some coupling with the spinning stars ; 
 
 No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere ; 
 
 No chaffinch but implies the cherubim : 
 
 And, glancing on my own thin, veined wrist, 
 
 In such a little trernour of the blood 
 
 The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul 
 
 Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven, 
 
 And every common bush afire with God : 
 
 But only he who sees, takes off his shoes ; 
 
 The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, 
 
 And daub their natural faces unaware 
 
 More and more, from the first similitude. 
 
 Or take this solemn and profoundly Christian 
 prayer : 
 
 Alas, long-suffering and most patient God, 
 Thou need'st be surelier God to bear with us 
 Than even to have made us ! Thou, aspire, aspire 
 From henceforth for me ! Thou who hast, Thyself, 
 Endured this flesh-hood, knowing how, as a soaked 
 And sucking vesture, it would drag us down 
 And choke us in the melancholy deep, 
 Sustain me, that, with Thee, I walk these waves, 
 Kesisting ! breathe me upward, Thou for me 
 Aspiring, who are the Way, the Truth, the Life, 
 
Marian's Child. 151 
 
 That no truth henceforth seem indifferent, 
 No way to truth laborious, and no life, 
 Not even this life I live, intolerable ! 
 
 From these sublime heights, to take farewell of 
 this [astonishing poem, we shall descend into the 
 room in which Aurora Leigh and Marian Erie 
 enjoy the woman's treat of having a long look at 
 Marian's baby. 
 
 I saw the whole room, I and Marian there 
 Alone. 
 
 Alone ? she threw her bonnet off, 
 Then, sighing as 'twere sighing the last time, 
 Approached the bed, and drew a shawl away : 
 You could not peel a fruit you fear to bruise 
 More calmly and more carefully than so, 
 Nor would you find within, a rosier-flushed 
 Pomegranate 
 
 There he lay, upon his back, 
 The yearling creature, warm and moist with life 
 To the bottom of his dimples, to the ends 
 Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face ; 
 For since he had been covered over-much 
 To keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks 
 Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose 
 The shepherd's heart-blood ebbed away into, 
 The faster for his love. And love was here 
 An instant ! in the pretty baby-mouth, 
 Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked ; 
 The little naked feet drawn up the way 
 Of nestled birdlings ; everything so soft 
 And tender, to the little holdfast hands, 
 Which, closing on a finger into sleep, 
 Had kept the mould oft. 
 
 Ill closing the book, I feel that my extracts do it 
 nothing like justice. It is starred with splendours like 
 
152 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 a clear night in June, or a morning meadow sown 
 with orient pearl. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 " I am, of course, not acquainted," I remarked 
 when, many years ago, I first had occasion to print 
 my estimate of Mrs. Browning, " with the works of 
 all great female writers, perhaps not even of many. 
 But as you look towards the brow of a towering 
 mountain, rising far over the clouds, and crowned with 
 ancient snow, you may have an assurance, even though 
 it rises from a plain, or, if amid lower hills, though 
 you have not actually taken the elevation of each, that 
 in height it is peerless. In the poems of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing are qualities which admit of their being compared 
 with those of the greatest men ; touches which only 
 the mightiest give. These may not come often enough, 
 or they may be too often associated with the spasm of 
 woman's vehemence, to permit her a seat beside 
 those mightiest. With the few sovereigns of litera- 
 ture, the Homers, Shakespeares, Miltons, she will not 
 rank. But in full recollection of Scott's vivacity, and 
 bright, cheerful glow; of Byron's fervid passion and 
 magnificent description ; of Wordsworth's majesty ; of 
 Shelley's million-coloured fancy; of Coleridge's occa- 
 sional flights right into the sun-glare; of Bailey's tropic 
 exuberance, and of Tennyson's golden calm ; I yet 
 hold her worthy of being mentioned with any poet of 
 this century. She has the breadth and versatility of a 
 
Conclusion. 153 
 
 man ; no sameliness, no one idea, no type character ; 
 our single Shakespearean woman. In this I am 
 agreed with by the author of The Baven, a critic of 
 great acuteness and originality. ' Woman, sister,' 
 says Thomas de Quincey, ' there are some things 
 which you do not execute as well as your brother, 
 man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me, if I doubt 
 whether you will ever produce a great poet from your 
 choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, 
 or a great scholar ; by which last is meant, not one 
 who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also 
 on an infinite and electrical power of combination, 
 bringing together from the four winds, like the angel 
 of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead 
 men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you 
 can create yourselves into any of these great creators, 
 why have you not ? ' Mrs. Browning has exalted her 
 sex; this passage was true." 
 
 There is, perhaps, more of enthusiasm than of dis- 
 crimination in these young-mannish sentences. Mrs. 
 Browning I still hold to be, in the full sense of the 
 term, a great poet, but I now see that De Quincey 
 might have maintained the negative on that question 
 with more weighty reasoning than I then surmised; 
 and when I so confidently pronounced Mrs. Browning 
 the greatest of women, fame was but beginning 
 to whisper the name of George Eliot. I would 
 now content myself with saying that, in fervour, 
 melodiousness, and splendour of poetic genius, Mrs. 
 Browning stands, to the best of my knowledge, first 
 
154 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 among women ; that, in tunefulness, the distinctive 
 quality of the poet, George Eliot is greatly her 
 inferior ; but that, in knowledge of life, insight 
 into character, comprehensiveness and penetration of 
 thought, and the plastic energy by which the literary 
 artist moulds his figures, she was not the equal of 
 George Eliot. 
 
CHAELOTTE BRONTE AND HER 
 SISTERS. 
 
CHAPTEK I. 
 
 GENERAL IMPRESSION OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE 
 THACKERAY'S OPINION OF HER- MRS. 
 GASKELL'S BIOGRAPHY AND MR. WEMYSS 
 REID'S MONOGRAPH THE JOY OF THE MOOR- 
 LANDTHE FATHER AND MOTHER OF THE 
 BRONTES THE FATHER'S POEMS. 
 
 THE main impression derived from the works of 
 Charlotte Bronte or Nicholls better known a 
 quarter of a century ago as Currer Bell is that of 
 vivid strength combined with moral vehemence. This 
 is the idea Thackeray felicitously expresses when he 
 calls her " an austere little Joan of Arc marching in 
 upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy 
 morals." 
 
 While she lived, very little was known of her 
 history ; and the announcement of her death, follow- 
 ing swiftly upon that of her marriage, fell upon the 
 public with a suddenness which added poignancy to 
 the pang arising from the knowledge that a genius 
 which, -ten years before, had not scaled the horizon, 
 and which had shone for a time with piercing bril- 
 liance, was already overtaken by the eclipse of death. 
 
158 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 It was in 1855, when the issue of the Crimean war 
 was still undecided, that she died. " Even while the 
 heart of the British nation " thus I wrote at the 
 time " is filled to overflowing hy one great anguish 
 and one great hope, a thrill of real sorrow will pass 
 to every corner of the land with the tidings that Mrs. 
 Nicholls, formerly Charlotte Bronte, and known to all 
 the world as Currer Bell, is no more. But a few 
 months ago we heard of her marriage. "We learned, 
 with a smile of happy surprise, that the merciless 
 derider of weak and insipid suitors had found a lord 
 and master that the hand which drew the three 
 worshipful ecclesiastics, Malone, Donne, and Sweet- 
 ing, had been locked at the altar in that of a curate. 
 And already the smile fades away in the sound of her 
 funeral knell, leaving us to reflect, that all of fruit and 
 flower which time might have matured in the garden 
 of her genius has been nipped by the frost of death. 
 There is something which strikes one as peculiarly 
 touching in the death of Currer Bell. She seemed so 
 full of animation, of vigour; life danced in her veins 
 like new wine ; all she said was so fresh and stirring ; 
 the child-look taking this for a grand world, worth 
 living in, no place for whining was still on her face. 
 The brave little woman! in whose works you could 
 not point to a slovenly line, to an obscure or tarrying 
 idea. You thought of her as combining the iron will 
 of her little Jane with the peerless nature of her 
 Shirley, the beautiful pantheress, the forest-born. 
 She could have stood out under the lightning, to 
 
Thackeray's Opinion. 159 
 
 trace, with firm pencil, its zigzags of crackling fire. 
 And now she, too, is but a few handfuls of white 
 dust ! Her step will never more be upon the loved 
 wolds of Yorkshire, and the broad moors which she 
 made classic by her genius. 
 
 Her part in all the pomp that fills 
 The circuit of the summer hills 
 Is that her grave is green." 
 
 Thackeray saw her in London, and the few words 
 we have from him, whether descriptive of her person, 
 or characterising the spirit of her books, are deeply 
 interesting. ''Which of her readers," he asks, "has 
 not become her friend? Who that has known her 
 books has not admired the artist's noble English, the 
 burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the 
 indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious 
 love and reverence, the passionate honour, so to speak, 
 of the woman?" " I can only say of this lady, vidi 
 tantum. I saw her first just as I rose out of an illness 
 from which I had never thought to recover. I re- 
 member the trembling little frame, the little hand, the 
 great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to 
 me to characterise the woman. Twice I recollect 
 she took me to task for what she held to be errors in 
 doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. 
 She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to 
 conclusions." Her judgment of London celebrities 
 struck Thackeray as often premature; " but, perhaps," 
 he confesses, " the city is rather angry at being 
 judged." " She gave me the impression of being a 
 
160 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A 
 great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed 
 to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, 
 she appeared to me." 
 
 The memory of Charlotte Bronte is indissolubly 
 associated with that of her sisters, Emily and Anne. 
 Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte, an acknow- 
 ledged masterpiece in that difficult branch of litera- 
 ture, has set before the world in imperishable colours 
 the little Haworth Parsonage, with its neighbouring 
 graves and circling moors, the saturnine father, the 
 unhappy son, and the three shy, pale, plain daughters 
 marked for early death, that belonged to the immortals 
 of the world. " What a story," says Thackeray 
 again, " is that of that family of poets in their soli- 
 tude yonder on the gloomy northern moors ! At nine 
 o'clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell tells us, after evening 
 prayers, when their guardian and relative had gone to 
 bed, the three poetesses the three maidens, Charlotte, 
 and Emily, and Anne Charlotte being ' the motherly 
 friend and guardian to the other two ' began, like 
 restless wild animals, to pace up and down their 
 parlour, ' making out ' their wonderful stories, talking 
 over plans and projects and thoughts of what was to 
 be their future life." 
 
 Perhaps, however, Mrs. Gaskell has conveyed an 
 exaggerated impression of the gloom and desolation of 
 the childhood of the Brontes. Mr. Wemyss Keid, 
 who has made Charlotte Bronte and her sisters the 
 subject of an admirably executed monograph, while 
 
The Joy of the Moors. 161 
 
 acknowledging the great ability and value of Mrs. 
 Gaskell's work, thinks that she has cast the shadow 
 too deeply and too soon over the young Brontes. We 
 have traces, in the earlier part of their lives, of what 
 he justly calls " a wholesome, healthy happiness." 
 No one, I am convinced, will wonder at the fact, who 
 has had any experience of what a high moor on a 
 summer day is to a child. My own first few years, 
 after emerging from infancy, were passed among moors 
 in the north of Scotland, hleaker than it might be 
 easy to find in Yorkshire ; and the intense and inex- 
 pressible sweetness of roamings among the heather in 
 summer days remains with me to this hour as one of 
 the supreme sensations of my life. This wild joy of 
 the moorland is everywhere traceable in the Bronte 
 books. The very soul of the music that lives, and will 
 live for ever, in the works of the sisters, would have 
 been absent, if they had not heard the song of the 
 winds, and seen the race of the clouds, upon the York- 
 shire moors. Mr. Wemyss Eeid, therefore, has done 
 good service in counteracting the idea that their life at 
 Haworth was altogether dreary and desolate. 
 
 In respect of human companionship, however, the 
 Bronte children were to be pitied . Their mother died 
 when they were tiny things, and their aunt, who came 
 to take care of them, was not fond of children, and had 
 no motherly ways. The servant-of- all- work, Tabby, 
 who assisted their aunt in the housekeeping, was the 
 only other female inmate of the Parsonage ; and she, 
 though evidently a rough Yorkshire-woman, had 
 
 11 
 
162 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 enough kindness of heart to commend her class to 
 Charlotte and Emily, and thus to make the family 
 servants about the most agreeahle people in their 
 novels. 
 
 The father was peculiar. An Irishman by birth, 
 and rejoicing in the thoroughly Irish name of Prunty 
 Patrick Prunty he had cast off his Irish name and 
 called England his adopted country. He was a Tory 
 of the Wellington type ; and I have seen thanks to 
 the courteous suggestion of Mr. Garnett, of the British 
 Museum three letters, published by him in the Leeds 
 Intelligencer newspaper, in January and February, 
 1829, in which he discusses the question of Koman 
 Catholic Emancipation. Not opposing all concession, 
 he insists that, if Koman Catholics are admitted to 
 the franchise, it will be necessary, in order to secure 
 the Protestantism of the realm, to vest in the King a 
 power " summarily to remove from both Houses of 
 Parliament, and from seats on the judicial bench, all 
 Roman Catholics, when in his judgment they were 
 about to encourage measures subversive of our glorious 
 Constitution in Church and State." This obviously 
 inadmissible and, in fact, childish proposal enables us 
 to gauge his sagacity and information as a politician ; 
 and the general cast of his thought on political ques- 
 tions may be further guessed from this incidental 
 utterance : " Our limited Monarchy, which, though not 
 altogether perfect, affords the most rational liberty of 
 any other Government under the sun ; and comes, 
 perhaps, as near to perfection as anything that can 
 
The Father. 163 
 
 be devised by, or accommodated to, fallen mortals." 
 This was written before Parliament was reformed, 
 and when pocket boroughs and a good many other 
 things were rotten in the state of England. 
 
 Old Bronte is understood to be represented by 
 Helstone, the Tory clergyman in Shirley, one of 
 Charlotte's favourite characters. His Toryism was 
 enthusiastically taken up by Charlotte, though I am 
 not so sure as to Emily's political creed. " The 
 election ! the election ! " wrote Charlotte to a friend in 
 1835, " that cry has rung even among our lonely hills 
 like the blast of a trumpet. . . . Under what 
 banner have your brothers ranged themselves the 
 Blue or the Yellow ? Use your influence with them, 
 entreat them, if it be necessary, on your knees, to 
 stand by their country and religion in this day 
 of danger ! " The vehemently Tory Blackwood's 
 Magazine was naturally prized in the parsonage of 
 Haworth, and the good stories it contained, as well 
 as its political articles, were doubtless not without 
 effect on the future novelists. The children were 
 not allowed to associate with the children of the 
 villagers, and grew up shy and sensitive, but not 
 unhappy. 
 
 Patrick Bronte's wife, as we learn from Mrs. 
 Gaskell and Mr. Wemyss Keid, was cast in a very 
 different mould from that of her husband. He was 
 tall, strong, full of wiry energy and rugged force, a 
 man against whom Fortune, with all her buffetings, 
 had no chance, who stood the winter of the moors for 
 
 112 
 
164 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 more than half a century, saw his children die around 
 him, and lived himself to he eighty-five. She was a 
 small woman, of the Cornish type of Celt, frail and 
 fine. Like enough, she may have been " a miracle 
 of symmetry, a miniature of loveliness, all grace 
 summed up and closed in little ; " certainly she was 
 a marked contrast to that Irish Hercules, Patrick 
 Bronte. There is no reason to doubt that the tall man 
 loved his delicate and gentle wife. "A few days since" 
 thus Charlotte writes in 1850 " a little incident 
 happened which curiously touched me. Papa put into 
 my hands a little packet of letters and papers, telling 
 me that they were mamma's, and that I might read 
 them. I did read them, in a frame of mind I cannot 
 describe. The papers were yellow with time, all 
 having been written before I was born. It was strange 
 now to peruse, for the first time, the records of a 
 mind whence my own sprang ; and most strange, and 
 at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly 
 fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to 
 papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, 
 a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a 
 gentleness about them indescribable." It may be that 
 some of the finest veining in the genius of the sisters 
 was due to their mother. But we cannot suppose 
 that Bronte treated her with much kindness and 
 sympathy, for this was not in his nature ; and in 
 the freakishness of his jealous pride his conduct 
 was sometimes harsh, as when he cut to pieces 
 a dress with which she had been presented. She 
 
Old Bronte's Poems. 165 
 
 died before reaching middle age. The children 
 manifestly inherited the low stamina of their mother, 
 as well as their father's fervid temperament and 
 literary ambition. 
 
 There is a little volume in the British Museum 
 Library, entitled The Rural Minstrel : a Miscellany of 
 Descriptive Poems, which was given to the world by 
 the Eev. Patrick Bronte in 1813. At that date neither 
 Anne, Emily, nor Charlotte was born. Forty-six years 
 later, when all his children were dead, Mr. Bronte 
 published a second volume, also tiny, styled simply 
 Cottage Poems. The first was published at Halifax, 
 the second at Bradford. I have glanced over both, 
 and have not seen anything extraordinary in either. 
 There is almost no trace of originality in thought, 
 feeling, or imagery. A strong religious sentiment of 
 the old Evangelical type the Grimshaw, Toplady, 
 and Wilberforce type pervades the poems ; the Bible 
 is the author's avowed model, authoritative and in- 
 superable, both in matters of thought and of style ; 
 Broad Church speculation, High Church enthusiasm, 
 are alike absent. The versification is smooth, and 
 the most observable, perhaps, of the characteristics 
 of the writer is an unaffected, perpetual, child-like 
 delight in the wayside beauties of Nature. He 
 never tires of talking about birds and flowers and 
 dewdrops ; and a fresh glimpse now and then shows 
 that he does not always echo the chatter of books, 
 but has cast his own eye lovingly on the things he 
 rhymes about. 
 
166 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 The linnets sweetly sung 
 
 On every fragrant thorn, 
 Whilst from the tangled wood 
 The blackbirds hailed the morn ; 
 And, through the dew, 
 Kan here and there, 
 But half afraid, 
 The startled hare. 
 
 The first of these stanzas is hopelessly common- 
 place, but the man who wrote the second must, I 
 think, have watched with patient pleasure the gambol- 
 lings of half-startled hares. The "ran here and there 
 but half-afraid " is absolutely and exquisitely true to 
 that air of half-domesticated security and familiarity 
 with which a hare will frisk about upon a lawn, 
 whither it has stolen from the adjoining wood or 
 copse, on a clear, warm, dewy evening in June, while 
 overhead the thrush, perched on the highest spray of 
 the larch, is flooding the air with song. I speak from 
 evening observation, but I doubt not it would hold 
 good of early morning. The phenomena that fall to 
 be chronicled about cottage doors were well known 
 to the writer of the following verse, and he would 
 scarcely have placed the accent so nicely on the right 
 spot in the drake, if he had not possessed something of 
 an eye for colour. 
 
 And motley ducks 
 Were waddling seen, 
 
 And drake, with neck 
 Of glossy green. 
 
 We may safely conclude that the vein of poetry 
 which belonged to Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and 
 
The Father. 167 
 
 of which, we have a trace in Branwell, was inherited. 
 Old Bronte was a man of undeveloped genius ; and 
 the fact that his genius was undeveloped, will probably 
 account for his unsocial ways, his moody and fitful 
 temper, and his trick of relieving his nervous tension 
 by pistol-shooting. I have seen no reference by the 
 Brontes to their father's poetry, nor does it strike me 
 as unlikely that they may never have read it. He 
 took his meals apart from his children, and though 
 they regarded him with a feeling of respect not un- 
 mixed with affection, he was not on terms of sympa- 
 thetic intimacy with them. Neither Charlotte, Emily, 
 nor Anne ever knew the ecstasy of such a moment as 
 that remembered so vividly by Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning, when her father looked down upon " the 
 poet at his knee," and rewarded her with a kiss. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 BEANWELL BRONTE ME. GRUNDY'S REVELA- 
 TIONS BRANWELL'S LETTER TO WORDS- 
 WORTHCHARLOTTE'S CORRESPONDENCE 
 WITH SOUTHEY BRANWELL'S DEATH. 
 
 PATKICK BEANWELL BEONTE, the sole 
 brother of the Bronte sisters, was in his 
 boyhood the hope and darling of the household, but 
 the promise of his early years was lamentably belied, 
 and he died prematurely, an intellectual, as well as 
 moral, wreck. It seems probable that the seeds of a 
 mutinous and wilful disposition soon began to ger- 
 minate in him, for his father, in a letter quoted by 
 Mrs. Gaskell, refers to him, at a period when he 
 cannot have been more than eight or nine, as " some- 
 times a naughty boy." A father does not incidentally 
 describe his son in that way without meaning a good 
 deal. Old Bronte mentions that, thinking his children 
 knew more than he had discovered, he put to them 
 certain questions, which they were encouraged to 
 answer by being placed behind a mask. The question 
 addressed to his son was singularly inappropriate to 
 the age of the boy. " I asked Bran well what was the 
 best way of knowing the difference between the in- 
 
Branwell Bronte. 169 
 
 tellects of man and woman ; he answered, * By con- 
 sidering the difference between them as to their 
 bodies.' " As Goethe had said almost exactly the 
 same thing, Branwell may be supposed to have picked 
 up the saying in some magazine ; but to have even 
 noted such a remark at his age proves him, unless he 
 spoke merely as a parrot, to have been a precocious 
 perhaps morbidly precocious boy. There is reason 
 to believe that he possessed a sufficient aptitude for 
 drawing and painting to have made him, under 
 favourable circumstances, an artist of distinction ; 
 but a scheme for sending him to study in the 
 Koyal Academy miscarried; and his general educa- 
 tion appears to have been desultory and imperfect. 
 Probably he read a good many books, and he learned 
 to write in prose and verse with facility. This sufficed 
 to make him a wonder among the rustics, commercial 
 travellers, and small mill-owners of the West Eliding, 
 and it is distressing to hear that, when the landlord 
 of the village inn had his room tenanted with travellers 
 or topers, he used to send for young Bronte to talk and 
 drink with them. 
 
 Mr. F. H. Grundy, in his recently-published Pictures 
 of the Past, after declaring that Branwell " took an 
 unusual fancy " to himself, and that he (Mr. Grundy) 
 "continued, perhaps, his most confidential friend 
 through good and ill until his death," proceeds to 
 expatiate on his " wit, brilliance, attractiveness ; " but 
 it would not take much of these qualities to produce 
 an impression on the chance guests or local sots of the 
 
170 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Haworth Black Bull Inn ; and nothing could be more 
 stupid than the specimen which Mr. Grundy gives of 
 his friend's conversational performances. The verses 
 which he quotes from Bronte are also excessively poor, 
 nor is there anything remarkable in the extracts from 
 his prose letters. " Eemarkable," I mean, in a literary 
 point of view ; for as revelations of the writer's moral 
 character, they are remarkably painful. Mr. Grundy 
 talks vaguely of the injustice done to his friend by 
 Mrs. Gaskell, and assumes the part of a vindicator; 
 but the result of his communications, whether in the 
 form of his own remarks or in that of extracts from 
 Bran well's letters, is to convey the impression of a 
 much worse man than we derive from. Mrs. Gas-ken" s 
 biography. Mrs. Gaskell leaves our sentiment of 
 pity comparatively unrestrained in dealing with the 
 sufferings of young Bronte ; his self-styled vindicator 
 arouses the sterner sentiments of justice and indig- 
 nation to contemplate a merited punishment. We 
 used to think of Branwell as a good-natured, weak- 
 willed lad, who, by miscellaneous reading, had turned 
 his mind into a magazine of literary curiosities, who in- 
 herited from his father the gift of Hibernian eloquence, 
 who was enthusiastically social, and who thus became 
 first the idol and then the victim of a circle of tipsy 
 villagers. But Mr. Grundy quotes Bronte himself 
 referring to " the grovelling carelessness, the malig- 
 nant yet cold debauchery, the determination to find 
 how far mind could carry body without both being 
 chucked into hell," which marked his conduct at 
 
Branwell Bronte. 171 
 
 a time when he had undertaken to discharge the 
 duties of stationmaster on a railway. He threw (Mr. 
 Grundy tells us) all the work on a porter, while he 
 went carousing with brother sots, and " serious de- 
 falcations " were the consequence. An inquiry fol- 
 lowed; Bronte was acquitted of theft ; "but," says 
 his vindicator, " was convicted of constant and 
 culpable carelessness." 
 
 In another of his Grundy letters, Bronte avows a 
 breach of trust of a still more dark and treacherous 
 nature. He says that for years he was on terms of 
 disgraceful intimacy with the wife of a gentleman 
 in whose family he acted as tutor. Mr. Wemyss 
 Reid calls attention to a passage in Charlotte Bronte's 
 first novel, The Professor, in which this circumstance 
 is alluded to in terms of fervent condemnation. 
 " Limited as had yet been my experience of life, I 
 had once had the opportunity of contemplating, near 
 at hand, an example of the results produced by a 
 course of interesting and romantic domestic treachery. 
 No golden halo of fiction was about this example : I 
 saw it bare and real, and it was very loathsome. I 
 saw a mind degraded by the practice of mean sub- 
 terfuge, by the habit of perfidious deception, and a 
 body depraved by the infectious influence of the vice- 
 polluted soul. I had suffered much from the forced 
 and prolonged view of this spectacle : those sufferings 
 I did not now regret, for their simple recollection 
 acted as a most wholesome antidote to temptation. 
 They had inscribed on my reason the conviction that 
 
172 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 unlawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights, is 
 delusive and envenomed pleasure its hollowness dis- 
 appoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures after- 
 wards, its effects deprave for ever." 
 
 In his nineteenth year (January, 1837), Bran well 
 Bronte sent a letter to Wordsworth, enclosing a 
 sample of his poetry. It is unmistakable that the 
 adulation of his little circle had already mounted to 
 the lad's brain, and that the conceit and vanity which 
 at this age are of evil augury were in a high state of 
 development. " My aim, sir," he wrote, "is to push 
 out into the open world, and for this I trust not poetry 
 alone that might launch the vessel, but could not 
 bear her on ; sensible and scientific prose, bold and 
 vigorous efforts in my walk of life, would give a 
 farther title to the notice of the world ; and then 
 again poetry ought to brighten and crown that name 
 with glory ; but nothing of all this can be ever begun 
 without means, and as I don't possess them, I must 
 in every shape strive to gain them. Surely, in this 
 day, when there is not a writing poet worth a six- 
 pence, the field must be open, if a better man can 
 step forward." Wordsworth appears to have taken 
 no notice of this letter, and we may pretty con- 
 fidently conjecture that glancing at the accom- 
 panying verses, and finding them utterly void of 
 merit, he put both letter and verses aside, with a 
 smile of serene cynicism at the idea of so paltry a 
 rhymester announcing himself as the probable poet 
 of the future. 
 
Charlotte and Southey. 173 
 
 A few weeks before Branwell wrote to Wordsworth, 
 Charlotte had written to Southey. Mrs. Gaskell 
 seems to have seen a copy of the letter, for she says 
 that it contained " some high-flown expressions," but 
 she annoyingly withholds it from her readers. She 
 gives us Southey's reply, however, and it is worthy 
 of that Bayard of literary chivalry. He has formed 
 a very different estimate of the poetry of the day 
 from that of the stripling of nineteen, who told 
 Wordsworth that not a writing poet was worth six- 
 pence. " Many volumes of. poems," he says, " are 
 now published every year without attracting public 
 attention, any one of which, if it had appeared half a 
 century ago, would have obtained a high reputation 
 for its author." Young Bronte's scornful dismissal 
 of contemporary poetry as beneath notice proves 
 either that he did not know what verse was being 
 published, and therefore spoke with mere random 
 impertinence, or that he had no critical judgment. 
 Since Christopher North was a household word in 
 Haworth Parsonage, and a copious selection from the 
 early poems of Tennyson had been printed in Black- 
 wood 's Magazine in North's famous critique on Ten- 
 nyson, the latter seems to be the more probable 
 supposition. The puerile arrogance, which had no 
 effect upon Wordsworth, was likely to be very im- 
 posing in the eyes of Bronte's audience in the Black 
 Bull at Haworth ; for arrogant depreciation of others 
 will always be accepted by foolish and ignorant 
 persons that is to say, by a large proportion of 
 
174 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 mankind as proof of talent, spirit, and accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 While writing with the gentlest consideration for 
 his correspondent, Southey advised Charlotte to banish 
 every idea of literature as a profession, and to indulge 
 in poetry only in moments of perfect leisure. "I," 
 he wrote, " who have made literature my profession, 
 and devoted my life to it, and have never for a moment 
 repented of the deliberate choice, think myself, never- 
 theless, bound in duty to caution every young man 
 who applies as an aspirant to me for encouragement 
 and advice, against taking so perilous a course." In 
 many letters which have found their way into print, 
 Mr. Carlyle has expressed a similar opinion to this of 
 South ey's ; and I should think that it would be 
 endorsed by ninety-nine out of every hundred men and 
 women now earning their bread by literature. 
 
 After pronouncing somewhat too peremptorily, that 
 " literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, 
 and it ought not to be," Southey proceeds to say that 
 he does not disparage poetry, or forbid its cultivation. 
 " I only exhort you so to think of it, and so to use it, as 
 to render it conducive to your own permanent good. 
 Write poetry for its awn sake not in a spirit of 
 emulation, and not with a view to celebrity ; the less 
 you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve 
 and finally to obtain it. So written, it is wholesome 
 both for the heart and soul. It may be made the 
 surest means, next to religion, of soothing the mind 
 and elevating it. You may embody in it your best 
 
Charlotte and Southey. 175 
 
 thoughts and your wisest feelings, and in so doing 
 discipline and strengthen them." 
 
 Charlotte replied to this letter with all the home- 
 bred warmth of feeling, and all the artless simplicity, 
 of an intelligent, good-hearted girl of twenty. " I 
 cannot rest," she says, " till I have answered your 
 letter, even though, hy addressing you a second time, 
 I should appear a little intrusive ; but I must thank 
 you for the kind and wise advice you have con- 
 descended to give me." She sketches her present life 
 and past history with the nicest selection of the 
 essential points, and with self-evidencing fidelity to 
 truth in every touch. " You kindly allow me to write 
 poetry for its own sake, provided I leave undone 
 nothing which I ought to do, in order to pursue that 
 single, absorbing, exquisite gratification. I am afraid, 
 sir, you think me very foolish. I know the first letter 
 I wrote to you was all senseless trash from beginning 
 to end ; but I am not altogether the idle dreaming 
 being it would seem to denote. My father is a clergy- 
 man of limited, though competent income, and I am 
 the eldest of his children. He expended quite as 
 much in my education as he could afford in justice to 
 the rest. I thought it, therefore, my duty, when I left 
 school, to become a governess.- In that capacity I find 
 enough to occupy my thoughts all day long, and my 
 head and hands, too, without having a moment's time 
 for one dream of the imagination. In the evenings, I 
 confess, I do think, but I never trouble any one else 
 with my thoughts. I carefully avoid any appearance 
 
176 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 of pre-occupation and eccentricity, which might lead 
 those I live amongst to suspect the nature of my 
 pursuits. Following my father's advice who from 
 my childhood has counselled me, just in the wise and 
 friendly tone of your letter I have endeavoured not 
 only attentively to observe all the duties a woman 
 ought to fulfil, but to feel deeply interested in them. 
 I don't always succeed, for sometimes when I'm 
 teaching or sewing I would rather be reading or 
 writing; but I try to deny myself, and my father's 
 approbation amply rewards me for the privation. 
 Once more allow me to thank you with sincere 
 gratitude. I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to 
 see my name in print ; if the wish should rise, I'll look 
 at Southey's letter, and suppress it. It is honour 
 enough for me that I have written to him, and received 
 an answer. That letter is consecrated ; no one shall 
 ever see it but papa and my brother and sisters. Again 
 I thank you." 
 
 The naivete of this is delicious. Fancy the future 
 authoress of Jane Eyre and Shirley schooling herself 
 to find occupation for all her faculties in her needle, 
 and calmly resolving never to think of seeing her name 
 in print. A dozen years after she wrote thus, 
 Charlotte had taken her place with acclamation 
 among the world's great women. The kind-hearted, 
 noble Southey was evidently struck with her letter. 
 He replied promptly and with much cordiality. 
 " Your letter has given me great pleasure, and I 
 should not forgive myself if I did not tell you so. 
 
Branwell Bronte. 177 
 
 You have received admonition as considerately and as 
 kindly as it was given. Let me now request that, if 
 you ever should come to these Lakes while I am 
 living here, you will let me see you." 
 
 There is one sentence in Branwell Bronte's letter to 
 Wordsworth which has a mournful significance. He 
 has, he says, been writing a poem, in which he 
 has "striven to develop strong passions and weak 
 principles struggling with a high imagination and 
 acute feelings, till, as youth hardens towards age, evil 
 deeds and short enjoyments end in mental misery and 
 bodily ruin." The words are a prophecy of his own 
 fate. I have said that his conduct became such as 
 to merit the sternest reprobation; but his fall was 
 due to his misfortune as well as his fault. We may 
 believe Mrs. Gaskell when she tells us that his im- 
 pulses were originally praiseworthy, and that he 
 showed strong family affection. What failed him was 
 firm and judicious discipline, and he was in that 
 situation which, beyond all others, makes want of 
 discipline fatal. He was an only son in a family of 
 daughters, brought up by an aunt who made him her 
 favourite. "There are always," says Mrs. Gaskell, 
 " peculiar trials in the life of an only boy in a family 
 of girls. He is expected to act a part in life ; to do, 
 while they are only to be ; and the necessity of their 
 giving way to him in some things is too often ex- 
 aggerated into their giving way to him in all, and thus 
 rendering him utterly selfish." Never does the bitterest 
 cruelty disguise itself in the garb of kindness so signally 
 
 12 
 
178 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 as when proud parents and loving sisters enfeeble, in a 
 son and brother, that moral will on which depends all 
 stability of character. Never, let me add, was the 
 genial and guardian influence of sound moral con- 
 ditions, in relation to youthful genius, more pointedly 
 illustrated than by the ruin of the young man, and 
 the emergence into fame of the young women, in this 
 " family of poets." 
 
 Branwell went from bad to worse until he fell into 
 the criminal degradation on which Mr. Grundy has 
 cast so dismal a light. From the time when he was 
 dismissed his tutorship, he became a prey to the 
 agonies of remorse alternating with forced outbursts 
 of mirth. He had previously given way to intoxi- 
 cation, he now became an opium-eater. His 
 constitution gradually broke down, and, as the end 
 approached, he proved an inexpressible affliction to his 
 old father and his sisters. " For some time," writes 
 Mrs. Gaskell, " before his death he had attacks of 
 delirium tremens of the most frightful character ; he 
 slept in his father's room, and he would sometimes 
 declare that either he or his father should be dead 
 before the morning. The trembling sisters, sick with 
 fright, would implore their father not to expose 
 himself to this danger ; but Mr. Bronte is no timid 
 man, and perhaps he felt that he could possibly 
 influence his son to some self-restraint, more by 
 showing trust in him than by showing fear. The 
 sisters often listened for the report of a pistol in the 
 dead of the night, till watchful eye and hearkening 
 
Branwell's Death. 179 
 
 ear grew heavy and dull with the perpetual strain upon 
 their nerves. In the morning young Bronte would 
 saunter out, saying, with a drunkard's incontinence of 
 speech, ' The poor old man and I have had a terrible 
 night of it ; he does his best the poor old man ! but 
 it's all over with me.' ' What tragedy could be more 
 drearily sad than that ? 
 
 Charlotte and her sisters endured this great 
 calamity with heroic fortitude. When Bran well died, 
 the feelings with which they had regarded him in his 
 boyhood returned, and not an angry syllable escaped 
 from Charlotte's pen when she chronicled the event. 
 " He was perfectly conscious till the last agony came 
 on. His mind had undergone the peculiar change 
 which frequently precedes death, two days previously ; 
 the calm of better feelings filled it ; a return of natural 
 affection marked his last moments. He is in God's 
 hands now ; and the All-Powerful is likewise the All- 
 Merciful. A deep conviction that he rests at last 
 rests well after his brief, erring, suffering, feverish life 
 fills and quiets my mind now. The final separation, 
 the spectacle of his pale corpse, gave me more acute, 
 bitter pain than I could have imagined. Till the last 
 hour comes, we never know how much we can forgive, 
 pity, regret a near relative. All his vices were and are 
 nothing now. We remember only his woes." He 
 died in the autumn of 1848. 
 
 
 122 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THE POEMS OF CUEEEE, ELLIS, AND ACTON 
 
 BELL. 
 
 BKANWELL BKONTE proving a scapegrace, the 
 three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, 
 seem to have let him pass beyond the circle of their 
 fellowship, and were drawn into closer and intenser 
 sympathy, into more exclusive and close-knit friend- 
 ship, among themselves, than could well have linked 
 them together if their brother had continued to occupy 
 the place naturally belonging to him in their love and 
 esteem. " The two human beings," wrote Charlotte, 
 after the deaths of Anne and Emily, " who understood 
 me, and whom I understood, are dead." She does not 
 hint that her brother, who stood next to her in the 
 family, ever understood her. At some indefinite 
 period in their girlhood, which Charlotte leaves us to 
 guess at from the phrase, "very early," the three 
 sisters discovered that they possessed, each and all, 
 the gift of literary expression, and " cherished the 
 dream of one day being authors." There was 
 motherly, managing Charlotte, the eldest ; there was 
 modest, nun-like Anne, the youngest ; and between 
 the two, different from both, stood the deep-thinking, 
 
The Three Sisters. 181 
 
 shy, intense, unsocial Emily, content to be subordi- 
 nate to Charlotte in all ordinary matters, leaning upon 
 ner Emily was the taller and thinner of the two 
 in walks, and trusting to her to do all the speaking 
 to strangers, but hiding in her own breast an origi- 
 nality weird and morbid, yet more intrepid, thorough- 
 going, and imaginative even than Charlotte's. 
 
 The strange girls were not popular with their neigh- . 
 bours. Emily in particular was held by the Haworth 
 people to be forbidding. Their personal appearance 
 if we may trust Mr. Grundy, and I should think 
 that on such a point, allowing for a dash of flippancy 
 and caricature, we may believe him was not attrac- 
 tive. "Distant and distrait, large of nose, small of 
 figure, red of hair, prominent of spectacles ; showing 
 great intellectual development, but with eyes con- 
 stantly cast down, very silent, painfully retiring," 
 such is his picture of the group. The " eyes con- 
 stantly cast down" I cannot but think apocryphal; 
 Charlotte at least could hold up her head when she 
 chose ; but perhaps the sisters did not experience from 
 the presence of Mr. Grundy that " eye-brightening " 
 influence, which makes "the massed clouds roll" from 
 the brow. 
 
 An honest stationer in Haworth gave Mrs. Gaskell 
 a much kindlier account of the Misses Bronte. " They 
 used to buy a great deal of writing-paper," he said ; 
 and he would " wonder whatever they did with 
 so much." When out of paper for want of capital 
 "I was always," he says, "short of that" he 
 
182 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 feared their coming, "they seemed so distressed about 
 it." The good-natured fellow would walk ten miles 
 " for half a ream of paper," rather than disappoint 
 them. "I did so like them to come," he goes 
 on, " when I had anything for them ; they were 
 so much different te anybody else; so gentle and 
 kind, and so very quiet." He was conscious of 
 no repulsiveness in their demeanour. Charlotte, 
 however, seems to have been more affable than the 
 others. She " sometimes would sit and inquire about 
 our circumstances so kindly and feelingly." We may 
 conclude, therefore, that it was not wholly, if at all, 
 from their unsociable character, but because they 
 lacked sympathetic neighbours, that the Bronte 
 sisters lived so recluse a life at Haworth. 
 
 It was a great day for the sisters when, in the 
 autumn of 1845, Charlotte " accidentally lighted on a 
 MS. volume of verse " in Emily's handwriting. " Of 
 course," she says, " I was not surprised, knowing 
 that she could and did write verse. I looked it over, 
 and something more than surprise seized me a deep 
 conviction that these were not common effusions, nor 
 at all like the poetry women generally write. I 
 thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and 
 genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, 
 wild, melancholy, and elevating." So far as it goes, 
 this is a singularly just critique of Emily's poems; but 
 it does not go beyond the record of a first impression. 
 
 Anne, finding that the great critical authority of the 
 household smiled approval on Emily, now announced 
 
Planning Their Volume. 183 
 
 that she also had composed poems. They were 
 produced, and again the judgment proved favourable. 
 "I thought," says Charlotte, "that these verses too 
 had a sweet, sincere pathos of their own." If to 
 " sweet, sincere pathos " we add unaffected and 
 graceful feeling, and correct, easy, not unmelodious 
 versification, we have almost a sufficient account of 
 Anne Bronte's poems. 
 
 The poetical powers of Charlotte seem to have been 
 already known in the household, and the three sisters 
 now formed the project of publishing a selection of 
 their poems. It is a striking illustration of the state 
 of severance and solitude, in relation both to their 
 father and their brother, in which these girls lived, 
 that neither Bran well nor Mr. Bronte was consulted 
 as to the merit of the poems, or taken into the secret 
 of publication. A special pathos is shed upon this 
 state of affairs by the fact that the father had himself, 
 as we saw, published poetry. 
 
 But what reader with any tincture of sensibility and 
 imagination can altogether fail to realise the situation 
 of the sisters under these new circumstances? How 
 keen would be the interest imparted to their whole 
 life ! How " fluttering-fain," to use a fine imaginative 
 epithet from their father's first volume, would be their 
 hearts, as poem after poem was submitted to the 
 critical conclave for selection or rejection ! How their 
 eyes would glisten when they dared to look towards 
 the future, and when hope suffused the horizon with 
 auroral tints of fame, fortune, enlargement a vision 
 
184 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 on which they would not trust themselves to dwell 
 often or long, but which was quite sure to present 
 itself at moments to gifted and aspiring women. Their 
 complete isolation would enhance their joy ; the moan- 
 ing of the frozen wind of the moors around their little 
 fire brightening the glow of it upon their faces. Then 
 there was much to be excogitated, many letters to be 
 written. Our good Haworth friend of the limited capital 
 would find his boot-leather sorely taxed. They had an 
 idea that the world looks unfavourably upon writing 
 women, yet shrank from anything like a positive act 
 of falsification, and therefore hunted up three names 
 which no mortal could assign expressly to the one sex 
 or the other Currer, Ellis, and Acton. The choice 
 could not have been more felicitously mystifying, and 
 the rather common surname Bell would naturally 
 suggest a plebeian father, of high-flying temperament, 
 who had given three out-of-the-way names to his 
 sons. There were publishers to be corresponded with, 
 questions of expense to be considered, the father's 
 surprise, when the postman brought a letter addressed 
 to Currer Bell, Esquire, to be obviated, and at last 
 proofs to be corrected. It is in experiences like these 
 that life becomes precious, that friendship and the 
 affection of close relationship combine to pour the 
 elixir of pure and tingling joy along the veins. In 
 those weeks of cosing and conspiring over their 
 grand ploy, England, we may be sure, did not hold 
 many happier groups than that of the three Bronte 
 sisters. 
 
The Poems Are Published. 185 
 
 The volume was published in 1846 by Messrs. 
 Aylott and Jones, London. Its interest depends 
 mainly on the self-portraiture of the authors, of which, 
 indeed, it may be said to consist. Anne's verses 
 exhibit a devout, sincere, and tender nature, chastened 
 by religious melancholy. Her mood, as Charlotte 
 says, was that of " perpetual pensiveness." " The 
 pillar of a cloud glided constantly before her eyes ; 
 she ever waited at the foot of a secret Sinai, listening 
 in her heart to the voice of a trumpet, sounding long 
 and waxing louder." Patrick Bronte seerns to have 
 been what would now be considered a rigid Calvinist, 
 taking the pessimist rather than the equally logical 
 optimist view of the Augustinian system ; and the idea 
 of God as an inexorable Fate cast a deep shadow over 
 the minds of the three sisters, but especially of Anne. 
 It is consoling to learn that, "in her last moments, this 
 tyranny of a too tender conscience was overcome ; this 
 pomp of terrors broke up, and, passing away, left her 
 dying hour unclouded." The invincible goodness of 
 her nature, the importunate kindness of her heart, 
 are pathetically shown by her rebellion against that 
 harshest of all dogmas which affirms not only that a 
 large proportion of mankind are consigned to eternal 
 torment, but that it is the duty of humble souls to 
 rejoice in this arrangement. A few stanzas from the 
 poem, which she calls A Word to the "Elect" will 
 explain her position. 
 
 You may rejoice to think yourselves secure ; 
 
 You may be grateful for the gift divine 
 That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure, 
 
 And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine. 
 
186 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 But is it sweet to look around, and view 
 
 Thousands excluded from that happiness 
 Which they deserved, at least, as much as you, 
 
 Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less ? 
 
 And, wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove, 
 Because for ALL the Saviour did not die ? 
 
 Is yours the God of justice and of love ? 
 And are your bosoms warm with charity ? 
 
 And when you, looking on your fellow-men, 
 
 Behold them doomed to endless misery, 
 How can you talk of joy and rapture then ? 
 
 May God withhold such cruel joy from me ! 
 
 And oh ! there lives within my heart 
 
 A hope, long nursed by me ; 
 (And should its cheering ray depart, 
 
 How dark my soul would be !) 
 
 That as in Adam all have died, 
 
 In Christ shall all men live ; 
 And ever round His throne abide, 
 
 Eternal praise to give. 
 
 The sadness which pervades Anne's poems renders 
 them, however, on the whole, oppressive and un- 
 healthy. Only once do I observe that she breaks into 
 a strain of jubilation, a high wind in a wood dissipating 
 for a moment the gloom of her spirit. 
 
 My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring, 
 
 And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze ; 
 For above and around me the wild wind is roaring, 
 
 Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas. 
 The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing, 
 
 The bare trees are tossing their branches on high ; 
 The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing, 
 
 The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky. 
 
 Charlotte's own poems, though much less restricted 
 in idea than those of her youngest sister, are not of 
 
Charlotte's Verses. 187 
 
 much value. Both sisters are accomplished versifiers 
 and have command of clear and vivid words, but both 
 fail in imagination, in variety of colour, and in passion. 
 This, from Pilate's Wife's Dream, by Charlotte, is a 
 tolerable stanza, but the piece, as a whole, is disap- 
 pointing. 
 
 The world advances ; Greek or Eoman rite 
 Suffices not the inquiring mind to stay ; 
 
 The searching soul demands a purer light 
 To guide it on its upward, onward way : 
 
 Ashamed of sculptured gods, Eeligion turns 
 
 To where the unseen Jehovah's altar burns. 
 
 The lines entitled Preference are eloquent rather 
 than poetical ; they read like an average passage from 
 Jane Eyre or Shirley finely versified ; but they have 
 this potent interest, that they present us with a 
 brilliant sketch, from her own hand, of the kind of 
 man whom Charlotte Bronte, in her years of brightest 
 womanhood, would have loved. She first dismisses 
 the man whom she could not love, telling him not to 
 flatter himself that he has made the least impression. 
 
 Why that smile ? Thou now art deeming 
 
 This my coldness all untrue, 
 But a mask of frozen seeming, 
 
 Hiding secret fires from view. 
 Touch my hand, thou self-deceiver ; 
 
 Nay be calm, for I am so : 
 Does it burn ? Does my lip quiver ? 
 
 Has mine eye a troubled glow ? 
 
 She grants no refuge to his amour propre in the 
 notion that perhaps, if she will not have him, she will 
 have no one. 
 
188 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Can I love ? Oh, deeply truly 
 
 Warmly fondly but not thee ; 
 And my love is answered duly, 
 
 With an equal energy. 
 Would'st thou see thy rival ? Hasten 
 
 Draw that curtain soft aside, 
 Look where yon thick branches chasten 
 
 Noon, with shades of eventide. 
 In that glade, where foliage blending 
 
 Forms a green arch overhead, 
 Sits thy rival, thoughtful bending 
 
 O'er a stand with papers spread 
 Motionless, his fingers plying 
 
 That untired, unresting pen ; 
 Time and tide unnoticed flying, 
 
 There he sits the first of men ! 
 Man of conscience man of reason ; 
 
 Stern, perchance, but ever just ; 
 Foe to falsehood, wrong, and treason, 
 
 Honour's shield and virtue's trust. 
 Worker, thinker, firm defender 
 
 Of Heaven's truth man's liberty; 
 Soul of iron proof to slander, 
 
 Eock where founders tyranny. 
 Fame he seeks not but full surely 
 
 She will seek him in his horde ; 
 This I know, and wait securely 
 
 For the atoning hour to come 
 To that man my faith is given. 
 
 There is better poetry than this in Charlotte Bronte's 
 prose ; but it would be hard to refuse one whose 
 strongest feelings take so naturally and flowingly the 
 garment of verse the name of poet. 
 
 I have never changed the opinion, formed and ex- 
 pressed by me many years ago, that the poems of 
 Emily Bronte excel those of her sisters. They are 
 superior in occasional splendour and concentrated 
 
Emily's Poems. 189 
 
 force of expression ; in serene intensity ; in pene- 
 tration and power of thought. Take as a sample of 
 her gift of expression the following poem, I omit a 
 few of the stanzas. 
 
 STARS. 
 
 Ah ! why, because the dazzling sun 
 
 Restored our earth to joy, 
 Have you departed, every one, 
 
 And left a desert sky ? 
 All through the night, your glorious eyes 
 
 Were gazing down in mine, 
 And, with a full heart's thankful sighs, 
 
 I blessed that watch divine. 
 I was at peace, and drank your beams 
 
 As they were life to me ; 
 And revelled in my changeful dreams 
 
 Like petrel on the sea. 
 Why did the morning dawn to break 
 
 So great, so pure a spell ; 
 And scorch with fire the tranquil cheek, 
 
 Where your cool radiance fell ? 
 Blood-red, he rose, and, arrow-straight, 
 
 His fierce beams struck my brow ; 
 The soul of nature sprang, elate, 
 
 But mine sank sad and low ! 
 My lids closed down, yet through their veil 
 
 I saw him, blazing still. 
 And steep in gold the misty dale, 
 
 And flash upon the hill. 
 Oh, stars, and dreams, and gentle night ! 
 
 Oh, night and stars return ! 
 And hide me from the hostile light, 
 
 That does not warm, but burn ; 
 That drains the blood of suffering men ; 
 
 Drinks tears, instead of dew ; 
 Let me sleep through his blinding reign, 
 
 And only wake with you ! 
 
190 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 The second of these verses expresses a thought 
 which certainly is not new, but no thought could be 
 more beautiful or more imaginative ; the fifth is superb 
 in its brevity and concentration, in its burst of colour, 
 its blaze of light : we feel ourselves flooded with the 
 crimson of dawn. Charlotte has once or twice written 
 as finely in prose ; never in verse. 
 
 Lovely also, with a grave, high, solemn loveliness, 
 especially towards its close, is the poem entitled 
 A Death Scene. The lady hangs over her dying lover 
 while the sun is high and the west winds are blowing, 
 and entreats him not to yield to death. But a glance 
 that rebuked her for yielding weakly to her woe, " one 
 mute look of suffering," moved her to repent her 
 prayer. She grew calm. No sign of further grieving 
 stirred her soul. The last hour came. 
 
 Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting; 
 
 Sunk to peace the twilight breeze : 
 Summer dews fell softly, wetting 
 
 Glen, and glade, and silent trees. 
 
 Then his eyes began to weary, 
 
 Weighed beneath a mortal sleep ; 
 And their orbs grew strangely dreary, 
 
 Clouded, even as they would weep. 
 
 But they wept not, but they changed not, 
 Never moved, and never closed ; 
 
 Troubled still, and still they ranged not- 
 Wandered not, nor yet reposed. 
 
 So I knew that he was dying 
 Stooped, and raised his languid head ; 
 
 Felt no breath, and heard no sighing, 
 So I knew that he was dead. 
 
Belief and Unbelief. 191 
 
 But the most important of Emily Bronte's poems 
 the most original in thought, the most powerful in 
 imagination, the most intensely sincere and im- 
 passioned in feeling is one too vaguely called The 
 Philosopher. It consists of an interchange of con- 
 fidences "between two sages, or two personified moods 
 of the same sage, on the question of questions, God 
 or no God ? The one sage believes ; the other, to 
 say the least, hesitates. The second sage has the last 
 word, and this appears to show that the position he 
 takes up is adopted by the author. Let us hear first 
 the believing sage. 
 
 " I saw a Spirit, standing, man, 
 
 Where them dost stand an hour ago, 
 And round his feet three rivers ran, 
 
 Of equal depth and equal flow 
 A golden stream and one of blood 
 
 And one of sapphire seemed to be ; 
 But when they joined their triple flood 
 
 It tumbled in an inky sea. 
 The Spirit sent his dazzling gaze 
 
 Down through that ocean's gloomy night ; 
 Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze, 
 
 The glad deep sparkled wide and bright 
 White as the sun, far, far more fair 
 Than its divided sources were ! " 
 
 Such is the statement of his experience, such the 
 profession of his faith, by the believer in God. 
 Observe the imaginative grandeur, combined with 
 intellectual subtlety, of the similitude made use of. 
 Every painter knows that the three primitive colours, 
 red, yellow, blue here represented by blood, gold, and 
 
192 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 sapphire yield, when mingled, an " inky," or, at 
 least, brown-black tint. Yet out of those same colours, 
 linked in celestial harmony, arises the pure white 
 light. The seer, the proclaimer of faith in God, 
 avers that, while he looked upon the colours mixing in 
 the blackness of chaos the blackness of matter the 
 blackness of an universal inky ocean unvisited by 
 light he saw a Spirit send from His eye an irradia- 
 ting beam, which turned blackness into beauty and 
 night into day, kindling the universe with sudden 
 blaze of order, life, and joy. That Spirit was God. 
 
 To have devised and worked out a conception like 
 this would have satisfied almost any woman-poet that 
 ever lived ; but it is only the prelude to what Emily 
 Bronte has to say. She has uttered the challenge : 
 now for the reply. It is the philosophical sceptic, the 
 representative of earnest doubt, that speaks. 
 
 " And even for that Spirit, seer, 
 
 I've watched and sought my lifetime long ; 
 Sought Hun in heaven, hell, earth, and air, 
 
 An endless search, and always wrong. 
 Had I but seen His glorious eye 
 
 Once light the clouds that wilder me, 
 I ne'er had raised this coward cry 
 
 To cease to think and cease to be ; 
 I ne'er had called oblivion blest, 
 
 Nor, stretching eager hands to death, 
 Implored to change for senseless rest 
 
 This sentient soul, this living breath. 
 Oh, let me die ! that power and will 
 
 Their cruel strife may close ; 
 And conquered good, and conquering ill, 
 
 Be lost in one repose ! " 
 
The Last Word of Doubt. 193 
 
 To this Emily Bronte gives no answer. By all 
 rules of interpretation, the speaker must be held to 
 stand for the poet. It seems, therefore, to be Emily 
 Bronte who, deliberately and intensely, but without the 
 remotest suggestion of irreverence, affirms that she 
 has looked for the Spirit announced by the seer who 
 spoke first, and has not seen Him. One glimpse, she 
 says, would have been enough, but that one glimpse 
 she did not obtain ; and in colossal sincerity, though 
 with unspeakable distress, she turns to the universe, 
 which is for her a grave, and accepts the eternal death 
 that is her portion. Whether it is in the mere 
 dramatic sympathy of an artist that Emily Bronte 
 puts words into the mouth of the philosopher; or 
 whether the words are her own, and reveal a secret 
 that might throw some light on her stern, reserved, 
 ungenial existence, and on the mood of mind in which 
 Wuthering Heights was composed ; I shall not under- 
 take to decide. 
 
 I confess, however, that I look upon the second of 
 these hypotheses as in a high degree probable. THe 
 verses come, if ever verses came, from the heart, 
 and I cannot help thinking that the fire within them 
 searched with its burnings the soul of Emily Bronte. 
 Charlotte, I fancy, never fathomed the depths of her 
 sister's mind. At all events, the girl who wrote these 
 stanzas had uttered the last and deepest word that has 
 been spoken, or can rationally be spoken, by modern 
 doubt. "Show us" this is the challenge of the 
 Tyndalls, the John Morleys "any glittering upon 
 
 13 
 
194 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 the clouds of nature that proceeds from a Divine 
 Eye, any force, influence, power, in or upon this 
 all- comprehending nature, which is not part and 
 parcel of nature itself, of nature everlastingly self- 
 produced and self-swallowed, which is in any sense 
 above or beyond, or dynamically distinguishable from 
 nature, and with which man can enter into communi- 
 cation ; and we will believe." Thrice blessed are they 
 who can solemnly, and in all the calmness of intelligent 
 faith, believe that God has given them such a glance 
 of His eye that they cannot but believe in His 
 existence ; but it may be doubted whether the reason 
 of their faith admits of being presented in a logically 
 unassailable form. On the other hand, those who 
 refuse to believe may be expected to admit that their 
 negation is purely personal, that they are not justified 
 in converting it into a positive and generalised state- 
 ment, and that they ought to weigh fairly, in the 
 opposite scale, the deliberate assertion of tens of 
 thousands of the best and wisest representatives of 
 the species, that God has spoken to them. To the 
 individual testimony, also, must in fairness be added 
 the testimony of the race, a testimony in which, 
 Hume being judge, all ages and tribes are unanimous, 
 a testimony so decisively signalising man as the wor- 
 shipping animal, the creature that, on nature's highest 
 pinnacle, opens his eye on God, that Auguste Comte 
 can find no basis of possible organisation for human 
 society except a religious basis. Why, if evolution 
 be true, should the supreme and ultimate fact of 
 
Unwilling Doubt. 195 
 
 evolution be denied? Why, when man, the Colum- 
 bus of the universe, has caught sight of the Divine 
 and Eternal continents of spiritual existence, should 
 they be perversely declared to be but sun-gilt mist ? 
 
 This, however, we may hold with all clearness and 
 decision, that when one does, as Emily Bronte did, 
 and as the poet Cowper still more conspicuously did, 
 thirst after God with genuine and impassioned long- 
 ing, the hiding of His countenance is but apparent 
 a physical clouding of the brain and is not only 
 not identical with, but essentially opposite to, that 
 sensual and self-satisfied atheism, that brutish in- 
 difference to ideal aims and disinterested virtues, 
 that rancorous mutiny against law and order, which 
 is moral death. 
 
 132 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 WUTHEEING HEIGHTS ME. GEUNDY ON ITS 
 A UTHOESHIPTHE EXTEAOEDINAET CHAE- 
 ACTEE OF THE BOOK. 
 
 THE poems of the Bronte sisters, published anony- 
 mously at their own expense, shared the fate 
 which has generally attended books in which the pub- 
 lishers have had no interest. Many anonymous books 
 have succeeded, many books by young and unprac- 
 tised writers have succeeded, but books published 
 by authors at their own expense are the pariahs of 
 literature. These brave girls, however, were not cast 
 down, "Ill-success," says Charlotte, "failed to crush 
 us : the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful 
 zest to existence ; it must be pursued." They resolved 
 that their next venture should be in prose. Charlotte 
 produced The Professor, Anne Agnes Grey, the re- 
 served, deep-thoughted, brooding Emily WutJiering 
 Heights. Of the first I shall have something to say 
 in connection with Charlotte's last novel, Villette. 
 The second I attempted to read, many years ago, but 
 failed. Wuthering Heights is one of the most remark- 
 able of all the Bronte books, and derives an interest 
 almost poignantly keen from its relation to the 
 
Mr. Grundy on Wuthering Heights. 197 
 
 character of Emily Bronte. It must be carefully 
 examined. 
 
 Before taking up the book I am forced, not without 
 considerable reluctance, to put out of the way a 
 statement respecting it made by Mr. F. H. Grundy, 
 whose unparalleled "vindication" of poor Branwell 
 Bronte I formerly referred to. Mr. Grundy observes 
 "that the question of the authorship of Wuthering 
 Heights has long vexed the critics." This is new to 
 me. When Wuthering Heights appeared, many people 
 thought that it was by the author of Jane Eyre, 
 which had been published a few months earlier. On 
 this misconception Charlotte wrote as follows : 
 " Unjust and grievous error ! We laughed at it at 
 first, but I deeply lament it now." Such a report 
 would naturally pain the true author, and Char- 
 lotte did justice to her sister by saying, with brief 
 precision, " Ellis Bell produced Wuthering Heights." 
 Since these words were printed, no critic has been 
 "vexed" by doubt or question as to the authorship 
 of the novel. But Mr. Grundy makes this startling 
 averment : " Patrick Bronte declared to me, and what 
 his sister said bore out the assertion, that he wrote a 
 great portion of Wuthering Heights himself. Indeed, 
 it is impossible for me to read that story without 
 meeting with many passages which I feel certain must 
 have come from his pen. The weird fancies of dis- 
 eased genius with which he used to entertain me in 
 our long talks at Luddendenfoot, reappear in the 
 pages of the novel, and I am inclined to believe that 
 
198 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 the very plot was his invention rather than his 
 sister's." 
 
 Mr. Grundy's book was published in 1879. The 
 statements which he imputes to Branwell Bronte can- 
 not have been made less than thirty-one years before 
 that date. Mr. Grundy has lived a roving life, traversing 
 first England and then Australia in the exercise of his 
 profession as an engineer, and it is no discredit to him 
 that his memory should have become confused as to 
 the particulars of conversations that took place, in or 
 before 1848, between him and young Bronte. It would 
 be painful to think that the latter laid claim to the 
 authorship of Wuthering Heights, for if he did, he 
 must have spoken falsely. Not a line of his composi- 
 tion, whether in prose or in verse, exhibits a glimpse of 
 such power as appears everywhere in the novel. The 
 negative proof against him is singularly complete and 
 convincing. Neither in his own letters, nor in Mrs. 
 Gaskell's biography, nor in Charlotte's account of the 
 origin of Wuthering Heights, is there a trace of evi- 
 dence that he was ever associated with his sisters in 
 their literary enterprises. We hear of him as having 
 been an usher in a school, a private tutor, a portrait- 
 painter, trying to establish himself at Bradford, all 
 before he was twenty-two. At twenty-two he is at 
 Luddendenfoot, astonishing Mr. Grundy by his conver- 
 sation, neglecting his duties, carousing with worthless 
 companions, and conducting himself, on the whole, dis- 
 gracefully. It is hardly conceivable that the drunken 
 station-master should have told Mr. Grundy that he 
 
Authorship of Wuthering Heights. 199 
 
 had written part of the novel which, six or seven years 
 later, Emily Bronte was to publish as her own. When 
 Bronte left Luddendenfoot, Mr. Grundy lost sight of 
 him for three years ; in Bronte's letters which followed 
 the resumption of their intercourse, and from which 
 Mr. Grundy prints several extracts, there is not a hint 
 that he is author of Wuthering Heights, or that he has 
 the slightest knowledge of the literary activity of his 
 sisters. In the interval he had been dismissed in pro- 
 found disgrace from his second tutorship; and had re- 
 turned, broken-hearted, to Haworth. At the time when 
 Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were preparing first their 
 poems and then their prose tales for the press, he was 
 sinking into the grave, ruined in body and soul, inca- 
 pable of mental work of any kind, and no more fit to 
 write Wuthering Heights than Homer's Iliad. There 
 was thus really no period in his history, so far as I can 
 trace it, at which he could have written any part of 
 Wuthering Heights. That book is perfectly homo- 
 geneous in thought, feeling, and style, and pointedly 
 evinces itself the work of one mind and one pen. It 
 was produced by Emily Bronte, and by her alone. By 
 a strange and sad caprice of fate, her work was claimed 
 for her sister during her life-time, and for her brother 
 after her death. 
 
 Charlotte's criticism of her sister's novel is interest- 
 ing and able, but somewhat perplexing. She first 
 alleges that the characters delineated in Wuthering 
 Heights are true to nature, and then surprises us by the 
 announcement that her sister knew nothing personally 
 
200 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 about the originals that suggested them. Setting out 
 with the remark that to those who are unfamiliar with 
 " the inhabitants, the customs, the natural character- 
 istics of the outlying hills and hamlets in the West 
 Eiding of Yorkshire," the book " must appear a rude 
 and strange production," Charlotte proceeds : " Men 
 and women, who, perhaps naturally very calm, and with 
 feelings moderate in degree, and little marked in kind, 
 have been trained from their cradle to observe the 
 utmost evenness of manner and guardedness of lan- 
 guage, will hardly know what to make of the rough, 
 strong utterance, the harshly-manifested passions, the 
 unbridled aversions and headlong partialities, of unlet- 
 tered moorland hinds and rugged moorland squires, 
 who have grown up* untaught and unchecked, except 
 by mentors as harsh as themselves." This clearly im- 
 plies that the language, customs, passions, in one 
 word, the character, of the moorland hinds and squires, 
 that figure in Wuthering Heights, are looked upon by 
 the writer as correctly depicted. But after stating, in 
 the immediate sequel, that the scenery of Wuthering 
 Heights is true to the West Eiding that the book is 
 " moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath," 
 that the hills and moors were, to her sister, " what she 
 lived in and by, as much as the wild birds, their ten- 
 ants, or as the heather, their produce," she adds that 
 Emily, after all, knew nothing, except at second-hand, 
 about the moorland hinds and squires. " I am bound 
 to avow" these are Charlotte's words " that she had 
 scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry 
 
Emily's Knowledge of Yorkshire. 201 
 
 ______ * 
 
 amongst whom she lived, than a nun has of the country 
 people who sometimes pass her convent gates." Emily, 
 it seems, was benevolent but not "gregarious," by 
 which word Charlotte means sociable. She had heard 
 the histories of the moorland folk, but did not know 
 them personally. " She could hear of them with 
 interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, 
 and accurate ; but with them, she rarely exchanged a 
 word. Hence it ensued that what her mind had 
 gathered of the real concerning them was too exclu- 
 sively confined to those tragic and terrible traits of 
 which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude 
 vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to re- 
 ceive the impress. Her imagination, which was a 
 spirit more sombre than sunny, more powerful than 
 sportive, found in such traits material whence it 
 wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like 
 Catherine." 
 
 I am unable to believe that Emily Bronte had 
 derived only from hearsay the knowledge of human 
 character, and in particular of the language and 
 manners of the West Eiding, which is exhibited in 
 Wuthering Heights. She shows herself almost as 
 familiar with the dialect of the West Eiding as Scott 
 does with the broad Scotch of Midlothian farm- 
 houses. Secluded as had been her life, I cannot 
 doubt that she had seen and talked with peasants 
 who might have sat for Joseph, with woman- 
 servants who might have been the original of Zillah, 
 and with youthful hinds who might have suggested 
 
 v, 
 
202 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Hareton Earnshaw. Nor is it credible that the dis- 
 like of strangers, the vehemence of language even to 
 cursing, the general shaggy rudeness and roughness 
 and ungeniality, that characterised the household of 
 Wuthering Heights, were not suggested by personal 
 observation among the moors of Yorkshire. The 
 truth seems to be that Charlotte gave one aspect of 
 the Yorkshire character, and Emily another. Char- 
 lotte showed the brilliant, bright, and brave side of 
 Yorkshire human nature in her Shirley Keeldars and 
 her Bobert Moores ; Emily, in her Josephs and her 
 Heathcliffs, brought out its capacities for badness, its 
 dark Norse tendency to brooding spite and to implaca- 
 bility of vengeful hate, its proneness to case its natural 
 hardness in spiritual pride and to deepen its natural 
 gloom by superstition. Since the domestic annals of 
 England, whether in Yorkshire or elsewhere, have 
 been made public in the reports of the divorce and 
 police courts, it has been no secret that such things 
 happen as are detailed in the history of the neighbour 
 families of Earnshaw and Linton. I, of course, do 
 not presume to set aside Charlotte Bronte's statement 
 as to the slightness of Emily's intercourse with the 
 people of Yorkshire ; but I think that she did not 
 sufficiently take account of the opportunities for obser- 
 vation inevitably occurring to one brought up from 
 infancy in a particular locality, and of the value, even 
 of rare occasions of observation, to so sure an eye, 
 and so tenacious a memory, as Emily's. 
 
 The stamp of Emily's genius, branded deep on 
 
The Meaning of Wutliering Heights. 203 
 
 Wuthering Heights, is seen chiefly in what I shall 
 call the motivation of the work. The secret of her 
 life, if we may read that secret in the terrible poem 
 which I attempted to analyse, is to be discerned 
 between the lines of the novel. The purport of the 
 poem is that Emily Bronte had searched the universe 
 for God, and that God had never, by so much as one 
 glimpse of His eye, revealed Himself to her. The 
 burden of Wuthering Heights is the potency of evil 
 its potency to pervert good. Old Mr. Earnshaw does 
 a deed of kindness relieves the helpless, shelters the 
 homeless and thus brings a fiend in human shape 
 into his house. Emily Bronte, with a strange reserve 
 of power in so young an artist, generally covers up her 
 secret ; but she is vividly conscious of her own mean- 
 ing, and sometimes lets us have more than a hint of 
 it. " It's a cuckoo's, sir," answers Nelly Dean, when 
 Lockwood asks her what is HeathclifFs history. Now 
 the ways of the cuckoo are deeply suggestive. The 
 green-finch builds her nest in the hedge, and lays her 
 eggs ; the cuckoo comes and inserts her egg among the 
 rest ; and if you go and look six weeks afterwards, 
 you find that the young cuckoo has utterly dispos- 
 sessed the young finches, by way of thanks to their 
 mother for giving it a warm place, while still un- 
 fledged, among her eggs. I have seen the young 
 cuckoo a huge, hawk-like thing, much larger than 
 the whole nest of the green-finch, out of which and 
 over which it had grown until it no longer lay in it 
 but upon it and could well believe, from its greedy, 
 
204 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 voracious look, that it was capable, according to the 
 old couplet quoted in King Lear, of biting off the head 
 of its good little foster-mother. This is one of those 
 mysterious facts which are not usually mentioned by 
 preachers when expatiating on the bounty and benefi- 
 cence of nature, but which, at a time when nature- 
 worship is fashionable, ought not to be overlooked. 
 Heathcliff, the little castaway Lascar, or gipsy, whom 
 Mr. Earnshaw picked out of the gutter in Liverpool 
 and brought home, was the human cuckoo of Wuther- 
 ing Heights. In like manner, the hospitable deed of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Linton, of Thrushcross Grange, in 
 sheltering Catherine Earnshaw, leading, as it did, 
 to an intimacy between the families of the Heights 
 and of the Grange, brought sorrow and death to 
 their offspring. 
 
 Strange and appalling thesis to be expounded by an 
 English girl ! In the Iliad it is of tyrannic rapacity 
 on the one hand, and proud resentment and moody 
 wrath on the other, that the curse is born whence 
 spring unnumbered woes. In the great Greek 
 tragedies it is sin always that is the fountain-head 
 of sorrow. The Supreme is audaciously defied or 
 outwitted before Prometheus is nailed on his rock- 
 Agamemnon slays Iphigeneia ; Clytaemnestra kills the 
 husband who had slain her daughter and his own ; 
 Orestes kills the mother who had killed his father. 
 Even when the sin is committed in entire uncon- 
 sciousness, as when CEdipus kills Laius, the deed 
 itself, viewed objectively, is evil. In the tremendous 
 
Withering Heights. 205 
 
 tragedy of Lear, in which the genius of Shakespeare 
 reveals itself in all its characteristic moral intensity, 
 it is from folly and lawless passion the folly of 
 prodigal and impulsive generosity in the old King 
 and the sin of lawless passion in Gloucester that the 
 subsequent blighting of the earth and blackening of 
 the heavens proceed. But in Wuthering Heights the 
 root of pain and misery is goodness, and the world in 
 which we move seems God-forsaken. And yet this 
 can, I think, be proved the tale is told without 
 violation of natural possibility. That is to say, we 
 are always made aware of the means by which good 
 is neutralised or perverted and the triumph of evil 
 prepared. Herein is displayed the consummate skill 
 of the author ; while at the same time the main 
 doctrine of the book, that there is no overruling 
 Divine force to be counted on to " make for " right- 
 eousness, or for those who work righteousness, is 
 fearfully illustrated. 
 
 It is not indeed wholly without glimpses of joy and 
 brightness. Were that so, the gloom would be in- 
 sufferable. "A good heart will help you to a bonny 
 face, my lad," says one of the characters. There is 
 much tenderness, as well as sense of the wild joy of 
 the moors, in the loving inspection and enumeration of 
 the feathers of moorland birds drawn from her pillow 
 by Cathy Linton on her death-bed. . Sometimes the 
 darkness is dispersed, like mist by a sudden burst of 
 sunlight, and the joy breaks out in a loud, ringing, 
 lark-like song of gladness, as in that admirable passage 
 
206 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 where the younger Cathy gives an account of the 
 dispute which she and her boy-lover had as to the best 
 way of imagining happiness and heaven. " One 
 time," she says, " we were near quarrelling. He said, 
 the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was 
 lying from morning till evening on the bank of heath 
 in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming 
 dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks 
 singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright 
 sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his 
 perfect idea of heaven's happiness. Mine was, rocking 
 in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, 
 and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above ; and not 
 only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds, and linnets, 
 and cuckoos, pouring out music on every side, and the 
 moors seen at a distance, broken into cool, dusky dells ; 
 but close by, great swells of long grass undulating in 
 waves to the breeze ; and woods, and sounding water, 
 and the whole world awake and wild with joy. He 
 wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace ; I wanted all 
 to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee." It is not, 
 however, too much to say that there is only enough of 
 brightness in Wuthering Heights to bring out the 
 gloom of the book in its deepest murky glow. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 WUTHERING HEIGHTS HEATHGLIFF AND 
 CATHY OLD JOSEPH ISABELLA LINTON 
 HEATHCLIFF. 
 
 AT the beginning of the tale we have a description 
 of its principal locality : " Wuthering Heights is 
 the name of Mr. HeathclifFs dwelling, ' wuthering 1 being 
 a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the 
 atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in 
 stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must 
 have up there at all times ; indeed, one may guess the 
 power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the 
 excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the 
 house ; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching 
 their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun." 
 The book throughout is written in this style ; simple, 
 terse, idiomatic, perfectly clear, singularly picturesque ; 
 without the French polish that is conspicuous in 
 Charlotte's, but with more of homety pith and forceful 
 ease. That of the gaunt thorns asking alms of the 
 sun is a wonderful piece of imaginative work, to come 
 so easily from the hand of a girl-artist. 
 
 Mr. Earnshaw, Squire of Wuthering Heights, had 
 been absent for three days, and arrived about eleven 
 
208 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 o'clock at night. The children, bent on seeing their 
 presents, had prevailed with their mother to let them 
 sit up for him. He flung himself into a chair, saying 
 he was nearly dead. Opening his great coat, " See 
 here, wife!" he said, "I was never so beaten with 
 anything in my life ; but you must e'en take it as a 
 gift of God ; though it's as dark almost as if it came 
 from the devil." What they saw was "a dirty, ragged, 
 black-haired child," talking gibberish. Mr. Earnshaw 
 had seen it "starving" in the streets of Liverpool. 
 So it was taken into the family and called Heathcliff. 
 It seemed to be " a sullen, patient child ; hardened, 
 perhaps, to ill-treatment." Mr. Earnshaw defended 
 the boy against his son Hindley, who disliked him, 
 and ill-feeling thus crept in between son and father. 
 Heathcliff was quiet and uncomplaining, but insen- 
 sible to kindness, and profoundly selfish. In addition 
 to his son, Mr. Earnshaw had a daughter Catherine. 
 Wild as a moorland bird, she had a strange witching 
 beauty of her own, and none but she had power over 
 the affections of Heathcliff. They grew up side by 
 side, rambled together on the moors, and learned to 
 love each other with what was less an ordinary 
 passion than an absolute absorption of the life and 
 being of the one into those of the other. I shall quote 
 the account of one of their truant excursions which 
 had important effects. They had been banished from 
 the sitting-room as the evening came on, had escaped 
 to the moors, and took it into their heads to ramble 
 to Thrushcross Grange, several miles away, to see 
 
Boy and Girl. 209 
 
 what the Linton children were doing. The boy 
 Heathcliff is the speaker, Nelly Dean the listener. 
 
 " We ran from the top of the Heights to the park without stopping 
 Catherine completely beaten in the race, because 'she was bare- 
 foot. You'll have to seek for her shoes in the bog to-morrow. We 
 crept through a broken hedge, groped our way up the path, and 
 planted ourselves on a flower-plot under the drawing-room 
 window. The light came from thence ; they had not put 
 up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed. Both 
 of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and 
 clinging to the ledge, and we saw ah ! it was beautiful a splendid 
 place, carpeted with crimson, and crimson- covered chairs and 
 tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of 
 glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shim- 
 mering with little soft tapers. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not 
 there ; Edgar and his sister had it entirely to themselves. 
 Shouldn't they have been happy? We should have thought 
 ourselves in heaven ! And now, guess what your good children 
 were doing? Isabella I believe she is eleven a year younger 
 than Cathy lay screaming at the further end of the room, 
 shrieking as if witches were running red-hot needles into her. 
 Edgar stood on the hearth, weeping silently, and in the middle of 
 the table sat a little dog, shaking its paw and yelping ; which, from 
 then* mutual accusations, we understood they had nearly pulled in 
 two between them. The idiots ! That was their pleasure ! to 
 quarrel who should hold a heap of warm hair, and each begin to 
 cry because both, after struggling to get it, refused to take it. We 
 laughed outright at the petted things ; we did despise them ! 
 When would you catch me wishing to have what Catherine 
 wanted ? or find us by ourselves, seeking entertainment in yelling, 
 and sobbing, and rolling on the ground, divided by the whole 
 room ? I'd not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here 
 for Edgar Linton's at Thrushcross Grange not if I might have the 
 privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the 
 house-front with Hindley's blood ! " 
 
 " Hush,' hush ! " I interrupted. " Still you have not told me, 
 Heathcliff, how Catherine is left behind?" "I told you we 
 laughed," he answered. "The Lintons heard us, and with one 
 accord they shot like arrows to the door ; there was silence, and 
 
 14 
 
210 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 then a cry, ' Oh, mamma, mamma ! Oh, papa ! Oh, mamma, 
 come here. Oh, papa, oh ! " They really did howl out something 
 in that way. We made frightful noises to terrify them still more, 
 and then we dropped off the ledge, because somebody was drawing 
 the bars, and we felt we had better flee. I had Cathy by the hand, 
 and was urging her on, when all at once she fell down. ' Kun, 
 Heathcliff, run ! ' she whispered. ' They have let the bull-dog 
 loose, and he holds me ! ' The devil had seized her ankle, Nelly : 
 I heard his abominable snorting. She did not yell out no, she 
 would have scorned to do it, if she had been spitted on the horns 
 of a mad cow. I did, though, I vociferated curses enough to 
 annihilate any fiend in Christendom ; and I got a stone and thrust 
 it between its jaws, and tried with all my might to cram it down 
 his throat. A beast of a servant came up with a lantern, at last, 
 shouting, * Keep fast, Skulker, keep fast.' He changed his tone, 
 however, when he saw Skulker's game. The dog was throttled off; 
 his huge, purple tongue hanging half a foot out of his mouth, and 
 the pendent lips streaming with bloody slaver. The man took 
 Cathy up ; she was sick ; not from fear, I am certain, but from 
 pain. He carried her in ; I followed, grumbling execrations and 
 vengeance. 'What prey, Robert?' hallooed Linton, from the 
 entrance. 'Skulker has caught a little girl, sir,' he replied ; 'and 
 there's a lad here,' he added, making a clutch at me, ' who looks 
 an out-and-outer ! Very like the robbers were for putting them 
 through the window to open the doors to the gang after all were 
 asleep, that they might murder us at their ease. Hold your 
 tongue, you foul-mouthed thief, you ! You shall go to the gallows 
 for this. Mr. Linton, sir, don't lay by your gun.' ' No, no, Robert,' 
 said the old fool. ' The rascals knew that yesterday was my rent- 
 day.' He pulled me under the chandelier, and Mrs. Linton placed 
 her spectacles on her nose, and raised her hands in horror. The 
 cowardly children crept nearer, also, Isabel lisping 'Frightful 
 thing ! Put him in the cellar, papa.' " 
 
 The implacable hatred with which Heathcliff hence- 
 forward regarded Isabella Linton and her brother 
 Edgar may be partly accounted for by the impressions 
 received by him on this occasion. Such a proposal as 
 " Put him in the cellar, papa," made by a little girl, 
 
Cathy and the Lintons. 211 
 
 would strike the boy-prisoner as venomously cruel. It 
 is important to note this point, for in no respect is 
 Heathcliff's subsequent conduct quite so diabolical as 
 in his treatment of Isabella and her child. No com- 
 mittal to the cellar, however, took place. Cathy was 
 presently recognised and received into favour, while 
 Heathcliff was ordered out of the house, to pick his 
 way back to Wuthering Heights over the moors, " I 
 refused," he says, "to go without Cathy; he (the man- 
 servant) dragged me into the garden, pushed the lantern 
 into my hand, assured me that Mr. Earnshaw should 
 be informed of my behaviour, and, bidding me march 
 directly, secured the door again. The curtains were 
 still looped up at one corner, and I resumed my 
 station as spy ; because, if Catherine had wished to 
 return, I intended shattering their great glass panes 
 to a million of fragments, unless they let her out. 
 She sat on the sofa quietly. The woman-servant 
 brought a basin of warm water, and washed her feet ; 
 and Mr. Linton mixed a tumbler of negus, and 
 Isabella emptied a plateful of cakes into her lap, and 
 Edgar stood gaping at a distance. Afterwards they 
 dried and combed her beautiful hair, and gave her a 
 pair of enormous slippers and wheeled her to the fire ; 
 and I left her as merry as she could be, dividing her 
 food between the little dog and Skulker, whose nose 
 she pinched as he ate ; and kindling a spark of spirit 
 in the vacant blue eyes of the Lintons a dim reflec- 
 tion from her own enchanting face. I saw they were 
 full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably 
 
 142 
 
212 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 superior to them to everybody on earth is she not, 
 Nelly?" 
 
 At this time there was evidently much capability of 
 good in Heathcliff. He was a brave boy, and intensely 
 devoted to at least one human being in addition to 
 himself. But Hindley had lately succeeded to his 
 father in possession of Wuthering Heights, and had 
 begun to treat Heathcliff with detestable injustice. 
 His cruelty " was enough to make a fiend of a saint." 
 Heathcliff had been no saint, but the fiendish elements 
 in his nature grew apace under Hindley's nurturing. 
 Catherine, too, had apparently ceased to love the 
 alien, and resolved to bestow herself on Edgar Linton. 
 Heathcliff, in desperation, ran away from Wuthering 
 Heights, and was not heard of for several years. One 
 day he returned, full-grown, and with money in his 
 pockets ; but where he had been, or how he had got 
 it, he never told. 
 
 I shall now make him stand aside until I have said 
 a word or two on old Joseph, a minor character, but 
 one of the most original in the group, and on some 
 others among the dramatis personce. 
 
 " There is a dry saturnine humour," says Charlotte 
 Bronte, "in the delineation of old Joseph." The 
 humour is both saturnine and dry, as compared, for 
 example, with that of Scott in the far more genial 
 and amusing portraiture of the kindred character, 
 Andrew Fairservice ; but it is of a rarer quality 
 than Charlotte seems to perceive. There are touches 
 in the delineation of Joseph which recall George Eliot 
 
Old Joseph. 213 
 
 in her raciest mood. He can throw a reflection or a 
 sneer into a metaphoric form so apt, compact, and 
 graphic, that we are reminded of Mrs. Poyser and, 
 still more, of Elspeth Bede. His way of describing one 
 man yielding to temptation administered by another is 
 to say that the first " gallops down t' broad road," 
 while the second " flees afore to oppen t' pikes." He 
 characterises a dainty, proud woman in the following 
 remark : " We wer a'most too mucky to sow t' corn 
 for makking her breead." Have we anything better 
 than that from Mrs. Poyser or Elspeth Bede ? Joseph 
 is not consciously a bad man. Nay, he is convinced 
 of his superlative goodness, and belongs to that class, 
 with whom we found Anne Bronte expostulating, who 
 have no manner of difficulty, no weak human experi- 
 ence of imaginative or sympathetic pain, in supposing 
 that an enormous proportion of their race have been 
 marked off for everlasting destruction, while they are 
 themselves the favourites of heaven. He was "the 
 wearisomest, self-righteous Pharisee that ever ran- 
 sacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and 
 fling the curses to his neighbours." In the height 
 of a thunderstorm he " swung on to his knees, 
 beseeching the Lord to remember the patriarchs 
 Noah and Lot, and, as in former times, spare the 
 righteous, though He smote the ungodly." " Thank 
 Hivin for all ! " said Joseph. " All warks togither for 
 gooid to them as is chozzen, and piked out fro' th' 
 rubbidge ! " Joseph was not without a certain dog- 
 like fidelity to the Earnshaw family, but it never 
 
214 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 interfered with the rooted selfishness of his nature. 
 If we take the bank-notes in the following sentence to 
 symbolise the intense worldliness overlying all that 
 was good in his sentiments and theology, the words 
 will expressively denote the kind of man he was. 
 "He solemnly spread his large Bible on the table, 
 and overlaid it with dirty bank-notes from his pocket- 
 book." 
 
 Such characters as Joseph are, I think, uncommon. 
 I have met with but one or two in the course of my 
 life, and of none even of these am I perfectly sure that 
 Joseph can be taken as the accurate representative. 
 I do not doubt, however, that Emily Bronte had some 
 actual Yorkshire peasant in view, and without ques- 
 tion the peculiar faults and perversities of Joseph are 
 in minor degree and development not too rare to be 
 worth pointing out and guarding against. If you 
 stand on the seashore when the sky is cloudless, and 
 look towards the sun, you will see the sunbeams 
 falling solely on the line between your eye and the 
 luminary, forming a pathway of light along the waves. 
 If the shore were lined by a million men, only one 
 line, kindled by the beams, would be visible to each of 
 the million. Now Joseph corresponds, in the spiritual 
 province, to one of those men who should allege that 
 there was no sunlight in the air except what reached 
 his own eye. The infinite benevolence is drawn into 
 the focus of his small sect, his still smaller self, and 
 by a strange perversion the affections shrink and 
 shrivel even under that sense of Divine kindness 
 
The Minor Characters. 215 
 
 which ought to have warmed, expanded, ennobled 
 them. 
 
 In boldness of invention and strength of handling, 
 Joseph is like a grotesque by Michael Angelo ; gnarled 
 and knotted as a stunted tree of the moorland ; his 
 vinegar face perked into contemptuous rebuke of his 
 fellow-creatures, his brow corrugated in an unhappy 
 grudge that there is so much happiness left in the 
 world. He is, indeed, little more than a sketch ; but 
 the sketch, if we had nothing else from her hand, 
 would attest the genius of Emily Bronte. 
 
 Nelly Dean, Edgar Linton, and Lockwood, to 
 whom might perhaps be added Zillah, though she is 
 nothing more than an ordinary farm servant with 
 some Yorkshire colour about her, are the neutral- 
 tinted characters in the book, neither specially good 
 nor pointedly bad. Emily Bronte evidently took too 
 dark views of life, and was too ironical in her moods 
 of mind, to rejoice in the delineation of heroes and 
 heroines. Wuthering Heights is a novel without a 
 hero, and with but a very marred and faulty specimen 
 of a heroine. Charlotte speaks of the " true benevo- 
 lence and homely fidelity " of Nelly Dean ; but in fact 
 Nelly has generally an eye to the main chance, and 
 only once forgets herself into a display of dangerous 
 anger and courage, on which occasion " a touch on 
 the chest " from Heathcliff silences her, she being, as 
 she explains, " stout, and soon put out of breath." 
 Lockwood is little more than a walking gentleman, 
 but, viewed as a walking gentleman, he is made 
 
216 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 admirable use of. Not only are his successive visits 
 to the gaunt manor-house on the Heights full of vivid 
 and appropriate interest, and cunningly adapted to 
 awaken the curiosity of the reader, but his reception 
 by the various inmates enables us to realise, as we 
 otherwise could not have done, the peculiar feeling of 
 repulsion and dislike with which the natives of the 
 Yorkshire wilds regard strangers. The moorland 
 creatures have their own quarrels and spites ; but 
 with creatures of another kind they admit no con- 
 verse at all. Not only do Joseph and Heathcliff 
 who look upon the smooth-spoken, conventional, 
 studiously-polite Lockwood as shaggy mastiffs might 
 on an Italian greyhound despise and repel him ; 
 young Cathy will have nothing at all to say to him. 
 He is outside her circle outside her sympathy; she 
 answers snappishly when he volunteers the slightest 
 act of interrogative courtesy. It is the instinctive 
 shyness, suspicion, aversion of a kitten spitting at a 
 puppy that wants to be civil. 
 
 Edgar Linton is the morally best character in the 
 book. Charlotte well describes him as "an example 
 of constancy and tenderness." He is good, but sheep- 
 ishly, ineffectually good. We cannot help feeling that 
 Emily Bronte shares the contempt for him which is 
 so intensely felt by If eathcliff, and so thinly disguised 
 by his own wife Catherine. He has none of the 
 mental power that is the fitting accompaniment, and 
 indispensable stay, of goodness of heart. He not 
 only fails to defend himself against Heathcliff, but 
 
Isabella and Her Son. 217 
 
 commits the quite unpardonable oversight of making 
 no provision for his daughter, and thus leaving he r 
 an easy prey to the enemy of his house. 
 
 Isabella Heathcliff and her son Linton are exceed- 
 ingly remarkable studies of character. Isabella is 
 feeble and morbid, with sickly propensities and a 
 cold heart. Heathcliff hates her inflexibly from the 
 day when she asks her father to put him into the 
 cellar ; and yet, when he has grown up and revealed 
 his badness, she will hanker after him, fall into foolish 
 love with him, perversely, and in spite of all dissua- 
 sion, and though he hardly condescends to pretend to 
 care for her, throw herself into his arms. She becomes 
 more rational and human when his cruelty drives her 
 into irrepressible rage, and she escapes from him, to 
 return no more. But we never have much regard for 
 her ; only we have a profound sense of her reality, and 
 of the fidelity with which she represents a morbid 
 phase of feminine character. 
 
 Her son and Heathcliff 's is, as Dobell remarked, 
 unmistakably the offspring of those parents. Half is 
 his and half is hers, and he is worthy of the two. The 
 creature is bad very bad ; physically weak, mentally 
 cross-grained, peevish, ill-conditioned. Terrible, once 
 more, is the suggestion of the subtlety and cruelty, 
 and blind and blank indifference to the production of 
 misery, reigning in nature, which this dark, strange 
 woman, this Emily Bronte, half hides, half reveals, in 
 the character and history of Linton Heathcliff. I 
 am not sure that young Heathcliff is not the most 
 
218 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 wonderful delineation in the book more wonderful 
 even than his father or than either of the Catherines. 
 A thin, wavering, gossamer-thread of existence is the 
 boy's at best, and it is soon blown away in the chill 
 wind of death ; yet we know him as vividly as we 
 know any character in fiction. We know him not 
 from the outside, but the inside, not merely the 
 marking of the hands on the clock-face, but the wheels 
 and sources of movement behind. This mode of 
 revealing character, not so much by external incident 
 as by psychological analysis by taking us, as Shak- 
 speare does in the case of Macbeth, and Hamlet, and 
 Brutus, and Angelo, and Claudio, into the mind is 
 the most difficult and masterly of all. The whining 
 self-pity, the incapacity to regard any one except in 
 the light of his own interest, the pleased excitement 
 of which he is conscious when his words give pain, 
 manifested by young Heathcliff in conversation with 
 his cousin, Cathy Linton, open to us the very arcana 
 of his nature. I must quote a short passage to illus- 
 trate these remarks. Nelly Dean details a conversa- 
 tion between Linton Heathcliff and young Cathy. 
 The reader is to recollect that young Cathy's mother 
 had really loved Heathcliff, Linton Heathcliff 's father, 
 though she gave her hand to Edgar Linton. 
 
 "Yes," said Catherine, stroking his long, soft hair; "if I could 
 only get papa's consent, I'd spend half my tune with you. Pretty 
 Linton ! I wish you were my brother." " And then you would 
 like me as well as your father ? " observed he, more cheerfully. 
 "But papa says you would love me better than him and all the 
 world if you were my wife ; so I'd rather you were that." " No ; 
 
Linton HeatJicliff. 219 
 
 I should never love anybody better than papa," she returned, 
 gravely. " And people hate their wives sometimes, but not then- 
 sisters and brothers ; and if you were the latter, you would live 
 with us, and papa would be as fond of you as he is of me." Linton 
 denied that people ever hated their wives ; but Cathy affirmed they 
 did, and in her wisdom instanced his own father's aversion to her 
 aunt. I endeavoured to stop her thoughtless tongue. I couldn't 
 succeed till everything she knew was out. Master Heathcliff, 
 much irritated, asserted her relation was false. " Papa told me, 
 and papa does not tell falsehoods," she answered, pertly. "My 
 papa scorns yours!" cried Linton. "He calls him a sneaking 
 fool." "Yours is a wicked man," retorted Catherine ; "and you 
 are very naughty to dare to repeat what he says. He must be 
 wicked to have made Aunt Isabella leave him as she did." " She 
 didn't leave him," said the boy; "you shan't contradict me." 
 " She did," cried my young lady. "Well, I'll tell you something," 
 said Linton. "Your mother hated your father; now then." 
 "Oh ! " exclaimed Catherine, too enraged to continue. " And she 
 loved mine," added he. "You little liar ! I hate you now! " she 
 panted, and her face grew red with passion. " She did ! she did! " 
 sang Linton, sinking into the recess of his chair, and leaning 
 back his head to enjoy the agitation of the other disputant, 
 who stood behind. "Hush, Master Heathcliff!" I said; "that's 
 your father's tale, too, I suppose." "It isn't; you hold your 
 tongue," he answered. " She did, she did, Catherine ! she did, 
 she did!" 
 
 Cathy, beside herself, gave the chair a violent push, and 
 caused him. to fall against one arm. He was immediately seized 
 by a suffocating cough that soon ended his triumph. It lasted so 
 long that it frightened even me. As to his cousin, she wept with 
 all .her might, aghast at the mischief she had done, though she said 
 nothing. I held him till the fit exhausted itself ; then he thrust 
 me away, and leant his head down silently. Catherine quelled her 
 lamentations also, took a seat opposite, and looked solemnly into 
 the fire. " How do you feel now, Master Heathcliff? " I inquired, 
 after waiting ten minutes. " I wish she felt as I do," he replied; 
 
 " spiteful, cruel thing ! And I was better to-day; and there " 
 
 his voice died in a whimper. "/ didn't strike you!" muttered 
 Cathy, chewing her lip to prevent another burst of emotion. He 
 sighed and moaned like one under great suffering, and kept it up 
 
220 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 for a quarter of an hour on purpose to distress his cousin, 
 apparently, for whenever he caught a stifled sob from her, he put 
 new pain and pathos into the inflexions of his voice. 
 
 This combination of utter weakness with bitter 
 badness is exactly what we should have looked for 
 in the son of Heathcliff and Isabella Linton. And 
 yet, with all his badness, there is in Linton Heath- 
 cliff I know not what element of fineness and high 
 breeding. The vase holds poison, but it is a vase of 
 delicate porcelain, the creature is of demon breed, 
 but, like Caliban, he has melodious tones in him, 
 something almost fascinating, which, under favour- 
 able auspices, might have made a dainty gentleman 
 of him, if never a brave, healthy, good man. 
 
CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 HEATHCLIFF AND CATHERINE WUTHERING 
 HEIGHTS NOT A WHOLESOME BOOKEMILY 
 BRONTE AND MR. G. H. LEWES. 
 
 WHAT Heathcliff had been about in his absence 
 from Wuthering Heights we are not in- 
 formed. Emily Bronte shows her unacquaintance 
 with, or, more probably, her contempt for, the re- 
 sources of professional novelists, by not availing her- 
 self of the opportunity of filling half-a-dozen chapters 
 with an account of his adventures. We are per- 
 mitted, if we like, to suppose that he robbed on the 
 highway ; but all we are told is that he returned laden 
 with money. Before he went, it had become the 
 ruling passion of his soul to take revenge on Hindley 
 Earnshaw, and to gratify this passion he now ad- 
 dressed himself. His love for the elder Catherine, 
 Hindley's sister, was as intense as before more in- 
 tense it could not have been ; but she had, in his 
 absence, become the wife of Edgar Linton. I shall 
 not attempt either to prove it likely that Catherine, 
 loving Heathcliff as she did, would have married 
 Linton in real life, or to show that her marriage is 
 pardonable in art. It was one of those unlikely 
 
222 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 things which, nevertheless, constantly happen. She 
 was wayward, wilful, fantastically perverse and 
 capricious as it is possible for woman to be ; she 
 was little more than a girl. To calculate the pro- 
 ceedings even of a man of genius is impossible, and 
 what is there that a woman of genius and a vein 
 of fiery genius there certainly was in Catherine may 
 not do ? 
 
 Her own account of her motives will, at least, give 
 us some idea of her character. She was not, she 
 explained to Nelly Dean, of the steady-going, respect- 
 able, angelic order of women. If the truth must be 
 told, the wild moors were more to her taste than 
 heaven, and she would rather be among the flowers 
 of the dells than bask on meadows of asphodel. " If 
 I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miser- 
 able I dreamt once that I was there. 
 
 . . . . Heaven did not seem to be my home ; 
 and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to 
 earth ; and the angels were so angry that they flung 
 me out into the middle of the heath on the top of 
 Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy." 
 The reader will do well to remember that Emily 
 Bronte could not live away from the moors, could 
 not get her heart to fix with right satisfaction on 
 anything away from the moors. She took an engage- 
 ment in England; but she pined inconsolably, and, 
 to save her life, they had to bring her back to 
 Haworth. She went with Charlotte to Brussels ; 
 but even the excitement of new splendours, new 
 
Heathcliff and Catherine. 223 
 
 associates, new pursuits, which effectually weaned 
 Charlotte from the nest among the hills, had no 
 power upon Emily. " I've no more business," said 
 Catherine, " to marry Edgar Linton than I have to 
 be in heaven." Heathcliff was the wild Wuthering 
 Heights of her heart, that she loved better than 
 Linton, with his heaven of Thrushcross Grange. Of 
 Heathcliff she said, "He's more myself than I am. 
 Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are 
 the same ; and Linton's is as different as a moon- 
 beam from lightning or frost from fire." Nelly bids 
 her consider how, if these are her feelings, she will 
 be able, when she is Mrs. Linton, to bear separation 
 from Heathcliff. She fiercely exclaims that no separa- 
 tion will be necessary. " Every Linton on the face of 
 the earth might melt into nothing before I could con- 
 sent to forsake Heathcliff. Oh, that's not what I 
 intend that's not what I mean ! I shouldn't be 
 Mrs. Linton were such a price demanded. He'll be 
 as much to me as he has been all his life-time. Edgar 
 mustshaFe^off his antipathy, and tolerate him, at 
 least. He will, when he learns my true feelings 
 towards him." This will seem mere affectation or 
 girlish folly unless we realise the fact, essentially im- 
 portant in order to do justice either to Catherine or 
 to Emily Bronte, that there is no sensual element 
 whatever in Catherine's love for Heathcliff, or in 
 Heathcliff 's love for her. It is this which makes 
 the conception of the pair so original this which 
 proves Emily Bronte to have had transcendent power 
 
224 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 as an artist. A mere sensual passion between Heath- 
 cliff and Cathy would have been as valueless in art 
 as that which vulgarises and defiles the first canto of 
 Don Juan. Catherine's idea is that she will love 
 Heathcliff as her soul's friend and brother, while her 
 affection for her husband will remain flawless and un- 
 sullied. Aided by Linton such, she further explains 
 to Nelly, is her hope she will rescue Heathcliff from 
 the cruelty of Hindley, and put him in the way of 
 rising. Nelly, who speaks for respectable common 
 sense, reprobates such a scheme. But Catherine per- 
 sists in her self-defence, and tries to explain how she 
 feels about Heathcliff, while avowing that she cannot 
 put the matter into words. " I cannot express it ; 
 but surely you and everybody have a notion that 
 there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond 
 you. ... If all else perished and he remained, I 
 should still continue to be ; and if all else remained, 
 and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to 
 a mighty stranger : I should not seem a part of it. 
 My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods : 
 time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes 
 the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the 
 eternal rocks beneath a source of little visible delight, 
 but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff ! He's always, 
 always in my mind : not as a pleasure, any more than 
 I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own 
 being." 
 
 The marriage with Linton took place, and when 
 Heathcliff reappeared, Catherine tried to carry out 
 
Heathcliff and Catherine. 225 
 
 her plan of having him as her friend on Platonic 
 principles. Heathcliff 's love for her was of the same 
 kind as hers for him, and there is not the remotest 
 suggestion nor does such ever occur to her husband 
 that she gives Linton more cause for jealousy than 
 she might have done if Heathcliff had been her 
 brother. Heathcliff, indeed, acts infamously, but not 
 in the vulgar way. He gives rein to his hatred for 
 Linton, is utterly regardless of Linton's happiness, 
 and produces a storm of varied agitation in the 
 Thrushcross household, which brings a feverish and 
 nervous illness on Catherine, and finally occasions 
 her death. Heathcliff speaks of his affection for 
 Catherine as Catherine had spoken of hers for him. 
 She is his life, his soul. If she dies, he will live with 
 his soul in the grave. He charges her with having 
 broken his heart and her own in leaving him and 
 marrying Linton. " You loved me then what right 
 had you to leave me ? " " Let me alone, let me 
 alone," sobbed Catherine. "If I've done wrong, I'm 
 dying for it. It is enough ! You left me, too ; but I 
 won't upbraid you. I forgive you. Forgive me." " It 
 is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel 
 those wasted hands," he answered. " Kiss me again ; 
 and don't let me see your eyes ! I forgive what you 
 have done to me. I love my murderer but yours ! 
 How can I?" 
 
 She fainted in Heathcliff 's arms, and he placed her 
 in those of her husband, bidding him help her. That 
 night she died. " Next morning bright and cheerful 
 
 15 
 
226 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 out of doors stole softened in through the blinds of 
 the silent room, and suffused the couch and its occu- 
 pant with a mellow, tender glow. Her brow smooth, 
 her lids closed, her lips wearing an expression of a 
 Y smile, no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than 
 j? 4] Aghe appeared." 
 
 F v^ ^ The death of Catherine must be considered to have 
 driven Heathcliff mad. He could not and would not 
 realise that she had left him, and that he was alone. 
 %7 "Where is she?" he cried, when Nelly Dean told 
 -' him she was dead ; " not there not in heaven not 
 v ^5\ perished where ? Oh ! you said you cared nothing 
 for my sufferings ! And I pray one prayer I repeat it 
 till my tongue stiffens Catherine Earnshaw, may you 
 not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed 
 you haunt me, then ! The murdered do haunt their 
 murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wan- 
 dered on earth. Be with me always take any form 
 drive me mad ! only do not leave me in this abyss, 
 where I cannot find you ! I cannot live without my 
 life ! I cannot live without my soul ! " Having uttered 
 these words, Heathcliff dashed his head against the 
 knotted trunk of a tree, and " howled, not like a man, 
 but like a savage beast being goaded to death with 
 knives and spears." 
 
 For eighteen years after Catherine's death, he be- 
 lieved himself haunted by her presence. In paroxysms 
 of agonised entreaty he implored her to make herself 
 more sensibly present ; and at last his mania rose to 
 such a pitch that he believed she had granted his 
 
Heathcliff Mad. 227 
 
 request, and was near him, generally invisible, but 
 sometimes in visible form. Before entering on this 
 last stage of his malady, he had been atrociously 
 wicked and cruel. He completed the ruin of Hindley 
 by gambling and intoxication, he diabolically ill-treated 
 his own wife and son. Even to young Cathy, the 
 daughter of his Catherine, he acted with revolting 
 cruelty, until the shade or spectre of her mother 
 seemed to arise to protect her. The last phase of his/ r f 
 madness was that of tolerance for others and harsh- * 
 ness to himself. He went about in a high fever, 
 declining food, and roaming, night and day, on the 
 moors. Then he died, and was buried. But if the 
 dwellers on the moors might be believed, he was not 
 at rest, and was not alone. " That old man," says 
 Nelly Dean, "by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen 
 two on 'em, looking out of his chamber window on 
 every rainy night since his death : and an odd thing 
 happened to me about a month ago. I was going to 
 the Grange one evening a dark evening, threatening 
 thunder and, just at the turn of the Heights, I en- 
 countered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs 
 before him ; he was crying terribly, and I supposed 
 the lambs were skittish, and would not be guided. 
 ' What is the matter, my little man ? ' I asked. 
 ' There's Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under 
 t'Nab,' he blubbered, * un' I darnut pass 'em.' " 
 
 Such, in imperfect and sketchy outline, are the 
 main features of this astonishing book. My sketch 
 of its contents does less than justice to the author; 
 
 152 
 
228 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 but enough has been said and quoted to convey some 
 idea of Wuthering Heights. It is a work of great 
 genius, but of genius reared within sight of graves, 
 and amid the winds and mists of the moorland. The 
 morbid and maddening affection with which Heathcliff 
 and Catherine cling to each other was exactly such an 
 affection, so intense, so unreasonable, so original, as 
 that with which Emily Bronte clung to Haworth. 
 And on Emily, as on Catherine, death descended in 
 the prime of her years. With few changes, the illness 
 and death of Catherine might stand for the illness 
 and death of Emily. The book cannot be pronounced 
 a good or a wholesome book. It exaggerates the evil 
 that is in the world, for it does not show the light in 
 due proportion to the darkness. If Haworth Par- 
 sonage, beside its graves, moaned around by the wind 
 of the moors, were all the world, then might the 
 gloom of Wuthering Heights be accepted for the 
 atmosphere of the planet. But it is not so ; and the 
 best that can be said for the book is that it is the 
 product of marvellous genius that never freely and 
 genially expanded ; genius that never rose into the 
 blue sky of hope and joy ; genius that seems to have 
 watched, and wailed, and waited for God, and yet 
 never once saw His eye light up the " wildering 
 clouds " above and around. 
 
 Curiously suggestive, in relation to Emily Bronte, 
 is Charlotte's reference to the late Mr. G. H. Lewes : 
 
 " I have seen Lewes too I could not feel 
 
 otherwise to him than half sadly, half tenderly a 
 
Emily Bronte and Mr. Lewes. 229 
 
 queer word that last ; but I use it because the aspect 
 of Lewes's face almost moves me to tears ; it is so 
 wonderfully like Emily her eyes, her features, the 
 very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, the fore- 
 head ; even, at moments, the expression." This is the 
 sole resource we have in realising the face of Emily 
 Bronte, since no portrait except the "rough and 
 common-looking oil-painting," executed by her brother 
 in his boyhood, which Charlotte did not think worth 
 mention when her publishers wanted likenesses of her 
 sisters, was taken of her. That she should have 
 resembled Mr. Lewes, both in features and expression, 
 seems at first surprising. Whether there is, or is not, 
 an art to read the mind's construction in the face, it 
 is certain that, unless what her Yorkshire neighbours 
 alleged as to the moroseness and reserve of Emily 
 Bronte be calumnious, and unless the settled gloom 
 of her writings bears false witness, her disposition and 
 temperament were pointedly in contrast with those of 
 G. H. Lewes, one of the most vivacious, nimble- 
 spirited and happy-spirited of authors. Nevertheless, 
 it is unquestionable that the basis of his entire scheme 
 of thought was the proposition that man has, and can 
 have, no certitude respecting immortality and God. 
 He had travelled to all shrines of wisdom ; consulted 
 the sages of antiquity and the philosophers of Europe ; 
 listened to Descartes and Leibnitz and Spinoza, to 
 Hume and Kant and Reid, and, lastly, to Comte ; 
 and announced to his countrymen, as the result, in 
 lucid English, and with the serene good-humour of 
 
 ( UNIVERSITl! 
 
230 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 perfect assurance, that God, if He did exist, was the 
 unknown X of the universe beyond reason, beyond 
 faith, beyond possible communion. Whether, in the 
 course of arriving at this conclusion, Mr. Lewes passed 
 through seasons of mental anguish, I cannot tell ; but 
 his books are remarkable for their genial vivacity, 
 their sweetness of tone and temper, their almost 
 unparalleled range, not only of tolerance, but of 
 sympathetic and kindly tolerance. Having entirely 
 satisfied himself that there is no Infinite Spirit in 
 the universe corresponding in any sense to the father 
 in a human household, or the king in a nation of men, 
 he betrays no sense of bereavement, gives no sign of 
 sorrow. He does not, indeed, exult ; arrogance and 
 scornful flippancy belong to a lower and baser kind of 
 man ; but neither is he in the least distressed, and we 
 feel that, if questioned on the point, he would have 
 said that his no-belief was true, and that to dwell with 
 truth must always be better for man than to yield to 
 the most soothing falsehood. 
 
 I beg to have it clearly understood that I do not put 
 forward the theory that Emily Bronte was an atheist. 
 Charlotte has let fall no hint to that effect, and if 
 Emily had made up her mind that there is no God, it 
 seems highly improbable that she could have pre- 
 vented a sister with whom she lived on terms of 
 unusual confidence and affection from having some 
 glimpse of the fact. Charlotte herself was not only 
 a believer in God, but derived perpetual practica^ 
 sustenance in her daily life and work from refer- 
 
Emily Bronte not an Atheist. 231 
 
 ence to a Judge who could not err and a Father 
 who could not misunderstand. When she read the 
 atheistic volume published by Miss Martineau and 
 Mr. Atkinson, she shrank back appalled from the 
 abyss then first opened to her. " Sincerely," she 
 said, " for my own part, do I wish to find and 
 know the Truth ; but if this be Truth, well may 
 she guard herself with mysteries and cover herself 
 with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who 
 beholds her can but curse the day he or she was 
 born." These words remind one of those in which 
 Sir William Hamilton declares that if atheism were 
 true, the last word of philosophy to man would be 
 the terrific message of the oracle to CEdipus, " May 
 you never know the secret of your birth." 
 
 Emily Bronte, as I conceive her character, occupied 
 the position of having sought God and not found Him, 
 but did not proceed to infer that He had never been 
 found, and had no existence. She was oppressed with 
 a sense of the power of evil and the ineffectuality of 
 good, and yearned with inexpressible and agonised 
 earnestness for a clearer discovery of God than she 
 had been able to attain to. She would not use a 
 language she could not verify, or pretend to trace the 
 light of God's eye when she could not see it ; but she 
 was solitary and sad, no human being rightly compre- 
 hended her, and her writings are a despairing cry to 
 God for light. A universe without God was for her a 
 universe of night and chaos, the wail of infinite be- 
 reavement rising from its human habitations. But it 
 
232 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 is a highly remarkable circumstance that, with so deep 
 a similarity, and at the same time so marked a dis- 
 similarity, in their relation to the fundamental beliefs 
 of religion, Emily Bronte and G. H. Lewes should 
 have had the same, certainly uncommon, type of 
 physiognomy. 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 CHAELOTTE BEONTE ON WUTHERING HEIGHTS 
 CHARLOTTE AND EMILY IN BRUSSELS 
 CHARLOTTE 'S STYLE- THE PROFESSOR- 
 BELGIAN SCENERY VILLETTE THE 
 SCHOOL SCENES IN JANE EYRE. 
 
 BEONTE puts into brilliant and 
 picturesque language a theory, partly expla- 
 natory, partly apologetic, on the subject of such 
 literary work as we have in Wuthering Heights. 
 "Whether," she says, "it is right or advisable to 
 create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I 
 scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer 
 who possesses the creative gift owns something of 
 which he is not always master something that, at 
 times, strangely wills and works for itself. He may 
 lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and 
 principles it will, perhaps, for years lie in subjection ; 
 and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there 
 comes a time when it will no longer consent to 
 ' harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the 
 furrow ' when it ' laughs at the multitude of the city, 
 and regards not the crying of the driver ' when, re- 
 
234 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 fusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any 
 longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have 
 a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mer- 
 maid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be 
 the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have 
 little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you 
 the nominal artist your share in it has been to work 
 passively under dictates you neither delivered nor 
 could question that would not be uttered at your 
 prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice." 
 That genius is apt to lay imperative commands on its 
 possessor, and that there is the inspiration of genius in 
 Wuihering Heights, I should be the last to dispute ; 
 but it were rash to admit that genius is not responsible 
 for its creations. And even if this were granted, it 
 would remain incontrovertible that the characteristic 
 creations of literary genius the portraits it delights to 
 depict, the scenes it loves to describe, the incidents it 
 habitually invents are trustworthy indications of the 
 nature of the artist. Even the religious inspiration, 
 which is more intense and transforming in its potency 
 than the literary inspiration, has been held by all wise 
 theologians to irradiate but never to obliterate or mis- 
 represent the natural character. Both the poems and 
 the prose work of Emily Bronte lie in pessimistic 
 shadow as dark and deep as that cast by the storm- 
 clouds on the sea in Turner's murkiest pictures of 
 shipwreck. We ought, indeed, to recollect that she 
 died young ; that young persons of genius are apt to 
 lay stress upon the tragic tones in life; that, if she 
 
Charlotte on Wuthering Heights. 235 
 
 had lived to be sixty, she might have produced so 
 many sunny and healthy works, that the grim 
 grotesque of her 'prentice hand would have been 
 thrown into the background. Against this, however, 
 we must in fairness set the fact, that the execution of 
 Wuthering Heights is singularly mature the style 
 such as practised and consummate writers use, the 
 sentiment free of young-mannish bravura, and, still 
 more, of young- womanish syllabub. The author never 
 seems for one moment to lose her self-possession and 
 self-command. Had Shakespeare written Lear before 
 he was thirty, and died, we should have had a right to 
 believe that he took a pessimistic view of life ; and of 
 Emily Bronte we must hold that she was morbidly 
 pessimistic. " I am oppressed," says Charlotte, after 
 reading the book anew in 1850 : " the reader is 
 scarcely ever permitted a taste of unalloyed pleasure ; 
 every beam of sunshine is poured down through black 
 bars of threatening cloud ; every page is surcharged 
 with a sort of moral electricity." 
 
 It is, however, the sunny book above all, it is the 
 sunny novel that the world most cordially takes to ; 
 and we may doubt whether Emily Bronte's name 
 would ever have obtained a place in the chronicles 
 of English literature, if the more buoyant and happy 
 genius of her sister had not fairly scaled the horizon, 
 and drawn all eyes to the wonder that had appeared 
 somewhere among the Yorkshire hills. 
 
 Mr. Wemyss Keid seems to me to be correct in 
 deciding that the main determining incident in 
 
236 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte's life was not the death of her 
 brother, but her own residence, at two successive 
 periods, in Brussels. When the change to her im- 
 mense from native Yorkshire to the Belgian capital 
 took place, she was twenty-six years old, but had very 
 much to learn. M. Heger, the head of the seminary 
 to which she went as a pupil, declared that she and 
 her sister Emily knew nothing of French. He meant, 
 I presume, that they had no extensive or finely accu- 
 rate acquaintance with the language, and set about 
 drilling them in the fashion adopted with his advanced 
 French and Belgian pupils. His experience with the 
 sisters was what we should have expected. " Emily," 
 says Mrs. Gaskell, summarising the Belgian head- 
 master's estimate, "had a head for logic, and a capa- 
 bility for argument, unusual in a man, and rare, in- 
 deed, in a woman." He thought Emily abler than 
 Charlotte ; but, unfortunately, " a stubborn tenacity 
 of will," " impairing " in his view the force of her 
 genius, rendered her occasionally impervious to his 
 instructions, " where her own wishes, or her own 
 sense of right, was concerned." We may interpret 
 this to mean that she chose to retain in her com- 
 positions the idiom of her native English, and in con- 
 ventional morals her "heretic" and Protestant ideas, 
 rather than to have her forms of expression and her 
 notions of truth passed through M. Heger's mill. The 
 style of Emily Bronte is thoroughly English. 
 
 In Charlotte's case M. Heger had not to deplore 
 any tenacity of will resisting his influence. She 
 
Charlotte and M. Heger. 237 
 
 delighted in feeling herself once more a schoolgirl. 
 " It is natural," she said, " to me to submit, and very 
 unnatural to command." I believe the characterisa- 
 tion to be just. It would be correct also, if applied to 
 Mrs. Barrett Browning, and, I think, though some 
 might dispute the fact, to George Eliot. But there 
 are women to whom it does not apply, women to 
 whom it is unnatural and painful to submit, and 
 natural and pleasant to command. Emily Bronte, I 
 take it, was one of these last. Whether submission 
 would have been so pleasant for Charlotte if M. Heger 
 had not been what he was, may remain a question. 
 Him she describes as " a man of power as to mind, 
 but very choleric and irritable in temperament." The 
 words describe the essential characteristic of Charlotte 
 Bronte's pet hero, be his name Rochester, or be it 
 Moore, or be it Paul Emanuel. A clever man, with 
 strongly-marked features, who is fervently in love 
 with a plain girl, to whom, while he longs to clasp 
 her to his heart, he talks harshly, is the man whom 
 Charlotte Bronte always hero-worships. 
 
 Under M. Heger 's auspices and instruction, Char- 
 lotte learned to write French so well that her English 
 style became thenceforward characteristically French. 
 Her devoir on the death of Napoleon is written in 
 French which I may err in pronouncing classic of the 
 best modern French school ; but it certainly has a 
 tone and air characteristically French, and yet it 
 reads exactly like a passage from her English prose 
 translated into French. " Napoleon " this is the 
 
238 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 opening passage " naquit en Corse et mourut a Ste. 
 Helene. Entre ces deux lies rien qu'un vaste et 
 brulant desert et 1'ocean immense. II naquit fils d'un 
 simple gentilhomme, et mourut empereur, mais sans 
 couronne et dans les fers. Entre son berceau et sa 
 tombe qu'y a-t-il ? La carriere d'un soldat parvenu, des 
 champs de bataille, un mer de sang, un trone, puis de 
 sang encore, et des fers. La vie, c'est 1'arc en ciel ; 
 les deux points extremes touchant la terre, la comble 
 lumineuse mesure les cieux. Sur Napoleon au berceau 
 une mere brillait; dans la maison paternelle il avait 
 des freres et des soeurs ; plus tard dans son palais il eut 
 une femme qui 1'aimait. Mais ur son lit de mort 
 Napoleon est seul ; plus de mere, ni de frere, ni de 
 soeur, ni de femme, ni d' enfant ! ! D'autres ont dit et 
 rediront ses exploits, moi, je m'arrete a contempler 
 I'abandonnement de sa derniere heure ! " 
 
 Did not the writer of this evidently, while writing 
 it, think in French? And did not Charlotte Bronte, 
 when writing in English, write in exactly the same 
 way? In other words, her style was French. In 
 some very important respects no style could be better. 
 It is clear as crystal, pointed as diamond, admirably 
 fitted for rapid and animated narrative, as well as for 
 the description of passion. But I think that, in 
 variety and expressiveness, it is not equal to those 
 English styles which are formed on the best Teutonic 
 models. The ornamental, the fashionable, the courtly, 
 to a great extent also the martial elements in our 
 language, are French ; the homelier and the heartier 
 
Charlotte's Style French. 239 
 
 are Teutonic; and striking as is much of the prose 
 written by those of our young authors who have 
 brought French models again into vogue, it cannot 
 vie, in respect of expressiveness, or home-bred tender- 
 ness, or Doric simplicity and idiomatic pith and 
 melody, with the prose of Carlyle's early essays, such 
 as that on Burns, or the prose in which George Eliot 
 wrote Silas Marner. The culture, both of Carlyle 
 and George Eliot, was mainly German. 
 
 Of her experience in Brussels, Charlotte Bronte 
 availed herself in the composition of two novels, her 
 first and her last The Professor and Villette. Critics 
 have loudly praised Villette, and I do not recollect 
 seeing anything said in commendation of The Pro- 
 fessor ; but I own to finding it a stiffer business to 
 read the later than the earlier book. The Professor, I 
 make bold to say, has not received due appreciation. 
 It is by no means a wonderful book, but it has signal 
 merits. Nothing could be more sharp than the chisel- 
 ling of the characters, which are neither uninteresting 
 nor commonplace, and the story is full of life. Huns- 
 den is unmistakably a first sketch of the Yorke of 
 Shirley, and the school scenes, though not so care- 
 fully elaborated as those in Villette, are, to my think- 
 ing, more fresh, and, in general respects, about as 
 good. Frances, of The Professor, is perhaps somewhat 
 too commonplace for a heroine : but not even a critic 
 has, to my knowledge, been found who could care for 
 the Lucy Snowe of Villette. The following passage 
 will enable us to realise the hopeful and cheerful spirit 
 
240 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 of Charlotte Bronte's first book, and has a biographical 
 interest as manifestly recalling the impressions with 
 which she first looked upon Belgium. 
 
 Belgium ! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name that when- 
 ever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such as 
 no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can 
 produce. Belgium ! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near 
 midnight. It stirs my world of the past like a summons to 
 resurrection; the graves unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts* 
 feelings, memories that slept are seen by me ascending from the 
 clods haloed most of them ; but while I gaze on their vapoury 
 forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their outline, the sound 
 which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all, like a light 
 wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, re-called to urns, re-sealed 
 in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms ! 
 
 This is Belgium, reader. Look ! don't call the picture a flat or 
 a dull one it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first beheld 
 it. When I left Ostend on a mild February morning, and found 
 myself on the road to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me- 
 My sense of enjoyment possessed an edge whetted to the finest 
 untouched, keen, exquisite. I was young ; I had good health 5 
 pleasure and I had never met ; no indulgence of hers had enervated 
 or sated one faculty of my nature. Liberty I clasped in my arms 
 for the first time, and the influence of her smile and embrace 
 revived my life like the sun and the west wind. Yes, at that epoch 
 I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that from the hill he 
 is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise ; what if the track 
 be straight, steep, and stony ? He sees it not ; his eyes are fixed 
 on that summit, flushed already, flushed and gilded, and having 
 gained it, he is certain of the scene beyond. He knows that the 
 sun will face him, that his chariot is even now coming over the 
 eastern horizon, and that the herald breeze he feels on his cheek 
 is opening for the god's career a clear, vast path of azure, amidst 
 clouds soft as pearl and warm as flame. Difficulty and toil were 
 to be my lot ; but, sustained by energy, drawn on by hopes as 
 bright as vague, I deemed such a lot no hardship. I mounted 
 now the hill in shade ; there were pebbles, inequalities, briars in 
 my path ; but my eyes were fixed on the crimson peak above ; my 
 imagination was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and I 
 
Belgium. 241 
 
 thought nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the 
 thorns scratching my face and hands. 
 
 I gazed often, and always with delight, from the window of the 
 diligence (these, be it remembered, were not the days of trains and 
 railroads). Well! and what did I see? I will tell you faithfully. 
 Green, reedy swamps ; fields fertile, but flat, cultivated in patches 
 that made them look like magnified kitchen-gardens ; belts of cut 
 trees, formal as pollard willows, skirting the horizon ; narrow 
 canals, gliding slow by the roadside ; painted Flemish farmhouses ; 
 some very dirty hovels; a grey, dead sky; wet road, wet fields, 
 wet house-tops ; not a beautiful, scarcely a picturesque, object met 
 my eye along the whole route ; yet to me all was beautiful, all was 
 more than picturesque. It continued fair so long as daylight 
 lasted, though the moisture of many preceding damp days had 
 sodden the whole country; as it grew dark, however, the rain 
 recommenced, and it was through streaming and starless darknes 8 
 my eye caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels. I saw 
 little of the city but its lights that night. Having alighted from 
 
 the diligence, a fiacre conveyed me to the Hotel de , where I 
 
 had been advised by a fellow-traveller to put up. Having eaten a 
 traveller's supper, I retired to bed, and slept a traveller's sleep. 
 
 Charlotte, as we saw, was favourably impressed by 
 M. Heger, and enjoyed life in Brussels ; but one thing 
 pained and offended the instincts of her nature so 
 bitterly that she wrote vehemently of it both in her 
 first book and in her last. The " plague-spot of dissi- 
 mulation," she said, rested upon each and all of 
 those girls who were reared under the influence of 
 Eome and the Jesuits. " Most of them could lie with 
 audacity when it appeared advantageous to do so. All 
 understood the art of speaking fair when a point was 
 to be gained. Backbiting and tale-bearing were uni- 
 versal." On girls from the United Kingdom she 
 was severe enough, but she " could at a glance dis- 
 tinguish the daughter of Albion and nursling of 
 
 16 
 
242 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Protestantism from the foster-child of Borne, the 
 protegee of Jesuistry." In making these assertions 
 Charlotte Bronte guards herself against being sup- 
 posed to speak from prejudice against Popish theology. 
 Her own experience it is that she states, professing 
 her inability to account for the facts except on the 
 supposition that the cause " is to be found in the dis- 
 cipline, if not the doctrines, of the Church of Kome." 
 Between the composition of The Professor and that 
 of Villette, something like ten years intervened, and 
 during these Charlotte had mingled in the best in- 
 tellectual society of London ; yet in Villette the 
 demoralising influences of the Romish discipline are 
 described with a force at least equal to that displayed 
 in the earlier book. " In an unguarded moment," she 
 writes, in the person of her heroine, " I chanced to say 
 that, of the two errors, I considered falsehood worse 
 than an occasional lapse in church attendance." From 
 that time she was differently regarded by the girls. 
 They had told the school authorities what she said, 
 and were instructed to look upon her as dangerous. 
 "Not a soul," she says, "in Madame Beck's house, 
 from the scullion to the directress herself, but was 
 above being ashamed of a lie ; they thought nothing 
 of it. ' J'ai menti plusieurs fois ' formed an item of 
 every girl's and every woman's monthly confession : 
 the priest heard unshocked, and absolved unreluctant. 
 If they had missed going to mass, or read a chapter of 
 a novel, that was another thing ; these were crimes 
 whereof rebuke and penance were the unfailing meed." 
 
ViUette. 243 
 
 Villette has been lauded to the skies by critics, but 
 the book has never been popular, and its failure as 
 a pecuniary success, in comparison with Jane Eyre, 
 was one of the bitterest disappointments of Charlotte 
 Bronte's closing years. There is a tone of remon- 
 strance, nay, of irritation and complaint, in some of 
 her references to the reception of the book; and 
 she says, half-mournfully, haH-reproachfully, when 
 commenting on the general verdict, that but two in 
 the world had understood her, and that both were 
 dead. Yet the result was not in the slightest degree 
 astonishing, nor is it easy to believe that, if Charlotte 
 Bronte had given full play to her excellent critical 
 faculty in relation to the matter, she would not have 
 been able to anticipate, if, indeed, she would not have 
 averted, the failure. 
 
 She wrote the book, for one thing, and a very im- 
 portant thing, when in bad health and suffering under 
 constant depression. With immense strength of will 
 she performed her task, but the tide of inspiration had 
 ebbed, and she wrote with effort. In the second place, 
 she chose a subject which presented practically in- 
 superable difficulties. " Out of so small a circle of 
 characters," exclaims Mrs. Gaskell, in the plenitude 
 of her admiration, " dwelling in so dull and mono- 
 tonous an area as a ' pension,' this wonderful tale 
 was evolved ! " Yes. The tale deserves the epithet, 
 wonderful. All honour to the author who wielded the 
 magical wand that " evolved " its scenes and incidents ; 
 all credit to the critics who celebrated the feat "with 
 
 162 
 
244 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 one burst of acclamation." But the great world does 
 not care a straw whether a work of fiction is a miracle 
 of evolution or not, but only whether the thing evolved 
 is an interesting novel. Charlotte Bronte, when 
 writing of Miss Austen, seems to be quite aware that 
 the novelist must have suitable materials if he is to 
 succeed. She complains that, in Pride and Prejudice, 
 we have " a carefully-fenced, highly-cultivated garden, 
 with neat borders and delicate flowers ; but no glance 
 of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no 
 fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck." And what 
 have we in Villette? The routine of what Mrs. 
 Gaskell calls a "pension" the schoolrooms and 
 dwelling-rooms and fine gardens of an educational 
 establishment in Brussels. It must be confessed that 
 the interest of mankind in education, as a subject of 
 entertainment, is limited. Schoolmasters and school- 
 mistresses, clever and affectionate pupils, or stupid and 
 heartless, are not capable of being made so interesting 
 to the mass of mankind as more picturesque and 
 open-air personages. And then the charm at which 
 Charlotte so felicitously hints the charm of blue hill 
 and bonny beck, of woods and moors, and craggy 
 heathery dells the charm whose fascination is so 
 pervasively felt in Jane Eyre and Shirley, is absent 
 in Villette. 
 
 School life, skilfully treated, may, of course, come in 
 admirably in a novel, but it must by no means occupy 
 almost the whole of the three volumes. In Jane Eyre 
 the school scenes are telling and effective. Whether 
 
The School Scenes in Jane Eyre. 245 
 
 it is because the few chapters in which we are intro- 
 duced to Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, to Miss 
 Scatcherd and Helen Burns, are written with more 
 subtle and heart-reaching power than the ampler 
 descriptions of school life in The Professor and Villette, 
 or whether it is simply because they are short, certain 
 it is that they excite a far livelier interest than is 
 awakened by the others. The school-girl, Jane Eyre, 
 is a singularly vivid and accurate miniature likeness of 
 Charlotte herself. The impetuosity with which little 
 Jane resents injustice, whether to herself or to her 
 friends the fierce haste, for instance, with which she 
 tears from the forehead of Helen Burns, and flings into 
 the fire, the badge of " Slattern" can hardly fail to 
 remind us of Charlotte's curt and stinging letter to 
 Mr. Lewes, when she thought he had unfairly criti- 
 cised her, after having made demonstrations of friend- 
 liness. "I can be on my guard against my enemies, 
 but God deliver me from my friends ! " 
 
 In describing Helen Burns, a true effect in pathos is 
 attained, and pathos is rare in Charlotte Bronte's 
 books. " When I should be listening to Miss 
 Scatcherd," says the self-accusing Helen, " and col- 
 lecting all she says with assiduity, often I lose the 
 very sound of her voice. I fall into a sort of dream. 
 Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that 
 the noises I hear round me are the bubbling of a little 
 brook, which runs through Deepden near our house ; 
 then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to 
 be wakened ; and, having heard nothing of what was 
 
246 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 read for listening to the visionary brook, I have no 
 answer ready." The reference to the brooks of North- 
 umberland reminds us that we are in the country; 
 and this is not the only touch of out-of-door and out- 
 of-town fascination that tends to make it pleasanter to 
 read of the Lowood Seminary than of the more im- 
 posing one in Brussels. Here is another glimpse of 
 the sylvan surroundings of Lowood : " April advanced 
 to May. A bright, serene May it was ; days of blue 
 sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern 
 gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation 
 matured with vigour ; Lowood shook loose its tresses ; 
 it became all green, all flowery. Its great elm, ash, 
 and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life ; wood- 
 land plants sprang up profusely in its recesses ; un- 
 numbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it 
 made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of 
 its wild primrose plants. I have seen their pale gold 
 gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the 
 sweetest lustre." 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 JANE EYEE LITTLE JANE AND THE EEEDS 
 THOENF1ELD HALLFUENITUEE FOETY 
 YEAES AGO GE ACE POOLE A WINTER 
 EVENING WALK MEETING WITH BO- 
 GHESTEE. 
 
 THE Professor, though not itself deemed satis- 
 factory, was considered by Messrs. Smith and 
 Elder, the enterprising and sagacious publishers to 
 whom Charlotte Bronte had offered it, to afford 
 evidence that Currer Bell could produce a splen- 
 didly successful novel in three volumes. Charlotte's 
 previous efforts had been but enough to awake in her 
 a surmise of her genius, and to accustom her to her 
 tools as a literary artist. She now worked with all her 
 might, heart engaged as well as brain, with that con- 
 centrated energy, and that exultation in the outgoing 
 of power, which preclude haste yet secure speed. It 
 is a great mistake to suppose that when artist-work, 
 whether of the pencil or of the pen, is quickly done, 
 it is necessarily hastily done. Haste throws off with 
 slovenly indifference sheet after sheet of heartless and 
 colourless task- work; genius, rejoicing in congenial 
 activity, doing easily what it does consummately well, 
 
248 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 joins the patient strength of the horse to the wings of 
 a bird, as the wise Greeks signified by their fable of 
 Pegasus. It may safely be said that all art- work 
 which is not, in this sense, quick work, is not 
 supremely excellent. The novel which Charlotte 
 Bronte produced under these circumstances was 
 published in the autumn of 1847, and before the 
 end of the year it had taken its place as one of the 
 most popular novels in the world. To this day it 
 holds, in general estimation throughout Europe and 
 America, the first place among her books. It was 
 cast in the unpromising form of an autobiography 
 of a governess, and named Jane Eyre. 
 
 The earlier chapters are a model of those preludings 
 which, interesting themselves, ought always to prepare 
 the way for, and to yield complete precedence to, the 
 main interest in a three-volume novel. The heroine, 
 introduced to us in early girlhood, is realised with 
 decisive and errorless touches, few but sufficient. She 
 was one to be vehemently liked by some, to be un- 
 affectedly detested by a much larger number. Abbot, 
 Mrs. Keed's maid, defined her as "a tiresome, ill- 
 conditioned child, who always looked as if she were 
 watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand." 
 Yet all her fault was that she was thoughtful, quiet, 
 gentle, deficient in animal spirits, and plain in feature. 
 She could be interested in books, and loved fairy tales. 
 She had looked for the elves " among foxglove leaves 
 and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground- 
 ivy mantling old wall-nooks," and had at length owned 
 
Jane and the Reed*. 249 
 
 "the sad truth that they were all gone out of Eng- 
 land." Such a little creature would seem to vulgar 
 worldlings, like Abbot and her coarse, red-faced 
 mistress, to be perpetually asserting a claim to 
 spiritual superiority, and would be hated with the 
 perfect hatred wherewith animals of all species, the 
 human emphatically included, regard creatures that 
 are strange, and alien, and perhaps superior, to 
 themselves. 
 
 Villanously ill-treated as our small heroine was by 
 the red-faced Keed and her brute son, John, the author 
 avoids Dickens-ish caricature by letting us see how 
 natural it was for such persons to be rude and cruel to 
 Jane. " I was a discord," writes the latter, com- 
 menting on the experiences of her childhood, " in 
 Gateshead Hall ; I was like nobody there ; I had 
 nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, 
 or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love me, in 
 fact, as little did I love them. They were not bound 
 to regard with affection a thing that could not sympa- 
 thise with one amongst them ; a heterogeneous thing, 
 opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in pro- 
 pensities ; a useless thing, incapable of serving their 
 interest, or adding to their pleasure ; a noxious thing, 
 cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, 
 of contempt of their judgment. I know that had I 
 been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, hand- 
 some, romping child though equally dependent and 
 friendless Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence 
 more complacently." And again, with still more preg- 
 
250 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 nant suggestiveness : " Mrs. Keed, to you I owe some 
 fearful pangs of mental suffering. But I ought to 
 forgive you, for you knew not what you did : while 
 rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only 
 uprooting my bad propensities." 
 
 These words convey a most valuable hint to all 
 engaged in the up-bringing of the young. Mis- 
 understandings are easy to produce, hard to destroy. 
 I was once in boyhood driven almost to despair by 
 a teacher, an able man, and not unduly harsh, who 
 quite misunderstood me, and yet, when I reflect on 
 the whole of the circumstances, I cannot fix upon 
 any point in which he was culpable; and I have 
 seen the ablest schoolmaster under whom I ever sat 
 Dr. Melvin, of Aberdeen most severely reprimand, in 
 presence of the whole class, a boy who was perfectly 
 innocent of what was imputed to him. " Jane, I 
 don't like cavillers or questioners," said Mrs. Reed, 
 when the little girl objected to be wrongfully accused. 
 But without questioning, nay, ample and fine cross- 
 questioning, the truth is often not to be come at ; and 
 of this it is generally impossible for the teacher, com- 
 pelled to be judge, jury, and, in most cases, sole 
 witness in his own court, to have the advantage. 
 Children, besides, and even boys and girls well-grown, 
 have limited powers of expression, and do not know 
 how to enter upon an explanation. What is wanted is 
 precisely what cannot be had, some mutual friend, 
 with gifts of reconciliation, like those by which, as 
 Macaulay so charmingly describes, Gilbert Burnet 
 
Thornfield Hall. 251 
 
 removed the misunderstanding that alienated William 
 of Orange from Mary. 
 
 From Gateshead Hall Jane was sent to Lowood 
 School. Enough, and not more than enough, is told 
 of her misfortunes and fortunes, the injustice she met 
 with from Mr. Brocklehurst, and the justice done her 
 by Miss Temple ; and pathetic and beautiful details 
 are given of her friendship with Helen Burns. Thus 
 prepared, we follow her with stimulated attention 
 when, having plucked up resolution to advertise for 
 a situation, she steps out a highly unprotected 
 female, aged eighteen, of plain face, tiny figure, 
 strong will, good head, and ver} 7 " limited experience 
 into the great world. The situation which her 
 advertisement has found for her is that of governess 
 to Adele Varens, the ward of Edward Fairfax Ro- 
 chester, Esq., of Thornfield Hall, near Millcote, in 
 a nameless county, which we may identify as York- 
 shire. Thornfield Hall was a three-storied house, 
 with picturesque battlements a-top ; a rather vener- 
 able mansion, but not rising to the dignity of a 
 nobleman's seat. "Its grey front stood out well 
 from the background of a rookery, whose cawing 
 tenants were now " when Jane looked at them on 
 the morning after her arrival " on the wing. They 
 flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great 
 meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk 
 fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees 
 strong, knotty, and broad as oaks at once ex- 
 plained the etymology of the mansion's designation. 
 
252 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Farther off were hills ; not so lofty as those round 
 Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like barriers of sepa- 
 ration from the living world ; but yet quiet and lonely 
 hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield with 
 a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near 
 the stirring locality of Millcote." 
 
 There is one point in the interior arrangements of 
 Thornfield Hall, as described by Charlotte Bronte, 
 which, though unimportant otherwise, has a special 
 interest for those who like to detect in literature the 
 signs of change in social habitude and prevailing 
 taste. It has often been remarked, and the remark 
 seems to me just, that, within the last thirty years, 
 people have become sadder. Buskin speaks some- 
 where of the growing incapacity among us to be 
 amused by poor jests. We require more to make 
 us laugh than the mere attempt at a joke which 
 furnishes pretext enough to a happy schoolboy for 
 breaking into a guffaw, or to a healthy milkmaid 
 for showing her white teeth. Punch does not make 
 us laugh now as Punch used to make people laugh a 
 quarter of a century ago. Leech's faces were always 
 glad, unless marked with vexation about some obvious 
 disaster ; Du Maurier's are invariably sad, especially 
 those of his women, except when they are vulgar or 
 ugly. The change is discernible also in the rooms 
 we inhabit. Thirty years ago, the ideal parlour or 
 drawing-room of the middle-class Englishman was 
 one in which the colours were harmoniously bright. 
 In its tones of colour he liked it to approach, as 
 
Furniture Forty Years Ago. 253 
 
 nearly as possible, to an apple blossom painted by 
 old William Hunt. Brightness in furniture is now 
 thought by many to betray vulgarity ; it is almost 
 as bad form as a loud laugh ; the olive greens, the 
 sober greys, the deep-toned reds, in which Mr. 
 Morris has taught us to find a melancholy satis- 
 faction, suggest, however beautiful they may be, a 
 more sombre ideal of domestic felicity. It is 
 curiously interesting, in connection with this change 
 of feeling, that Emily and Charlotte Bronte, both of 
 them what one would call grave and earnest rather 
 than sprightly women, have given us descriptions of 
 rooms, evidently intended by them to be delightful, 
 in which the apple-blossom ideal is realised, and that 
 Charlotte, when her taste presided over the furnishing 
 of a room in Haworth Kectory, was true to the ideal 
 presented in her writings. 
 
 When Heathcliff and Cathy look through the 
 window into the domestic heaven of Thrushcross 
 Grange, what they see is thus enthusiastically de- 
 scribed by the boy : " Ah ! it was beautiful a 
 splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson- 
 covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling 
 bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging 
 in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering 
 with little soft tapers." When Mrs. Fairfax permits 
 Jane Eyre to look into the drawing-room of Thorn- 
 field Hall, what meets her delighted gaze is thus 
 described by the governess: "I thought I caught 
 a glimpse of a fairy palace, so bright to my novice 
 
254 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet it was merely 
 a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir* 
 both spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid 
 brilliant garlands of flowers ; both ceiled with snowy 
 mouldings of white grapes and vine-leaves, beneath 
 which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and 
 ottomans ; while the ornaments on the pale Parian 
 mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemian glass ruby- 
 red, and between the windows large mirrors repeated 
 the general blending of snow and fire." " The par- 
 lour," writes a visitor to Haworth Parsonage when 
 Charlotte was its mistress, "has been evidently re- 
 furnished within the last few years, since Miss 
 Bronte's success has enabled her to have a little 
 more money to spend. The prevailing colour of 
 the room is crimson," harmoniously blended, we 
 need not doubt, though this deponent saith not, 
 with white and gold. For my own part, though I 
 unaffectedly enjoy Mr. Morris's best colours, I agree 
 with the simple, cheerful people of the early Victorian 
 era, in thinking that the pleasantest of all family 
 sitting-rooms, especially in the country, is one in 
 which the tone of colour is a delicate harmony of 
 crimson, white, and gold. 
 
 We shall not accompany Jane in her tour of dis- 
 covery, with Mrs. Fairfax for guide, from room to 
 room and story to story, in Thornneld Hall, but 
 the description of the landscape which she saw when 
 she emerged, through a trap-door, upon the roof, is too 
 characteristic of Charlotte Bronte to be omitted : 
 
Grace Poole. 255 
 
 " I was now on a level with the crow colony, and 
 could see into their nests. Leaning over the battle- 
 ments and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds 
 laid out like a map : the bright and velvet lawn closely 
 girdling the grey base of the mansion ; the field, wide 
 as a park, dotted with its ancient timber ; the wood, 
 dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, 
 greener with moss than the trees were with foliage ; 
 the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, 
 all reposing in the autumn day's sun ; the horizon 
 bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with 
 pearly white. No feature in the scene was extra- 
 ordinary, but all was pleasing." 
 
 We are bound also to take note of the first intro- 
 duction of that mystery which plays so important a 
 part in the machinery of Jane Eyre. The governess 
 had stepped in again, after looking from the roof; Mrs. 
 Fairfax stayed behind for a moment to fasten the trap- 
 door ; and Jane was alone in the passage leading from 
 the garret staircase. This passage, so near the roof of 
 the house, was " narrow, low, and dim, with only one 
 little window at the far end, and looking, with its two 
 rows of small black doors all shut, like a corridor, in 
 some Bluebeard's castle." " While I paced softly on," 
 proceeds Jane, " the last sound I expected to hear in 
 so still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a 
 curious laugh, distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped ; 
 the sound ceased, only for an instant ; it began again, 
 louder, for at first, though distinct, it was very low. 
 It passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake 
 
256 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 an echo in every lonely chamber, though it originated 
 but in one, and I could have pointed out the door 
 whence the accents issued. * Mrs. Fairfax ! ' I called 
 out, for I now heard her descending the great stairs, 
 ' did you hear that loud laugh ? Who is it ? ' ' Some 
 of the servants, very likely,' she answered ; ' perhaps 
 Grace Poole.' 'Did you hear it?' I again inquired. 
 ' Yes, plainly ; I often hear her ; she sews in one of 
 these rooms.' The laugh was repeated in its low, 
 syllabic tone, and terminated in an odd murmur. 
 ' Grace ! ' exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax. I really did not 
 expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as 
 tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard ; 
 and, but that it was high noon, and that no circum- 
 stance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachin- 
 nation, but that neither scene nor season favoured 
 fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. How- 
 ever, the event showed me I was a fool for entertain- 
 ing a sense even of surprise. The door nearest me 
 opened, and a servant came out, a woman of between 
 thirty and forty ; a set, square-made figure, red-haired, 
 and with a hard, plain face: any apparition less 
 romantic or less ghostly could scarcely be conceived. 
 ' Too much noise, Grace,' said Mrs. Fairfax. ' Ke- 
 rnember directions ! ' Grace curtsied silently and 
 went in." 
 
 It is only in the sequel that we appreciate the ad- 
 mirable artfulness of this. Grace Poole, the contra- 
 dictory creature who is utterly wooden when we get a 
 full sight of her, and becomes so mysteriously and 
 
Grace Poole. 257 
 
 eerily mirthful whenever the door in the long, low, 
 remote passage closes behind her, is a singularly in- 
 genious invention. 
 
 Jane, too active-minded to find full occupation for 
 her faculties with her one pupil and Mrs. Fairfax, 
 frequently walked in meditative mood in the weird 
 corridor. "When thus alone," she says, "I not un- 
 frequently heard Grace Poole's laugh : the same peal, 
 the same low, slow ha ! ha ! which, when first heard, 
 had thrilled me : I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs, 
 stranger than her laugh. Sometimes I saw her : she 
 would come out of her room with a basin, or a plate, 
 or a tray in her hand, go down to the kitchen and 
 shortly return, generally (oh, romantic reader, forgive 
 me for telling the plain truth !) bearing a pot of porter." 
 Was ever mystery more tantalising more provokingly 
 unpoetical ? The reader must recollect that Jane was 
 at this time a girl of eighteen, who had lived for eight 
 years at Lowood school ; had she possessed more 
 knowledge of the world, she might have taken a 
 somewhat different view of the enigma connected 
 with Grace Poole. 
 
 In spite, however, of Adele's vivacity, Mrs. Fairfax's 
 judicious observations, and Grace Poole's eccentric 
 merriment, Jane had begun to feel existence too tran- 
 quil at Thornfield, when a new chapter opened in her 
 history by the occurrence of an event. Winter had 
 succeeded autumn, and the ground was hard, the air 
 keen, with January frost. Tired of sitting in the 
 library, Jane offered to carry a letter for Mrs. Fairfax 
 
 17 
 
258 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 to the village of Hay, two miles off. The bracing 
 influence of the sharp Yorkshire air seems to be upon 
 us as we read the description of her walk. 
 
 The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely. I 
 walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and 
 analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and 
 situation. It was three o'clock ; the church bell tolled as I passed 
 under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching 
 dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile 
 from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts 
 and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral 
 treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its 
 utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made 
 no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to 
 rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as 
 the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. 
 Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle 
 now browsed ; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally 
 in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to 
 drop. 
 
 This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay : having reached 
 the middle, I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field. 
 Gathering my mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my 
 muff, I did not feel the cold, though it froze keenly; as was 
 attested by a sheet of ice covering the causeway, where a little 
 brooklet, now congealed, had overflowed after a rapid thaw some 
 days since. From my seat I could look down on Thornfield: the 
 grey and battlemented hall was the principal object in the vale 
 below me; its woods and dark rookeiy rose against the west. I 
 lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees, and sank 
 crimson and clear behind them. I then turned eastward. 
 
 On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a 
 cloud, but brightening momently: she looked over Hay, which, 
 half lost in trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys ; it 
 was yet a mile distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear 
 plainly its thin murmurs of life. My ear, too, felt the flow of 
 currents ; in what dales and depths I could not tell : but there were 
 many hills beyond Hay, and doubtless many becks threading their 
 passes. That evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of the nearest 
 streams, the sough of the most remote. 
 
Winter Evening. 259 
 
 This is very simple, yet quite masterly, writing. It 
 is like the best parts of Cowper's Task with some- 
 thing that reminds you of the minute elaboration of 
 Crabbe or John Clare. There is a crispness in the 
 touch suggestive of frost, when frost is seasonable and 
 not too severe. What a nice precision and judicious 
 parsimony of descriptive features none of the too- 
 much-ness, the too florid exuberance, of vulgar word- 
 painting ! The hedge has its " coral treasures," in hip 
 and haw, though the rose leaves are gone, and the 
 little brown birds are among the branches, "like 
 single russet leaves ! " though the songs of summer 
 are hushed. And how fine and deep is that poetry of 
 the hill streams ! " My ear felt the flow of currents." 
 The poet-woman was with the becks as they stole 
 quietly on, humming their own low, sweet moorland 
 tune, among the dales. 
 
 The frost and the silence having brought our nerves 
 into exquisite tension, we are in a condition to be 
 not unpleasantly startled by sound. " A rude noise 
 broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once 
 so far away and so clear ; a positive tramp, tramp ; 
 a metallic clatter, which effaced the soft wave- 
 wanderings ; as, in a picture, the solid mass of a 
 crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in 
 dark and strong on the. foreground, efface the aerial 
 distance of azure hill, sunny horizon, and blended 
 clouds, where tint melts into tint." 
 
 A great dog, " a lion-like creature with long hair 
 and a huge head," went careering along; a horse and 
 
 172 
 
260 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 rider passed; and Jane took a few steps onward 
 towards Hay : but a noise caused her to look back, and 
 she saw that horse and man were down on the ice of 
 the causeway. The dog, barking loudly as dogs will 
 do when circumstances suddenly overtax their canine 
 sagacity, ran instinctively towards Jane as if to 
 summon her assistance. She walked back to the 
 traveller, who was extricating himself from his 
 hazardous situation, and offered help. He limped to 
 the stile on which she had been seated a minute 
 before, and she had time to survey him. " His figure 
 was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur-collared, and 
 steel-clasped ; its details were not apparent, but 1 
 traced the general points of middle height, and con- 
 siderable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with 
 stern features and a heavy brow ; his eyes and 
 gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just 
 now ; he was past youth, but had not reached middle 
 age ; perhaps he might be thirty-five." After some 
 little colloquy, he accepted Jane's aid to the extent of 
 leaning on her shoulder, as he halted on his sprained 
 foot towards his horse ; he then rode off, and she went 
 on her way. " The incident," she writes, " had 
 occurred, and was gone for me ; it was an incident of 
 no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense ; yet 
 it marked with change one single hour of a mono- 
 tonous life. My help had been needed and claimed ; 
 I had given it ; I was pleased to have done something ; 
 trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an 
 active thing, and I was weary of an existence all 
 
Jane meets Rochester. 261 
 
 passive. The new face, too, was like a new picture 
 introduced to the gallery of memory ; and it was 
 dissimilar to all the others hanging there : firstly, 
 because it was masculine ; and, secondly, because it 
 was dark, strong, and stern." On returning to 
 Thornfield Hall, she found that the rider was her 
 employer, Mr. Rochester. 
 
CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 JANE AND ROCHESTER JANE'S PICTUEES 
 CHAELOTTE BEONTE'S IMAGINATION TEE 
 MERMAID THE NEEEIDESEOCHESTEE 'S 
 SELF-DESCEIPTION THE MYSTEEY EO- 
 CHESTEE'S PLEA. 
 
 FEW characters, if any, in modern fiction, have been 
 so much discussed as that of the hero of Jane Eyre. 
 My own estimate of Edward Fairfax Rochester has 
 long heen formed, but it will be more satisfactory to 
 my readers that the facts on which a just estimate 
 must be based should be fairly set before them than that 
 I should begin with a statement of my own opinion. 
 
 On the evening of the day after his arrival at 
 Thornfield, Kochester conversed at some length with 
 Jane. We shall take a few words from their colloquy. 
 " * You have been resident in my house three 
 
 months?' * Yes, sir.' 'And you came from ?' 
 
 ' From Lowood school in shire/ ' Ah ! a charit- 
 able concern. How long were you there ? ' ' Eight 
 years.' ' Eight years ! you must be tenacious of life. 
 I thought half the time in such a place would have 
 done up any constitution ! No wonder you have 
 rather the look of another world. I marvelled where 
 
Jane and Rochester. 263 
 
 you had got that sort of face. When you ca/me on me 
 in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of 
 fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether 
 you had bewitched my horse : I am not sure yet. 
 Who are your parents ? ' 'I have none.' ' Nor ever 
 had, I suppose ; do you remember them? ' * No.' " 
 
 I put into italics that remark of Eochester's which 
 must, I think, have grated on the ear, or rather on 
 the heart, of the reader. It is entirely decisive as to 
 the fact that Kochester had not the intuitions of a 
 gentleman. "A charitable concern! " he says. The 
 girl had just told him she had been trained in it. 
 Noah Claypole called Oliver Twist " Vurkus." 
 Eochester did not, like Claypole, wish to wound the 
 person he addressed ; but if he had not been charac- 
 terised by that defect of sensibility which Euskin 
 rightly pronounces the infallible note of vulgarity, he 
 would instinctively and instantaneously have placed 
 his recollection of the nature of the Lowood founda- 
 tion under the strictest guard of silence, and hastened 
 on without letting Jane detect, even by a glance of his 
 eye, what he had been thinking of. There was a lack 
 of delicacy in the blunt cross-questioning about Jane's 
 parentage, but this was a venial offence compared 
 with the other. In his second conversation with Jane, 
 Eochester took occasion, apropos of his disliking the 
 prattle of children, to inform her that he was an " old 
 bachelor." The sequel proves that this was a lie, 
 not a quite unqualified lie, but a statement which, in 
 any court of justice, would be characterised as the real 
 
264 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 thing. Kather unmanageable items these, to reconcile 
 with the character of a hero, a piece of rudeness of 
 which no one could be guilty who had the sympathetic 
 nerve of a gentleman, and a fib ! 
 
 We shall return to the character of Eochester, but 
 I must here make him stand aside for a moment, in 
 order that the attention of the reader may be given to 
 a passage, occurring in connection with one of these 
 early conversations between Jane and her master, 
 which is specially illustrative of Charlotte Bronte's 
 imaginative genius. I refer to the description of three 
 of Jane's water-colour pictures, as they were placed 
 before the critical eye of Eochester. 
 
 The first represented clouds low and livid, rolling over a swollen 
 sea ; all the distance was in eclipse ; so, too, was the foreground ; 
 or, rather, the nearest billows, for there was no land. One gleam 
 of light lifted into relief a half -submerged mast, on which sat a 
 cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with foam : its beak 
 held a gold bracelet, set with gems, that I had touched with as 
 brilliant tints as my palette could yield, and as glittering dis- 
 tinctness as my pencil could impart. Sinking below the bird and 
 mast, a drowned corpse glanced through the green water ; a fair 
 arm was the only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had 
 been washed or torn. 
 
 The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak 
 of a hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. 
 Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at 
 twilight ; rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust, 
 portrayed in tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim 
 forehead was crowned with a star ; the lineaments below were 
 seen as through the suffusion of vapour ; the eyes shone dark and 
 wild ; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by 
 storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection like 
 moonlight ; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds 
 from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star. 
 
Jane's Pictures. 265 
 
 The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar 
 winter sky : a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, 
 close serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, 
 rose, in the foreground, a head a colossal head, inclined towards 
 the iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under 
 the forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features 
 a sable veil ; a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye 
 hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of 
 despair, alone were visible. Above the temples, amidst wreathed 
 turban folds of black drapery, vague in its character and consis- 
 tency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with 
 sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was ' The 
 likeness of a Kingly Crown ; ' what it diademed was ' the shape 
 which shape had none.' " 
 
 Chapters books, I daresay have been written to dis- 
 cuss and define the nature^of imagination ; but the main 
 and central application of the term is that which rests 
 upon the idea of eyesight. Imagination is the soul's 
 eye. In its highest power, however, it is creative in a 
 sense in which the bodily eye, except for diseased 
 persons or fantastic philosophers, never is. The vision 
 of the external world rolls into the bodily eye, un- 
 bidden ; not at all created, and very slightly modified, 
 by the eye that sees ; but the imagination, working, 
 indeed, with materials furnished in their originals by 
 perception, bodies out visions which have no counter- 
 part in the external world. These are produced by the 
 poet and the artist, and demand a higher form of 
 mental operation than any that is engaged in by the man 
 of science. The imaginative power displayed in in vent- 
 ing and describing Jane's pictures gives Charlotte Bronte 
 a better title to the name of poet than anything in her 
 verses. The passage seems to me to transcend anything 
 
266 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 that has been done, either in verse or prose, by George 
 Eliot. Only Mrs. Browning, among Englishwomen of 
 literary genius, has surpassed these word-paintings. 
 
 Perhaps still finer illustration of the power in 
 question than is afforded by the three pictures which 
 Jane Eyre placed before Kochester, may be found in 
 some passages occurring in Shirley. They are brief, 
 and admit of being easily separated from the context. 
 It will be unnecessary to quote more than two. 
 The first appears in a conversation between Shirley 
 Keeldar, the heroine of the novel, and her friend 
 Caroline Heist one, on the subject of a voyage which 
 they propose taking to the Arctic regions. 
 
 "I suppose you expect to see mermaids, Shirley?" "One of 
 them at any rate. I do not bargain for less ; and she is to appear 
 in some such fashion as this. I am to be walking by myself on 
 deck, rather late of an August evening, watching and being 
 watched by a full harvest-moon ; something is to rise white on the 
 surface of the sea, over which that moon mounts silent, and hangs 
 glorious. The object glitters and sinks. It rises again. I think I 
 hear it cry with an articulate voice : I call you up from the cabin : 
 I show you an image, fair as alabaster, emerging from the dim 
 wave. We both see the long hair, the lifted and foam-white arm, 
 the oval mirror brilliant as a star. It glides nearer ; a human face 
 is plainly visible; a face in the style of yours, whose straight, 
 pure (excuse the word, it is appropriate) whose straight, pure 
 lineaments paleness does not disfigure. It looks at us, but not 
 with your eyes. I see a preternatural lure in its wily glance : it 
 beckons. Were we men we should spring at the sign, the cold 
 billow would be dared for the sake of the colder enchantress 
 being women, we stand safe, though not dreadless. She compre- 
 hends our unmoved gaze ; she feels herself powerless ; anger 
 crosses her front; she cannot charm, but she will appal us; she 
 rises high, and glides all revealed, on the dark wave-ridge. 
 Temptress-terror ! monstrous likeness of ourselves ! Are you not 
 glad, Caroline, when at last, and with a wild shriek, she]]dives ? " 
 
Charlotte Bronte's Imagination. 267 
 
 The other passage is suggested by the contraband 
 reading of the schoolboy, Martin Yorke, who likes 
 better to con fairy tales when the lingering light of 
 sunset blends with the first beams of the moon, than 
 to explore the mysteries of Latin grammar. The few 
 lines descriptive of the vision of the fairy queen are 
 unimportant, but we may as well take them for what 
 Charlotte Bronte doubtless intended them to be, a 
 kind of introduction to the more original bit of 
 imaginative work that succeeds. 
 
 He reads : he is led into a solitary mountain region ; all round 
 him is rude and desolate, shapeless, and almost colourless. He 
 hears bells tinkle on the wind ; forth-riding from the formless 
 forms of the mist, dawns on him the brightest vision a green- 
 robed lady, on a snow-white palfrey ; he sees her dress, her gems> 
 and her steed ; she arrests him with some mysterious question ; he 
 is spell-bound, and must follow her into Fairyland. 
 
 A second legend bears him to the sea-shore ; there tumbles in a 
 strong tide, boiling at the base of dizzy cliffs ; it rains and blows. 
 A reef of rocks, black and rough, stretches far into the sea; all 
 along, and among, and above these crags, dash and flash, sweep 
 and leap, swells, wreaths, drifts of snowy spray. Some lone 
 wanderer is out on these rocks, treading, with cautious step, the 
 wet, wild sea-weed; glancing down into hollows where the brine 
 lies fathom-deep and emerald-clear, and seeing there wilder, and 
 stranger, and huger vegetation than is found on land, with treasure 
 of shells some green, some purple, some pearly clustered in the 
 curls of the snaky plants. He hears a cry. Looking up, and 
 forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the reef, a tall, pale thing 
 shaped like man, but made of spray transparent, tremulous, 
 awful : it stands not alone ; they are all human figures that wanton 
 in the rocks a crowd of foam-women a band of white, evanes- 
 cent Nereides. 
 
 That Mermaid is, so far as I know, an entirely 
 original conception. Despite the presence of the 
 mirror, she is not in the least like the lady of 
 
268 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 marine tradition who combs her locks with a golden 
 comb, as Heine makes his witch of the Loreley do ; 
 nor has she any resemblance to the Sirens of the old 
 Sicilian shore. She is born of the imagination 
 of Charlotte Bronte, and is invested with a new 
 and strange mystery as a temptress of women ; not 
 impassioned, but wily and cold, incarnating the 
 treachery, and the wild gleaming perilous beauty, 
 and the cruel power, of the Northern sea. How 
 finely in keeping is it that such a creature should 
 appear when the pale moon is rising into the steely 
 sky, and the cold glitter of its beam lends a more 
 witching whiteness to arm and bosom as she "glares 
 appalling from the ridge of the wave! " 
 
 The description, in the second passage, of the 
 broken sea on a craggy shore beneath high cliffs, 
 with interposed hollows, rock-protected, where the 
 salt water lies in crystalline clearness, shows how 
 carefully Charlotte Bronte had noted the scenery of 
 the English seashore on her visits to Scarborough 
 and Filey ; but in the personification of the filmy 
 foam-wreaths, wavering in the wind, as evanescent 
 Nereides, there is a far more subtle and plastic 
 power than that of mere observation, a power essen- 
 tially identical with that of the poet and the creative 
 artist. And while the imagination, in its plastic, 
 form-giving energy, calls into visible shape the Mer- 
 maid or the Nereid, the imagination, in its reveal- 
 ing, penetrating, and sympathetic energy, enables us 
 to realise how, in a distant age, the legend of the 
 
Rochester. 269 
 
 Mermaid or the Nereid arose. Charlotte Bronte, 
 with her quick eye and kindling sympathy, as she 
 looked at the wind-shaken foam beneath Yorkshire 
 cliffs, felt as the early Greek felt when he first saw, 
 in the wavering spray of the .ZEgean, the white 
 draperies of the daughters of Nereus. Thus treated, 
 old legends are never dead ; the fossil tradition is 
 re-inspired with life, and we know how our remote 
 ancestors first learned to believe in it. And now let 
 us return to Edward Fairfax Rochester. 
 
 He was, we found, an imperfect character, his im- 
 perfection including a vulgar callousness of feeling 
 and a disregard of truth. The author, however, is 
 careful to inform us that his imperfection was not 
 without excuse. He had suffered wrong. His elder 
 brother had prejudiced his father against him. His 
 father, anxious that he should be rich , had co-operated 
 with his brother in placing him in " what he con- 
 sidered a painful position, for the sake of making 
 his fortune." The nature of the injury is not, at 
 this stage, disclosed ; but " his spirit could not 
 brook what he had to suffer." His misfortune had 
 caused him to lead " an unsettled kind of life," and 
 since the death of his brother, when he became 
 master of Thornfield, he had hardly stayed at the 
 place for a fortnight together. In his wanderings 
 he had acquired the habit of brooding on his sorrows, 
 and his conversation with Jane was strongly tinged 
 with egotism. " ' Criticise me,' he said to her once ; 
 * does my forehead not please you ? ' He lifted up the 
 
270 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his 
 brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual 
 organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign 
 of benevolence should have risen. ' Now, ma'am, am 
 I a fool ? ' ' Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, 
 think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are 
 a philanthropist?' ' No, he is not a "general philan- 
 thropist." He does not like children or old women ; 
 but "I bear," he says, "a conscience," and "I once 
 had a kind of rude tenderness of heart." 
 
 This looks much like the kind of man who, by the 
 lords of creation, wherever they do congregate in 
 college hall, or club dining-room is unanimously 
 voted a bore and prig. There is a fine stagy sad- 
 ness about him, and he looks not ill. " He rose from 
 his chair, and stood, leaning his arm on the marble 
 mantelpiece. In that attitude his shape was seen 
 plainly, as well as his face ; his unusual breadth of chest 
 disproportionate almost to his length of limb. I am 
 sure most people would have thought him an ugly man ; 
 yet there was so much unconscious pride in his port, 
 so much ease in his demeanour, such a look of com- 
 plete indifference to his own external appearance, so 
 haughty a reliance on the power of other qualities, 
 intrinsic or adventitious, to atone for the lack of mere 
 personal attractiveness, that, in looking at him, one 
 inevitably shared the indifference, and, even in a 
 blind, imperfect sense, put faith in the confidence." 
 
 If men would call this a strutting coxcomb, there 
 are few women who would not be touched by his 
 
Rochester Describes Himself. 271 
 
 melancholy charm. The reader has probably been 
 already reminded of the Byronic hero the Giaour, 
 the Corsair, the Childe, Lara, Manfred who awoke 
 such a furore of sympathetic admiration two or three 
 generations back. Byron, at bottom one of the 
 shrewdest men of the world, appreciated the theatri- 
 cality of his own stock character, and laughed ironi- 
 cally when a young American hero-worshipper, 
 Coolidge by name, betrayed symptoms of disappoint- 
 ment at not finding his lordship attired in wolfskin 
 breeches and answering in fierce monosyllables, on the 
 model of his typical hero. When Moore, however, 
 sketched the character in its generic traits, Byron did 
 not half like his friend's wit. 
 
 The sallow, sublime, kind of Werter-faced man, 
 With moustachios that gave, what we read of so oft, 
 The dear Corsair-expression, half-savage, half soft. 
 
 Rochester, proceeding with his autobiographical 
 confidences to Jane, informs her that he is not a 
 villain, but " a trite, common-place sinner, hackneyed 
 in all the poor, petty dissipations with which the rich 
 and worthless try to put on life." He detects in her, 
 he says, a capacity of listening to him, not with male- 
 volent scorn, but with "innate sympathy," and he 
 opens his heart to her in return. " ' You would say, 
 I should have been superior to circumstances ; so I 
 should ; but you see I was not. When fate wronged 
 me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool. I turned 
 desperate ; then I degenerated. . . . Dread 
 remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre. 
 Remorse is the poison of life.' ' She suggests that 
 
272 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 repentance is its cure ; but he will not listen to so 
 commonplace a prescription. He has one of his own. 
 A notion, he says, has flitted across his brain. "'I 
 believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation : 
 it was very genial, very soothing I know that. Here 
 it comes again. It is no devil, I assure you ; or, if it 
 be, it has put on the robes of an angel of light. I 
 think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks 
 entrance to my heart.' ' Jane warns him that it may 
 be an angel of darkness, but he refuses to believe her. 
 " ' Not at all, ' he exclaims ; ' it bears the most 
 gracious message in the world : for the rest, you are 
 not my conscience-keeper, so don't make yourself un- 
 easy. Here, come in, bonny wanderer ! ' He said this 
 as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his 
 own; then, folding his arms, which he had half 
 extended, on his chest, he seemed to enclose in their 
 embrace the invisible being. ' Now,' he continued, 
 again addressing me, ' I have received the pilgrim a 
 disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has 
 done me good : my heart was a sort of charnel ; it will 
 now be a shrine.' " 
 
 The whisper of hope and healing from heaven, or 
 the muttered temptation from hell for it is not on 
 the surface discernible which of these it may be 
 which [Rochester expected to turn his heart from a 
 charnel into a shrine, was, in more prosaic language, 
 the suggestion that he should marry Jane. What 
 stands in the way he will not tell her ; but readers 
 doubtless suspect that it is something connected with 
 
The Mystery. 273 
 
 Grace Poole. A succession of incidents, devised and 
 described with an ingenuity, a felicity, an intensity, 
 unsurpassed in the whole range of fictitious literature, 
 perplexes us with a sense of the mystery. One night 
 Jane, startled from sleep, hears close to her room door 
 the laugh which had surprised her in the corridor, 
 finds presently that the curtains and bed-clothes of 
 Kochester's bed had been set on fire, and barely 
 succeeds in extinguishing the flames and saving his 
 life. He refers her to Grace Poole as the source of 
 the mischief. On another nighfc the silence is rent by 
 a terrific shriek ; a visitor sleeping on the same story 
 with Grace Poole has been murderously attacked ; and 
 Jane holds the basin while Rochester sponges away 
 the blood and restores the rescued victim to conscious- 
 ness. This operation is performed in a room into 
 which another room opens, and from this inner room 
 Jane hears " a snarling, snatching sound, almost like 
 a dog quarrelling." It need scarcely be said that she 
 was perplexed. " What crime," she speculated, "was 
 this, that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, 
 and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the 
 owner ? What mystery that broke out, now in fire 
 and now in blood, at the deadest hour of night? 
 What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary 
 woman's face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a 
 mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of 
 prey?" Once more this time, also, in the dead of 
 night Jane Eyre was awakened by the presence of 
 the mystery. In the description of what followed, 
 
 18 
 
274 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 taken in connection with the subsequent explanation 
 of it, Charlotte Bronte has succeeded in creating the 
 emotion of terror as effectually as Edgar Poe ever did 
 in those weird and awful tales in which he concen- 
 trated the whole force of his genius upon the produc- 
 tion of that particular emotion. Jane details the 
 circumstances to Rochester, most imaginatively lead- 
 ing up to the climax of horror by an account of the 
 troubled dreams which had been previously vexing 
 her sleep. I include in my quotation the closing 
 sentences of this " preface." 
 
 " I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road ; I was 
 sure it was you ; and you were departing for many years, and for 
 a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic, perilous 
 haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top ; the stones 
 rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, 
 the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me ; 
 at last I gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white 
 track, lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong, I could 
 not stand. I sat down on the narrow ledge ; I hushed the scared 
 infant in my lap ; you turned an angle of the road ; I bent forward 
 to take a last look ; the wall crumbled ; I was shaken ; the child 
 rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke." 
 
 " Now, Jane, that is all." " All the preface, sir ; the tale is yet 
 to come. On waking, a gleam dazzled my eyes ; I thought oh, 
 it is daylight ! But I was mistaken ; it was only candle-light ; 
 Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a light on the 
 dressing-table, and the door of the closet, where, before going to 
 bed, I had hung my wedding dress and veil, stood open ; I heard a 
 rustling there. I asked, ' Sophie, what are you doing ? ' No one 
 answered ; but a form emerged from the closet ; it took the light, 
 held it aloft, and surveyed the garments pendent from the port- 
 manteau.* ' Sophie ! Sophie ! ' I again cried, and still it was silent. 
 I had risen up in bed, I bent forwards : first, surprise, then 
 
 * I quote from the illustrated edition of 1875. It is not easy to 
 see how garments could be pendent from a portmanteau. 
 
The Mystery. 275 
 
 bewilderment, came over me, and then my blood crept cold 
 through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie, it was 
 not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax ; it was not no, I was sure of 
 it, and am still it was not even that strange woman, Grace 
 Poole." "It must have been one of them," interrupted my 
 master. " No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The 
 shape standing before me had never crossed nay eyes within the 
 precincts of Thornfield Hall before ; the height, the contour, were 
 new to me." "Describe it, Jane." "It seemed, sir, a woman, 
 tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her 
 back. I know not what dress she had on : it was white and 
 straight ; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell." 
 " Did you see her face ? " " Not at first. But presently she took 
 my veil from its place ; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then 
 she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror. At that 
 moment I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite 
 distinctly in the dark oblong glass." _ " And how were they ? " 
 " Fearful and ghastly to me oh, sir, I never saw a face like it. 
 It was a discoloured face it was a savage face. I wish I could 
 forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of 
 the lineaments." " Ghosts are usually pale, Jane." " This, sir, 
 was purple ; the lips were swelled and dark ; the brow furrowed ; 
 the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes ! Shall 
 I tell you of what it reminded me ? " " You may." " Of the foul 
 German spectre the Vampire." "Ah! What did it do?" 
 " Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, 
 and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them." " After- 
 wards ? " "It drew aside the window- curtain and looked out ; 
 perhaps it saw dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it 
 retreated to the door. Just at my bedside the figure stopped ; the 
 fiery eye glared upon me she thrust up her candle close to my 
 face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid 
 visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness : for the second 
 time in my life only the second time I became insensible from 
 terror." 
 
 The peculiar and penetrating horror of this appa- 
 rition is derived from the subsequent discovery that it 
 was no ghost that appeared to Jane, but a fierce 
 and dangerous maniac. The spectral woman was, of 
 
 182 
 
276 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 course, Eochester's wife, and he led Jane to the altar 
 without correcting his early statement to her that he 
 was a bachelor. He had been married to his maniac 
 wife when he was very young, through the influence 
 of a mercenary father and a heartless brother. How 
 far was he justifiable in attempting to marry again 
 while she was alive ? In order to do Charlotte Bronte 
 justice, and to obviate all doubt that we have the 
 character of Rochester fully and favourably presented 
 to us, we shall take his plea from his own lips, as he 
 stated it to Jane one lovely morning in the garden, 
 when the air was fragrant with sweet-brier, and 
 bright with apple-blossom. 
 
 " Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew while all 
 the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds 
 fetch their young ones' breakfast out of the cornfield, and the early 
 bees do their first spell of work I'll put a case to you, which you 
 must endeavour to suppose your own ; but first, look at me, and 
 tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err in detaining 
 you, or that you err in staying." "No, sir; I am content." 
 " Well, then, Jane, call to your aid your fancy; suppose you were 
 no longer a girl, well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy, 
 indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote 
 foreign land ; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no 
 matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose con- 
 sequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. 
 Mind, I don't say a crime ; I am not speaking of shedding of blood 
 or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrators amen- 
 able to the law : my word is error. The results of what you have 
 done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take 
 measures to obtain relief ; unusual measures, but neither unlawful 
 nor culpable. Still you are miserable ; for hope has quitted you 
 on the very confines of life ; your sun at noon darkens in an 
 eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. 
 Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your 
 memory; you wander here and there, seeking rest in exilej: 
 
Rochester's Plea. 277 
 
 happiness in pleasure I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure such 
 as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul- 
 withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment ; 
 you make a new acquaintance how or where no matter ; you find 
 in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you 
 have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered ; and 
 they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such 
 society revives, regenerates ; you feel better days come back 
 higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your 
 life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more 
 worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified 
 in overleaping an obstacle of custom a mere conventional im- 
 pediment, which neither your conscience sanctifies, nor your 
 judgment approves?" 
 
 He paused for an answer, and what was I to say ? Oh, for some 
 good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response ! Vain 
 aspiration ! The west wind whispered in the ivy round me ; but 
 no gentle Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech ; the 
 birds sang in the tree-tops, but their song, however sweet, was 
 inarticulate. Again Mr. Eochester propounded his query, " Is the 
 wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man 
 justified in daring the world's opinion, in order to attach to him 
 for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his 
 own peace of mind and regeneration of life ? " " Sir," I answered, 
 " a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation should never 
 depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die ; philosophers 
 falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness. If any one you 
 know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals 
 for strength to amend, and solace to heal." "But the instrument 
 the instrument ! God, who does the work, ordains the instru- 
 ment. I have myself I tell it you without parable been 
 worldly, dissipated, restless man ; and I believe I have found the 
 
 instrument for my cure in ." He paused; the birds went on 
 
 carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. 
 
 Shall we pronounce Rochester a true hero, or a 
 theatrical scamp, or something between the two? 
 The question is too important to be answered in the 
 fag end of a chapter. 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 GHAELOTTE BRONTE'S DEFENCE OF JANE EYRE 
 ROCHESTER AN EGOIST THE PRECISE 
 CHARGES AGAINST JANE EYRE- JANE'S DIS- 
 APPOINTMENTROCHESTER'S LAST WORD- 
 JANE IN EXTREMIS- OUR VERDICT ON THE 
 AUTHOR. 
 
 force of Rochester's plea for himself might be 
 JL enhanced if we in imagination accompanied 
 him and Jane, and the clergyman and clerk, and Mr. 
 Mason, who interrupted the marriage ceremony, from 
 the altar to the room in which his maniac wife was 
 confined. But this is happily not necessary. Ro- 
 chester had been grievously sinned against cajoled in 
 his youth into marriage with one of " a mad family, 
 idiots and maniacs through three generations ; " his 
 wife was a drunkard, and worse, before she became a 
 raging lunatic, and nothing could be more hideously 
 infra-human than her final state. He "meant," there- 
 fore, to use his own words, " to be a bigamist," and he 
 " entrapped," or did his best to entrap, " into a feigned 
 union," a girl of eighteen, whose residence under his 
 roof, in capacity of governess, gave him his oppor- 
 tunity. Voila, the plain facts. 
 
Charlotte Bronte's Self -Defence. 279 
 
 Rochester's plea was not universally sustained by 
 the readers of Jane Eyre. To the second edition of 
 the book Charlotte Bronte affixed a preface, in which 
 she took to task " the timorous or carping few " who 
 pronounced its tendency questionable, its morality 
 doubtful. Her unfavourable critics are therein de- 
 scribed as persons " in whose eyes whatever is un- 
 usual is wrong ; whose ears detect in each protest 
 against bigotry that parent of crime an insult to 
 piety, that regent of God on earth." Bather hard 
 measure to deal out to the unfavourable critics, one 
 must admit. She suggests to them " certain obvious 
 distinctions," reminds them of "certain simple truths." 
 We are bound to bestow upon these our best atten- 
 tion. The following is her statement of them : 
 " Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness 
 is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail 
 the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the 
 Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the crown 
 of thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically 
 opposed : they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. 
 Men too often confound them : they should not be 
 confounded ; appearance should not be mistaken for 
 truth ; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to 
 elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for 
 the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is I 
 repeat it a difference ; and it is a good, and not a bad 
 action, to mark broadly and clearly the line of separa- 
 tion between them. The world may not like to see 
 these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to 
 
280 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 blend them; finding it convenient to make external 
 show pass for sterling worth to let white-washed 
 walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who 
 dares to scrutinise and expose to rase the gilding, 
 and show hase metal under it to penetrate the 
 sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics ; but hate as it 
 will, it is indebted to him. Ahab did not like Micaiah, 
 because he never prophesied good concerning him, but 
 evil; probably he liked the sycophant son of Chena- 
 anah better ; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody 
 death, had he but stopped his ears to flattery, and 
 opened them to faithful counsel." 
 
 These diamond-pointed sentences afford the most 
 humorously-beautiful illustration known to me in 
 literature of that style of argument which is un- 
 gallantly, and perhaps unjustly, called lady's logic. 
 With charming coolness with winning and child- 
 like naivete Charlotte Bronte begs the whole 
 question, and assumes what she is bound to prove. 
 No sane man, from Nova Zembla to Cape Comorin, 
 from Pekin to Birmingham, could confound the things 
 she distinguishes, or dispute the truths she enunciates. 
 But when all these generalities have been admitted and 
 put aside, the question remains, whether Rochester is 
 a legitimate hero, and whether the ethical foundations 
 of the novel are sound. The preliminary flourish of 
 the advocate is extremely fine but she commits the 
 slight mistake of not following it up by any argu- 
 ment whatever of not once referring to the facts in 
 evidence. We must repair her omission, remarking 
 
Eochester an Egoist. 281 
 
 that the advocate must be held to plead not only her 
 hero's cause, but her own. She unquestionably be- 
 speaks the admiration of the reader for Rochester. 
 This is on the face of the , novel. He is made 
 attractive. Courage, firmness, manliness, ardour, 
 talent, soldierly frankness, are his characteristics, 
 and he rides his black horse Mesrour like a prince. 
 
 Looking searchingly then into Rochester's plea, 
 what better, let us ask, is he at bottom than an 
 egoist ? In his selfishness he does not scruple to lie. 
 He has not resolutely adjusted himself to the melan- 
 choly circumstances which have darkened his life, but 
 has drawn a veil over them ; and he attempts, though 
 it be by criminal means, to evade the misfortune under 
 which he has fallen. His own word " entrap " applies 
 strictly to his conduct in relation to Jane, for if he 
 intended to make of her a friend and nominal wife, he 
 ought to have let her know precisely how matters 
 stood, and to have obtained her consent or refusal. 
 But the darkest symptom in Rochester's case is one 
 which Charlotte Bronte must, I fear, be held not only 
 to condone, but to enter in mitigation of his offence. I 
 allude to his suggestion as to the religious elevation of 
 his motives in deceiving Jane. What he says about 
 receiving a heavenly visitant into his breast when the 
 idea occurs to him of marrying the governess, about 
 knowing that his *' Maker sanctions " what he does, 
 and so forth, is cant. A ruggedly honest man, a 
 healthily strong man, though he might be passion- 
 driven into crime, would not fall into sickly self- 
 
282 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 deception like this. The personage who, with a wife 
 in the garret, snivels about little Jane being the instru- 
 ment ordained by Providence to work out his reforma- 
 tion, must have a vein of rather malignant humbug in 
 him. Heep's parade of his 'umbleness, Pecksniffs 
 advertisement of his generosity, are superficial weak- 
 nesses compared with the rooted falseness of cant like 
 this. I should not call Kochester a scoundrel or a 
 worthless fellow, but he falls below the lowest 
 standard of a heroic character. Yet he is the hero 
 of this book; and so attractive is he made so 
 effectually are his bad elements masked in his 
 fascinating qualities that, of the tens of thousands 
 of girls who have hung enraptured over the pages of 
 Jane Eyre, I should doubt whether one of a thousand 
 has not fallen in love with Rochester. Thackeray 
 took it for many years as his mission to castigate 
 those writers of fiction who arrayed vice in the 
 attractiveness pertaining legitimately to virtue. The 
 representative of such writers he found in the author 
 of Pelham and Ernest Maltravers, and no one, I think, 
 has ventured to maintain that his censure was wholly 
 unjust or uncalled for ; but the subtly seductive and 
 cunningly masked badness of Rochester is fitted to 
 exert a far deadlier influence than that of the gorgeous 
 voluptuaries whom one smiles at in those romances 
 that carried the name of Bulwer over the world. 
 
 Let it not, however, be supposed that I charge 
 Charlotte Bronte with what Scotch lawyers would 
 call homologating Eochester. She does not take him 
 
The Charges against Jane Eyre Defined. 283 
 
 over as all right, and cover him with the mantle of 
 her approval. We cannot make her answerable for 
 more than Jane's estimate of Rochester for the 
 treatment which, first and last, he obtains at Jane's 
 hands ; but she is assuredly answerable for this. 
 Jane, it is true, does not take Rochester at his own 
 valuation. She starts back so soon as she knows 
 what he has prepared for her ; declines to exculpate 
 him; promptly leaves his house. Her previous con- 
 duct had not been faultless, but neither had it been 
 gravely censurable. She had not been duly respect- 
 ful to herself, duly sensible of her dignity as a 
 teacher, of her rights as a woman and a lady ; but 
 she was very young, and she came from Lowood 
 school, where she had been accustomed to answer 
 "Yes, sir," " No, sir," to the portentous Mr. Brockle- 
 hurst. It was a more serious offence to the right 
 instincts of a woman, that she should listen to 
 Rochester's unedifying account of his Parisian ex- 
 periences. No man perfectly entitled to the name 
 of gentleman would have stained the imagination of 
 a girl in that way ; no woman entitled to the name 
 of lady would have permitted her imagination to be 
 so stained. Charlotte Bronte had no such sense of 
 delicacy, in man or woman, as was possessed by Miss 
 Austen, greatly more original and potent as I hold 
 her genius to have, on the whole, been than that of 
 her matronly and sweet-minded predecessor. But 
 Jane stops short of actual degradation. When the 
 catastrophe comes, she is true to herself, and in her 
 
284 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 inflexible resistance to Bochester we see how, under 
 like circumstances, Charlotte, the intrepid little York- 
 shire-woman, would have acted. Jane had loved 
 Bochester with all the energy of her keen brain and 
 virgin heart. He had seemed to be lifting her into 
 exquisite bliss. The extent of her distress when the 
 shock arrived we are enabled to realise when we 
 accompany her into her room after the clergyman 
 and the lawyer have left Thornneld Hall. She bolts 
 her door, takes off her marriage dress, and, in the 
 consciousness that the place she had been about to 
 occupy is already occupied by a hideous maniac, 
 begins to think. The passage in which her reflec- 
 tions and feelings are expressed is another of those 
 that mark Charlotte Bronte as a poet and great 
 literary artist. Its imagery in particular its brief, 
 superb contrast of wintry grief with summer glad- 
 ness is unsurpassable. 
 
 Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman almost 
 a bride was a cold, solitary girl again : her life was pale ; her 
 prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at Mid- 
 summer ; a white December storm had whirled over June ; * ice 
 glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses ; on hay- 
 field and cornfield lay a frozen shroud; lanes which last night 
 blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow ; 
 and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant 
 as groves between the tropics, now spread waste, wild, and white 
 as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead, 
 struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the 
 first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, 
 yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid 
 
 * " Seek roses in December, ice in June." Byron. 
 
Jane's Disappointment. 285 
 
 corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love ; that feeling 
 which was my master's which he had created ; it shivered in my 
 heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle ; sickness and anguish 
 had seized it ; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms it could not 
 derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to 
 him, for faith was blighted confidence destroyed ! Mr. Rochester 
 was not to me what he had been ; for he was not what I had 
 thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him ; I would not say 
 he had betrayed me ; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone 
 from his idea ; and from his presence I must go ; that I perceived 
 well. When ? how ? whither ? I could not yet discern ; but he 
 himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real 
 affection, it seemed, he could not have for me ; it had been only 
 fitful passion : that was baulked ; he would want me no more. I 
 should fear even to cross his path now : my view must be hateful 
 to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes ! How weak my 
 conduct ! 
 
 My eyes were covered and closed ; eddying darkness seemed to 
 swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a 
 flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have 
 laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river ; I heard a flood 
 loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come ; to rise I 
 had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint; longing to be 
 dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me a remem- 
 brance of God ; it begot an unuttered prayer. These words went 
 wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that 
 should be whispered ; but no energy was found to express them : 
 " Be not far from me, for trouble is near ; there is none to help." 
 
 It was near ; and as I had lifted no petition to heaven to avert it 
 as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor 
 moved my lips it came : in full, heavy swing the torrent poured 
 over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, 
 my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty 
 above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be 
 described; in truth, "the waters came into my soul, I sank in 
 deep mire ; I felt no standing, I came into deep waters ; the floods 
 overflowed me." 
 
 It was now that the fiercest trial of her virtue 
 began. While she shook like a reed under the stress 
 
286 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 of her anguish, she found herself again in the 
 presence of Kochester. He was contrite ; he spoke 
 in the tone of one who was broken-hearted. " Jane, 
 I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who 
 had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a 
 daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, 
 and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered 
 it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody 
 blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever 
 forgive me?" She forgave him; but repelled him 
 decisively when he attempted to caress her, remind- 
 ing him that he had a wife, and stating her deter- 
 mination to leave him. Thereupon he entered more 
 explicitly than he had ever done before on an explana- 
 tion of his circumstances, insisting that, whatever 
 might be his position in the eye of human law, he 
 was, in the sight of God, divorced from his wedded 
 wife. It was not only that he had been grossly 
 deceived before the marriage, or that she had been 
 intolerable afterwards ; she had, he said, conducted 
 herself so as to entitle him to a legal divorce ; but 
 "the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad 
 her excesses had prematurely developed the germs 
 of insanity." Legal proceedings, therefore, could not 
 be resorted to. 
 
 Whether Rochester was right or wrong in thus 
 defining his position before the law may be open to 
 question. The prevailing impression, at the time when 
 Jane Eyre was written, undoubtedly concurred with 
 the view he takes of his case ; but, since then, events 
 
Rochester's Last Word. 287 
 
 have taken place which suggest a doubt whether he 
 might not have obtained legal relief. A poor man, it 
 is too true, who was forced to maintain a lunatic wife 
 in an asylum, and who applied for a divorce on account 
 of her unfaithfulness before madness had ensued, was 
 driven, almost with hootings, from the judgment-seat ; 
 but when a rich man, a man of title, applied for a 
 divorce on exactly the same grounds, he found English 
 law not inexorable to a petition that aristocratic blood 
 might be warded from taint. Eochester was a rich 
 man and of an old family, and he might possibly have 
 found the aristocratic luxury called justice not so 
 unobtainable as he thought. All this, however, was 
 unknown to Charlotte Bronte when she published 
 Jane Eyre. She had a right to represent her hero as 
 barred from proceedings against his wife. 
 
 Eochester next describes to Jane how the misery of 
 his indissoluble connection drove him almost to suicide. 
 Then a new hope awoke within him. " That woman," 
 whispered the new hope, "who has so abused your 
 long-suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your 
 honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife nor 
 are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her 
 condition demands, and you have done all that God and 
 humanity require of you." He was then in the West 
 Indies. Animated with his new purpose, he sailed for 
 Europe, immured his wife in Thornfield Hall under 
 the charge of Grace Poole, set out for the Continent, 
 and " pursued wanderings as wild as those of the 
 March-spirit." What he sought for was a woman to 
 
288 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 whom he could tell all, who might take his own view 
 of his position, " understand " him and " accept " him. 
 He found that his ideal woman could not be dis- 
 covered. He had recourse to unideal women much 
 the reverse of ideal. They did not answer. Return- 
 ing to his native country " in a harsh, bitter frame of 
 mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life," he 
 met little Jane on the frost-bound highway. " When 
 once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new 
 a Iresh sap and sense stole into my frame." He 
 dwells with glowing tenderness upon the incidents of 
 their life in Thornfield Hall, and brings his whole tale 
 to a climax of entreaty. " Jane, you understand what 
 I want of you? Just this promise ' I will be yours, 
 Mr. Rochester.' " She had now heard not only his 
 plea, but his proposed application of its ethical princi- 
 ples to the circumstances of his position : her reply 
 was brief, clear, and right. " Mr. Rochester, I will 
 no t be yours." 
 
 " Jane," recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me 
 down with grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror 
 for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising " Jane, do you 
 mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another ? " "I 
 do." "And now?" softly kissing my forehead and cheek. "I 
 (j o " extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely. 
 " Oh, Jane, this is bitter ! This this is wicked. It would not be 
 wicked to love me." " It would to obey you." A wild look 
 raised his brow crossed his features : he rose ; but he forebore yet. 
 I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I shook, I 
 feared but I resolved. " One instant, Jane. Give one glance to 
 my horrible life. When you are gone ah 1 happiness will be torn 
 away with you. Wha\i, then, is left ? For a wife I have but the 
 maniac upstairs : as well might you refer me to some corpse in 
 
Jane in Extremis. 289 
 
 yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane ? Where turn for a 
 companion, and for some hope ? " " Do as I do : trust in God and 
 yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there." ." Then 
 you will not yield?" "No." "Then you condemn me to live 
 wretched, and to die accursed?" His voice rose. "I advise you 
 to live sinless ; and I wish you to die tranquil." " Then you snatch 
 love and innocence from me ? You fling me back on lust for a 
 passion vice for an occupation?" "Mr. Eochester, I no more 
 assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born 
 to strive and endure you as well as I : do so. You will forget me 
 before I forget you." "You make me a liar by such language: 
 you sully my honour. I declared I could not change : you tell me 
 to my face I shall change soon. And what a distortion in your 
 judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your 
 conduct ! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to 
 transgress a mere human law no man being injured by the 
 breach ? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom 
 you need fear to offend by living with me." This was true; and 
 while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors 
 against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They 
 spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, 
 comply ! " it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger- 
 look at his state when left alone ; remember his headlong nature ; 
 consider the recklessness following on despair soothe him ; save 
 him ; love him ; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in 
 the world cares for you ? or who will be injured by what you 
 do?" 
 
 Still, indomitable was the reply " I care for myself. The more 
 solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more 
 I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned 
 by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was 
 sane and not mad as I am now. Laws and principles are not for 
 the times when there is no temptation : they are for such moments 
 as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ; 
 stringent are they ; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual 
 convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? 
 They have a worth so I have always believed ; and if I cannot 
 believe it now, it is because I am insane quite insane : with my 
 veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count 
 its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all 
 I have at this hour to stand by : there I plant my foot." 
 
 19 
 
290 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 So she conquered. Simple, sound the very founda- 
 tions of human society the adamant on which the 
 pillars of the household and of the State alike rest 
 are these principles of morality : and they did not fail 
 her. Rochester was an egoist, but one of a high 
 order : we should utterly misconceive his character, as 
 imagined by Charlotte Bronte, if we thought him 
 capable, even though he might threaten it, of resort- 
 ing to violence. He was vanquished, and sank into 
 silence. Jane left Thornfield, and did not again look 
 into the face of Eochester till she could respond 
 honourably to his love. The worst charge, therefore, 
 which we can bring against Charlotte Bronte in rela- 
 tion to this novel is that she casts too great a charm 
 over Rochester, not that she does not discern him to 
 be blameworthy. The length to which he protracted 
 his persecution of Jane was, next to his hypocrisy, 
 the worst thing in his conduct. No man could have 
 a right to bait and badger a woman like that ; and if 
 Jane had been a little more strong and a little more 
 proud, she would never have favoured him with 
 another look of her face. Am I right here, ladies ? 
 
CHAPTEK XI. 
 
 WOMEN'S EIGHTS THE ETHICS OF ABNEGATION 
 MB MEBEDITH ON EGOISM THACKERAY'S 
 MORAL ANALYSIS JANE LEAVES THORN- 
 FIELD-THE REST OF THE BOOK. 
 
 IT is worth while, in these days of vociferous debate 
 concerning the place of women in the social 
 system, when perfect equality between men and 
 women is indignantly claimed as a right, or asserted 
 as a fact, by a thousand voices, to take note of Jane 
 Eyre's mode of allusion to Kochester's career of dis- 
 sipation during his wife's lunacy. She does not quite 
 approve of his successive liaisons, but her rebuke is 
 the mildest of upbraiding glances. " Jane," he says, 
 pausing in his narrative, " I see by your face you are 
 not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. 
 You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake, 
 don't you?" "I don't like you," she replies, " so 
 well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it 
 not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that 
 way? . . . You talk of it as a mere matter of 
 course." " It was with me," he somewhat jauntily 
 
 192 
 
292 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 answers : " and I did not like it. It was a grovelling 
 fashion of existence ; I should never like to return to 
 it." Jane continues to look grave. She will not 
 sanction his proceedings. But it seems never to have 
 occurred to Charlotte Bronte, as a possible way of 
 viewing the case, that Jane might have said to him, 
 " Now suppose, Mr. Rochester, that I had conducted 
 myself as you have done, and had then bestowed on 
 you so frank a series of confidences as you have 
 bestowed upon me, how would you have taken it? 
 and, in particular, how would you have been affected 
 by the concluding expression of superlative affection 
 for yourself? Would you have accepted this last with 
 gratitude and ecstasy, or repelled it with anger and 
 contempt ? " This is what it must come to if women 
 are to teach men to do justice to women not only by 
 precept but by example. 
 
 Morality is, after all, a commonplace affair, 
 commonplace as the beaten road through the trea- 
 cherous morass. Eight and wrong are seldom diffi- 
 cult to discriminate, though it is not seldom difficult 
 to do the one and refrain from doing the other. As 
 Pope shrewdly suggests, the energy that might con- 
 centrate itself on doing the right is apt to be at- 
 tenuated into ingenuity to devise excuses for doing 
 the wrong. Mr. Carlyle has been vehement beyond 
 tolerance of ears polite in his contempt for the modern 
 notion that duty can arrange a compromise with 
 voluptuous ease. Not moral heroism only; but the 
 honesty, the habit of painful persistent work, the 
 
Mr. Meredith on Egoism. 293 
 
 manly acceptance of loss, of misfortune, of failure, of 
 irremediable wrong, without mutinous infraction of 
 the divine-human laws of society : all these, which 
 are the very stuff of virtue and the soul of nations, 
 would perish if Rochester's practical ethics found 
 universal favour. Abnegation is not easy, but it 
 cannot be dispensed with for all that. Call it, in the 
 dialect of self-sufficient humanism, conscious submis- 
 sion to necessity; call it, in the language of old-world 
 reverence, bowing of the back to the burden provi- 
 dentially laid upon it, the thing, once for all, 
 cannot, unless man degrades into a beast, become 
 obsolete. 
 
 The root of Rochester's moral malady is his egoism, 
 and Charlotte Bronte fails chiefly, not in perceiving 
 the fact of his wrongness, for she does that, but in 
 analysing it. Mr. George Meredith, in his remarkable 
 novel The Egoist, furnishes so masterly an example of 
 the kind of analysis which ought to have been applied 
 to Rochester, that I am glad to be able to refer to it. 
 Sir Willoughby Patterne is a self- worshipper of the 
 most elaborate get-up. He has an income of fifty 
 thousand pounds drawn from land ; his family is old 
 enough to give him a pretence for pride of birth ; he is 
 naturally " anything but obtuse," and has had every 
 advantage of education ; he is handsome in figure, 
 good-looking in face, imposing in manner, and has 
 been nurtured in the idolatry of his mother and aunts. 
 Such a man is the most eligible match in his county. 
 Clara Middleton, an exceedingly beautiful girl, attracts 
 
294 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 his attention, accepts his hand, and fancies herself as 
 happy as all the world believes her to be enviable. He 
 cants to her about ideals, and about ethereal separa- 
 tion from the world. She is, however, affectionate and 
 sincere, and while Sir Willoughby discourses of the 
 felicities that await her and him, it gradually dawns 
 upon her that there is a hollowness at the man's 
 heart ; that he is like a cathedral whose painted 
 windows are lit up, not with God's sunlight from 
 without, but with a strange and sickly light derived 
 from the lamp which perpetually burns in its centre at 
 the shrine of self. In fact, he is an egoist ; and when 
 this word is accidentally uttered by some one in her 
 hearing, she mentally fixes upon it as the title that 
 befits and explains him. In place of the vague warmth 
 of admiration with which she had previously regarded 
 him, there steals over her an absolute horror at the 
 idea of becoming his wife. 
 
 Rochester's egoism is of a different kind from that of 
 Sir Willoughby Patterne. It has less of the element 
 of aristocratic pride, more of the element of passion. 
 Mr. George Meredith's egoist is incapable of loving any 
 one so ardently as Rochester loves Jane. But love that 
 is altogether noble dwells first and supremely on the hap- 
 piness of the loved one ; and it cannot be maintained 
 for a moment that Rochester is primarily swayed by 
 what is due to Jane. Of himself he always talks ; he 
 does not implore permission to make her happy, but 
 beseeches her to confer happiness on him. The test 
 of noble and knightly passion is that it exults in 
 
Thackeray's Moral Analysis. 295 
 
 conferring joy, and that the " chord of self," struck 
 by it, passes in music " out of sight." The egoism 
 of passion, however, is more human and morally 
 hopeful than the egoism of vanity and of worldly 
 pride. 
 
 The man to treat Kochester with unique felicity 
 would have been Thackeray. The performance would 
 have been a faultless masterpiece of moral vivisection. 
 That combination of insight into human nature and 
 experience of human life, with the finest irony, which 
 distinguished the great censor and humorist, is exactly 
 what was required for the problem. Thackeray's irony, 
 never cruel, never Swiftian, yet irresistible in its sharp- 
 ness and fineness, would have played like a tongue of 
 lambent, finely-laughing fire upon Rochester's views of 
 self-reformation, upon his edifying aspirations after 
 goodness, his generous readiness to make Jane's fall 
 the instrument of his spiritual elevation, his self-pity- 
 ing sentimentalism. But while Thackeray would have 
 left us under no mistake as to what he thought of 
 Rochester's heroism, he would probably have repre- 
 sented Jane as no less fascinated and subdued by him 
 than Charlotte Bronte shows her to have been. It is 
 a Chorus we want to the play, after the fashion of the 
 Greek drama, and this part of Chorus might have been 
 taken with unsurpassable effect by Thackeray. The 
 brief snatches of comment that he could have thrown 
 in while he made Rochester tell his own story, would 
 have had a still more delicate aroma of humour than 
 those 'with which he satirises the pretensions of Barry 
 
296 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Lyndon. He would not have made Rochester either 
 quite a coxcomb or quite a histrio, but he would have 
 brought out in vivid and piquant relief the lurking 
 ingredients of coxcomb and histrio which Charlotte 
 Bronte's hand perhaps because it was a woman's 
 hand does not disclose to us. 
 
 Miss Martineau, who doubtless had the information 
 from head-quarters, tells us that Charlotte Bronte, as 
 she proceeded with the novel, became intensely inter- 
 ested in the fortunes of her heroine, whose smallness 
 and plainness corresponded with her own. When she 
 brought little Jane to Thornfield her enthusiasm had 
 grown so great that she could not stop. She went on 
 " writing incessantly for three weeks." At the end of 
 this time she had made the minute woman conquer 
 temptation, and, in the dawn of the summer morning, 
 leave Thornfield. It was in the dead of winter that 
 the great agitation of Jane's life had begun with the 
 arrival of Rochester. The morning was now lovely 
 with the streaks of sunrise, and the grass was bright 
 with dew ; but the icy sharpness of that winter even- 
 ing had been sweeter to Jane than this balmy summer 
 morn. " I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling 
 sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to 
 pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of 
 the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block 
 and axe-edge ; of the disseverment of bone and vein ; 
 of the grave gaping at the end : and I thought of drear 
 flight and homeless wandering and, oh ! with agony 
 I thought of what I left. I could not help it." She pic- 
 
Jane Leaves Thornfield. 297 
 
 tured to herself Eochester, sleepless, watching the dawn. 
 She trembled lest, on discovering her flight, he might 
 sink into self-abandonment and ruin. Under the in- 
 exorable rule of duty, her emotions chafed and fretted 
 like fiery horses against the curb, lashing out in their 
 rebellious desire for freedom. "Birds began singing 
 in brake and copse ; birds were faithful to their 
 mates; birds were emblems of love. What was 
 I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic 
 effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no 
 solace from self-approbation ; none even from self- 
 respect. I had injured wounded left my master. 
 I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I could not turn 
 nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As 
 to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had 
 trampled one and stifled the other. I was weeping 
 wildly as I walked along my solitary way ; fast, fast I 
 went like one delirious." This is imagined with 
 superb power and, I have no doubt, with substantial 
 fidelity to truth ; but the phenomena chronicled are 
 those of the surface those which a spectator would 
 have seen those of which Jane herself was distinctly 
 conscious ; and beneath all these was the great deep 
 of Jane's spiritual nature, unagitated by the surface 
 waves, resting on the immovable foundations of the 
 world, the changeless laws of rectitude, morality, 
 religion. 
 
 After Jane left Thornfield " the rest of the book," 
 says Miss Martineau, " was written with less vehe- 
 mence, and with more anxious care ; the world adds, 
 
298 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 with less vigour and interest." Miss Martineau seems, 
 though she does not actually say so, to agree with the 
 world; and I certainly do. Jane's experiences be- 
 tween the time of her departure from Thornfield and 
 her return to Eochester at Ferndean Manor would 
 form an excellent one-volume tale ; but, in relation to 
 the main interest and plan of this book, they are what 
 magazine editors call padding. And their style has 
 that elaborate perfection that " anxious care," as 
 Miss Martineau well words it which shows that the 
 fires of imagination had subsided. I should say that, 
 on the whole, the part of Jane Eyre which comes 
 between the heroine's meeting with Kochester and her 
 departure from Thornfield is more deeply imbued 
 with the genius and imagination of Charlotte Bronte 
 than anything else she has written. In fidelity of 
 characterisation, in consistency of thought, feeling, 
 speech, conduct, mood, even caprice, Eochester is as 
 fine a piece of artistic portraiture as we have from 
 Miss Austen, Thackeray, or Scott. But on that 
 matter Mr. Swinburne has sufficiently enlarged. 
 
CHAPTEK XII. 
 
 M. PAUL EMANUELTHE PEOFESSOE IN CLASS 
 THE BRONTE LOVEES. 
 
 THEEE is one of her characters which some might 
 aver to be executed with more consummate skill 
 than Rochester, and which, whether superior or in- 
 ferior, is so differently handled that it may be profitable, 
 as well as interesting, to compare the two. I allude to 
 Paul Emanuel, professor in the Villette Seminary, and 
 lover of Lucy Snowe. Rochester is the more ima- 
 ginatively conceived portrait ; M. Paul has the closer 
 resemblance to a living man. It might, indeed, be 
 argued, though I should not care to maintain the 
 position dogmatically, that Paul Emanuel is too much 
 an individual to attain high perfection as a figure in a 
 work of art. It is with the type, not the individual, or 
 at least with the type in the individual, that art con- 
 cerns itself. The particulars specified regarding him 
 have the air, indefinable yet unmistakable, of literal 
 facts. But it is a special note of Charlotte Bronte's 
 work that both Rochester and Paul Emanuel have 
 harsh and repulsive, as well as attractive, qualities. 
 Charlotte Bronte never forgets to give " the bitter of 
 
300 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 the sweet " and the sweet of the bitter, in her charac- 
 teristic heroes. Eochester is imperious, abrupt, almost 
 rude, and it is plain that Jane likes the element of aus- 
 terity in her "master." Emanuelis choleric, arbitrary, 
 eccentric, even cruelly harsh. When his temper is 
 ruffled, he makes all who come near him the victims 
 of his petulant fury. An illustrative passage will 
 enable my readers to know what I mean better than 
 any words of mine. Emanuel had just delivered to 
 Lucy Snowe a letter, which suggested to him that he 
 had a rival in her affections, handing it to her with " a 
 look of scowling distrust." She retired with the letter, 
 and presently returned. 
 
 When I re-entered the schoolroom, behold M. Paul raging like 
 a pestilence ! Some pupil had not spoken audibly or distinctly 
 enough to suit his ear and taste, and now she and others were 
 weeping, and he was raving from his estrade almost livid. Curious 
 to mention, as I appeared, he fell on me. " Was I the mistress of 
 these girls? Did I profess to teach them the conduct befitting 
 ladies ? and did I permit and, he doubted not, encourage them to 
 strangle their mother-tongue in their throats, to mince and mash 
 it between their teeth, as if they had some base cause to be 
 ashamed of the words they uttered ? Was this modesty ? He 
 knew better. It was a vile pseudo-sentiment the offspring or the 
 forerunner of evil. Rather than submit to this mopping and 
 mowing, this mincing and grimacing, this grinding of a noble 
 tongue, this general affectation and sickening stubbornness of the 
 pupils of the first class, he would throw them up for a set of 
 insupportable petites mattresses, and confine himself to teaching 
 the A B C to the babies of the third division." 
 
 What could I say to all this ? Keally nothing ; and I hoped he 
 would allow me to be silent. The storm recommenced. " Every 
 answer to his queries was then refused? It seemed to be con- 
 sidered in that place that conceited boudoir of a first class, 
 with its pretentious bookcases, its green-baized desks, its rubbish 
 
M. P. Emanuel in Class. 301 
 
 of flower-stands, its trash of framed pictures and maps, and its 
 foreign surveillante, forsooth ! it seemed to be the fashion to 
 think there that the Professor of Literature was not worthy of a 
 reply ! These were new ideas ; imported, he did not doubt, 
 straight from 'la Grande Bretaigne ' they savoured of island 
 insolence and arrogance." Lull the second the girls, not one of 
 whom was ever known to weep a tear for the rebukes of any other 
 master, now ah 1 melting like snow- statues before the intemperate 
 heat of M. Emanuel : I not yet much shaken, sitting down, and 
 venturing to resume my work. Something either in my con- 
 tinued silence or in the movement of my hand, stitching trans- 
 ported M. Emanuel beyond the last boundary of patience. He 
 actually sprang from his estrade. The stove stood near my desk ; 
 he attacked it ; the little iron door was nearly dashed from its 
 hinges, the fuel was made to fly. " Est-ce que vous avez ^intention 
 de rriinsulter ? " said he to me, in a low, furious voice, as he thus 
 outraged, under pretence of arranging, the fire. 
 
 It was time to soothe him a little. " Mais, monsieur," said I, 
 "I would not insult you for the world. I remember too well that 
 you once said we should be friends." I did not intend my voice to 
 falter, but it did : more, I think, through the agitation of late 
 delight than in any spasm of present fear. Still there certainly 
 was something in M. Paul's anger a kind of passion of emotion 
 that specially tended to draw tears. I was not unhappy, nor much 
 afraid, yet I wept. "Aliens, allons!" said he presently, looking 
 round and seeing the deluge universal. " Decidedly I am a 
 monster and a ruffian. I have only one pocket-handkerchief," he 
 added, "but if I had twenty, I would offer you each one. Your 
 teacher shall be your representative. Here, Miss Lucy." And he 
 took forth and held out to me a clean silk handkerchief. Now, a 
 person who did not know M. Paul, who was unused to him and 
 his impulses, would naturally have bungled at this offer declined 
 accepting the same et cetera. But I too plainly felt this would 
 never do: the slightest hesitation would have been fatal to the 
 incipient treaty of peace. I rose and met the handkerchief half- 
 way, received it with decorum, wiped therewith my eyes, and, 
 resuming my seat, and retaining the flag of truce in my hand and 
 on my lap, took especial care during the remainder of the lesson 
 to touch neither needle nor thimble, scissors nor muslin. Many a 
 jealous glance did M. Paul cast at these implements; he hated 
 them mortally, considering sewing a source of distraction from the 
 
302 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 attention due to himself. A very eloquent lesson he gave, and 
 very kind and friendly was he to the close. Ere he had done, the 
 clouds were dispersed and the sun shining out tears were ex- 
 changed for smiles. 
 
 Capricious, whimsical, subject to sudden gusts of 
 irrational anger, Professor Emanuel had the faculty 
 of diffusing an immense deal of discomfort among his 
 fellow-creatures. They had the irritation the annoy- 
 ance even to tears of the stormy gusts ; and he 
 reaped the advantage of finding his sunshine, when 
 he chose to smile, more highly prized, more sweetly 
 felt, than if no bad weather had preceded it. He 
 could be kind; his heart was not " ossified;" nay, 
 " in its core was a place tender beyond man's tender- 
 ness, a place that humbled him to little children, 
 that bound him to girls and women." This made 
 amends for " many a sharp snap and savage snarl." 
 " Naturally a little man, of unreasonable moods," he 
 resembled Napoleon in his " shameless disregard of 
 magnanimity." He detested learned women. A 
 " woman of intellect " was, he thought, " a luckless 
 accident, a thing for which there was neither place 
 nor use in creation, wanted neither as wife nor 
 worker." He was, withal, forgiving to the van- 
 quished, and though lacking magnanimity in trifles, 
 was "great in great things." Sharing Dr. Johnson's 
 capricious temper, he was, like Johnson, a succourer 
 of poor and unpleasant creatures who had no other 
 friend, and had on hand Mother Walravens, Father 
 Silas, Mrs. Agnes, "and a whole troop of nameless 
 paupers." He had been constant to a youthful love 
 
The Bronte Lovers. 303 
 
 " one grand love, born so strong and perfect, that 
 it had laughed at Death himself, despised his mean 
 rape of matter, clung to immortal spirit, and, in 
 victory and faith, had watched beside a tomb twenty 
 years." Why is it that all the heroes all the admired 
 men and accepted lovers of Charlotte Bronte are 
 choleric, moody, masterful, and are obviously felt by 
 her to be, for that reason, the more enchanting ? 
 
 The tartness to use a somewhat indefinite term 
 of Charlotte Bronte's lovers is, to the best of my know- 
 ledge, a thing peculiar to the Bronte genius. Except 
 Emily and Charlotte Bronte I do not know any writer 
 who imputes asperity to love-making and captivating 
 gentlemen. The author of the old ballad, Burd Helen, 
 whose name is, I suppose, unknown, occurs to me as 
 having approached the Bronte practice more clearly 
 than most, and Chaucer, I have no doubt, could have 
 accurately analysed the charm of Kochester's impe- 
 riousness, and shown its root in the nature and social 
 habits of women and of men. Helen in the ballad is 
 atrociously ill-used by her lover, being forced by him 
 to follow a-foot, clinging to his saddle-bow, as he rides 
 on his journey by moorland waste and haggard stone ; 
 he refuses to take her up, but lets her still drag on at 
 his horse's side, even when they must ford " Clyde 
 water," which rolls full in flood "from bank to brae." 
 But we are relieved, or half relieved, at length, by 
 finding that he has only been testing her affection, and 
 that, when he proves it sufficiently, he accepts and 
 returns it. Chaucer represents patient Grisildis as 
 
304 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 
 
 suffering exquisite mental torment from the man she 
 loves, yet never faltering in her devotion. But Chaucer 
 is careful to announce his own disapproval of Lord 
 Walter's conduct, and to exhort wives not to be so 
 meek as Grisildis, but always to give the husband 
 back his own with usury. In the prenuptial period, 
 Lord Walter had been gentleness itself. 
 
 Probably enough, it is due to my lack of information, 
 but I cannot, I repeat, recall any lover, outside the 
 Bronte books, who, in the time of courtship, when 
 desirous of presenting himself in the most attractive 
 guise to the lady, is so blunt and peremptory as 
 Kochester, or so snappish as Paul Emanuel. In Char- 
 lotte's other great novel she adheres to her practice. 
 Both Robert Moore and Louis Moore in Shirley are 
 stern, commanding men, with something of the soldier, 
 something even of the drill-sergeant, in them. And 
 Shirley Keeldar herself has the Bronte contempt for 
 soft lovers. " Pah ! " she says, " my husband is not to 
 be my baby. I am not to set him his daily lesson and 
 see that he learns it, and give him a sugar-plum if he 
 is good, and a patient, pensive, pathetic lecture if he is 
 bad." The love-lorn Louis understood the woman he 
 had to deal with. "I scared her," he remarks, in 
 describing what is generally held to be the delicate 
 process of eliciting from a lady a confession of affection. 
 " I scared her; that I could see; it was right ; she must 
 be scared to be won." He scared her so effectually 
 that she " trembled." The more she trembled the 
 more commanding he became. " My pupil ! " he said. 
 
Amatory Fence. 305 
 
 " My master !" she replied in accents fainter. After 
 one or two other passes of amatory fence, " Am I to die 
 without yon," he cries, " or am I to live for you?" 
 " Do as you please," she answers ; "far be it from me 
 to dictate your choice." " You shall tell me with your 
 own lips, whether you doom me to exile, or call me to 
 hope." " Go, I can bear to be left." " Perhaps, I too 
 can bear to leave you ; but reply, Shirley, my pupil, my 
 sovereign reply." This is peremptory enough, so she 
 answers, "Die without me, if you will. Live for me, 
 if you dare." Of course he tells her that he dares to 
 be her accepted lover, addressing her by the endearing 
 term of "leopardess." "You name me leopardess? 
 remember the leopardess is tameless." " Tame or 
 fierce," he answers, "wild or subdued, you are mine." 
 " I am glad I know my keeper," she says, with the 
 smile of acceptance on her lip, " and am used to him. 
 Only his voice will I follow ; only his hand shall 
 manage me ; only at his feet will I repose." 
 
 Neither in Shakespeare nor in Goethe, neither in 
 Schiller nor in Byron, neither in Fielding nor in 
 Scott, neither in Thackeray nor in Dickens, neither 
 in Mr. Trollope nor in George Eliot, do I find acid 
 mixed with sweetness in love-making as it is mixed 
 in the love-making of the Bronte novels. Heathcliff, 
 in his boyish time, when the fine and manly in- 
 gredients in his nature have not yet become malig- 
 nant, is a rough and saucy lover ; nor would the wild, 
 wayward, witching Cathy have endured him if he had 
 been a soft and sighing swain. When Shakespeare 
 
 20 
 
306 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 introduces Richard the Third wooing Anne, an ex- 
 press opportunity is afforded him for representing 
 the lady as impressed by the hardness of Eichard's 
 character, and as influenced by the force even 
 though the harsh force of one born to be a king. 
 Had Charlotte Bronte designed and executed the 
 scene, she would certainly have made Bichard cast 
 over Anne the glamour of his imperious strength, 
 and shown her fluttering into his arms like a bird 
 sinking fascinated into the jaws of a snake. Shake- 
 speare's Bichard is subtle, insinuating, sophistical, 
 wily, but he studiously disguises his harshness. 
 King Henry, making love to the Princess of France, 
 with the garlands of Agincourt on his brow, is a less 
 masterful lover than Louis Moore extorting an avowal 
 of regard from the splendid heiress whose tutor he has 
 been. Egmont is all softness to Clarchen Faust 
 to Margaret. And so on ad infinitum. 
 
 If it were in a merely whimsical and fantastic spirit 
 that Charlotte Bronte assigned to her lovers a gift of 
 government and faculty of sarcasm distinguishing 
 them from all other lovers, if they were extravagant 
 or untrue to nature as well as unique, the originality 
 with which she is to be credited on their account 
 would be little worth. Stupidity, affectation, con- 
 ceit, impudence, strong drink, opium, are all prolific 
 sources of originality. But the distinctive charm of 
 the acid in the Bronte love-making is connected with 
 broad and well-established facts of human nature, and 
 is neither fantastic nor far-fetched. Amiability is apt 
 
Insipid Amiability. 307 
 
 to be insipid is always insipid when it is monotonous 
 and constant. Flavour in fruit or wine is hopelessly 
 destroyed by excess of sweetness. Smiling innocence 
 is oftener complimented than liked, and Byron who, 
 one would think, had never suffered much from 
 amiability, whether as exhibited by himself or his 
 friends or foes expresses sceptical wonder how the 
 grand old gardener and his wife could have found it 
 agreeable in Eden. The Bronte sisters had an excep- 
 tionally keen and clear, but hardly exaggerated, per- 
 ception of this general fact. Sugary people they re- 
 garded with aversion the remark is illustrated by 
 their delineation of pleasant women as well as of 
 pleasant men ; and they instinctively shrank from 
 sugary love-making. Little Jane, Shirley, and Lucy 
 Snowe are women of great strength of character, and 
 Caroline and Polly are not without decision. Mr. 
 Lint on' s well-meaning friendliness does^ not save him 
 from Emily Bronte's scorn, and the weak Mr. Symp- 
 son in Shirley is the most despicable of all Charlotte's 
 characters. Manliness, intellectual power, caustic 
 piquancy of conversation, are qualities universally 
 popular, and the Bronte sisters discerned that they 
 are not suspended, and do not cease to be charming, 
 though people are in love. 
 
 But there is a still more specific element in the fasci- 
 nation of Rochester and his peers than that dependent 
 on the general interest of vigorous and pithy character. 
 Charlotte Bronte unmistakably intends that a sense of 
 the dominance and control exercised by her lovers shall 
 
 202 
 
308 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 be intensely delightful to the women who are loved. 
 There is no term of endearment applied by Jane to 
 Rochester which seems to have so exquisite a charm 
 for her as " master." Shirley, the proud, rich, wild, 
 brilliant Shirley, exults, as we saw, in the thought 
 that she has found her "keeper," the man who can 
 " manage " her. A deep swell of hero-worshipping 
 enthusiasm an enraptured recognition that the man 
 worthy to be a woman's lover is worthy also to be her 
 lord passes through the whole of Charlotte Bronte's 
 writings. Imbecility in the form of a man is indeed 
 only the more contemptible for having degraded the 
 temple it usurps ; but a man of true nobility, a man 
 whose patent is stamped by Almighty God, is for her 
 the king of the world. "I tell you," exclaims Shirley, 
 "when they are good, they are the lords of the creation 
 they are the sons of God. Moulded in their 
 Maker's image, the minutest spark of His spirit lifts 
 them almost above mortality. Indisputably a great, 
 good, handsome man is the first of created things." 
 Keen as is her assertion of every claim that she 
 believes capable of being justly preferred on behalf 
 of her sex, Charlotte Bronte has not a shred of 
 sympathy with those who maintain the absolute 
 equality of men and women. This cannot, I think, 
 be reasonably disputed. Not only are we made to 
 feel that Jane and Shirley and Lucy Snowe would 
 be defrauded of their intensest joy in loving if they 
 did not feel that their lovers were their masters, but 
 we are expressly informed, through the lips of Shirley, 
 
Women's Eights. 309 
 
 when Caroline asks her whether man must indeed be 
 acknowledged woman's superior, that such is Charlotte 
 Bronte's opinion. " I would scorn," Shirley answers, 
 "to contend for empire with him. I would scorn it. 
 Shall my left hand dispute for precedence with my 
 right? shall my heart quarrel with my pulse? shall 
 my veins be jealous of the blood which fills them? 
 . . . . Nothing ever charms me more than when 
 I meet my superior, one who makes me sincerely feel 
 that he is my superior." "Did you ever meet him ? " 
 asks Caroline. " I should be glad to see him any 
 day," she replies; "the higher above me, so much 
 the better ; it degrades to stoop, it is glorious to look 
 up." When Shirley did see her lover, it was the very 
 elixir of her joy that he could rule her. In her love, 
 as in that of all Charlotte Bronte's heroines, there 
 was a "delicious pride," but a "more delicious 
 humility." * I presume that the ladies and gentle- 
 men who are at present conspicuous by their advocacy 
 of " women's rights " would hesitate to admit that 
 their contention involves a denial of the superiority 
 assigned to men by Shirley; but I believe that the 
 main drift of their movement is practically its denial; 
 and I hold further that, though all the enactments 
 which give power to men as compared with women 
 were swept from the Statute Book a consummation 
 to which I should offer no resistance every woman 
 supremely in love would, all the same, feel the crown 
 of her joy to be in self-surrender. Mrs. Browning 
 * This antithesis, however, is not quoted from Charlotte Bronte. 
 
310 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 attests this as well as Charlotte Bronte. It is woman 
 who is addressed in the words, 
 
 Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
 Of service which thou renderest. 
 
 I have no doubt, however, that there are women 
 whom it would not be safe to woo in the fashion of 
 the Bronte lovers some who would have resented 
 Kochester's behaviour if he had ordered them about 
 so bluntly as he ordered Jane Eyre, and who would 
 have found nothing attractive in M. Emanuel's 
 irascibility and caprice. 
 
CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 MB. DONNE'S EXODUS SHIRLEY THE AUTHOR'S 
 MOST CHARACTERISTIC BOOK ROBERT'S 
 PROPOSAL MERCENARY MARRIAGE A DAY 
 WITH SHIRLEY LANDSCAPE GLIMPSES 
 THE DUTY OF ENDURANCE. 
 
 TjINTEETAINING for great and good men an 
 I J impassioned and frankly expressed admiration, 
 Charlotte Bronte treats feeble and bad men with 
 unrelenting scorn, and shows us, in an entirely 
 characteristic passage, how, in her opinion, a spirited 
 Yorkshire girl might put down a coarse and self- 
 obtruding clergyman. The occurrence described took 
 place in the grounds of Fieldhead, Miss Keeldar's 
 residence. The Kev. Mr. Donne is the first speaker. 
 
 " Ahem ! " he began, clearing his throat evidently for a speech 
 of some importance. " Ahem ! Miss Keeldar, your attention an 
 instant, if you please.' 3 "Well," said Shirley, nonchalantly, 
 "what is it? I listen: all of me is ear that is not eye." "I 
 hope part of you is hand also," returned Donne, in his vulgarly 
 presumptuous and familiar style, "and part purse: it is to the 
 hand and purse I propose to appeal. I came here this morning 
 
 with a view to beg of you " "You should have gone to Mrs. 
 
 Gill ; she is my almoner." " To beg of you a subscription to a 
 
312 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 school. I and Dr. Boultby intend to erect one in the hamlet of 
 Ecclefigg, which is under our vicarage of Whinbury. The Baptists 
 have got possession of it ; they have a chapel there, and we want 
 to dispute the ground." " But f have nothing to do with Eccle- 
 figg : I possess no property there." "What does that signify? 
 You're a Churchwoman, ain't you?" "Admirable creature!" 
 muttered Shirley, under her breath; "exquisite address! fine 
 style ! What raptures he excites in me ! " Then aloud, " I am 
 a Churchwoman, certainly." "Then you can't refuse to contribute 
 in this case. The population of Ecclefigg are a parcel of brutes 
 we want to civilize them." " Who is to be the missionary ? " 
 " Myself, probably." " You won't fail through lack of sympathy 
 with your flock." "I hope not I expect success; but we must 
 have money. There is the paper pray give a handsome sum." 
 
 When asked for money, Shirley rarely held back. She put 
 down her name for 5. After the ,300 she had lately given, and 
 the many smaller sums she was giving constantly, it was as much 
 as she could at present afford. Donne looked at it, declared the 
 subscription " shabby," and clamorously demanded more. Miss 
 Keeldar flushed up with some indignation and more astonishment. 
 " At present, I shall give no more," said she. " Not give more ? 
 Why, I expected you to head the list with a cool hundred. With 
 your property, you should never put down a signature for less." 
 She was silent. " In the south," went on Donne, " a lady with a 
 thousand a-year would be ashamed to give 5 for a public object." 
 Shirley, so rarely haughty, looked so now. Her slight frame 
 became nerved ; her distinguished face quickened with scorn. 
 "Strange remarks!" said she; "most inconsiderate! Reproach 
 in return for bounty is misplaced." "Bounty ! Do you call five 
 pounds bounty ? " " I do ; and bounty which, had I not given it 
 to Mr. Boultby's intended school, of the erection of which I 
 approve, and in no sort to his curate, who seems ill-advised in 
 his manner of applying for, or rather extorting, subscriptions 
 bounty, I repeat, which, but for this consideration, I should 
 instantly reclaim." 
 
 Donne was thick-skinned ; he did not feel all or half that the 
 tone, air, glance of the speaker expressed ; he knew not on what 
 ground he stood. " Wretched place this Yorkshire," he went on. 
 " I could never have formed an idear of the country had I not 
 seen it ; and the people rich and poor what a set ! How corse 
 and uncultivated ! They would be scouted in the south." Shirley 
 
Mr. Donne s Exodus. 313 
 
 leaned forwards on the table, her nostrils dilating a little, her taper 
 fingers interlaced and compressing each other hard. " The rich," 
 pursued the infatuated and unconscious Donne, " are a parcel of 
 misers never living as persons with their incomes ought to live : 
 you scarsely (you must excuse Mr. Donne's pronunciation, reader ; 
 it was very choice ; he considered it genteel, and prided himself on 
 his southern accent ; -northern ears received with singular sensa- 
 tions his utterance of certain words) you scarsely ever see a 
 i'am'ly where a propa carriage or a regla butla is kep ; and as to 
 the poor just look at them when they come crowding about the 
 church-doors on the occasion of a marriage or a funeral, clattering 
 in clogs ; the men in their shirt-sleeves and wool-combers' aprons, 
 the women in mob-caps and bedgowns. They pos'tively deserve 
 that one should turn a mad cow in amongst them to rout their 
 rabble-rankshe ! he I What fun it would be ! " 
 
 " There, you have reached the climax," said Shirley quietly. 
 "You have reached the climax," she repeated, turning her glowing 
 glance towards him. "You cannot go beyond it; and," she 
 added with emphasis, " you shall not, in my house." Up she 
 rose. Nobody could control her now, for she was exasperated. 
 Straight she walked to her garden gates, wide she flung them 
 open. " Walk through," she said, austerely, " and pretty quickly, 
 and set foot on this pavement no more." Donne was astounded. 
 He had thought all the time he was showing himself off to high 
 advantage, as a lofty-souled person of the first ton; he imagined 
 he was producing a crushing impression. Had he not expressed 
 disdain of everything in Yorkshire ? What more conclusive proof 
 could be given that he was better than anything there ? And yet 
 here he was about to be turned like a dog out of a Yorkshire 
 garden! Where, under such circumstances, was the "concaten- 
 ation accordingly"? "Bid me of you instantly instantly!" 
 reiterated Shirley, as he lingered. " Madam a clergyman ! 
 Turn out a clergyman?" "Off! Were you an archbishop, 
 you have proved yourself no gentleman, and must go. Quick ! " 
 She was quite resolved ; there was no trifling with her. Besides, 
 Tartar was again rising ; he perceived symptoms of a commotion ; 
 he manifested a disposition to join in. There was evidently 
 nothing for it but to go, and Donne made his exodus, the heiress 
 sweeping him a deep curtsey as she closed the gates on him. 
 
 The book, Shirley, from which this admirable piece 
 
314 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 of life-comedy is taken, though not marked by the 
 sustained intensity of imaginative power which cha- 
 racterises the central portion of Jane Eyre, is in some 
 respects the finest of all Charlotte Bronte's novels. 
 There is more ease in it more freedom and variety 
 than in Jane Eyre, and it is less laborious and didactic 
 than Villette. In none of Charlotte Bronte's books 
 are there more fresh and lovely glimpses of landscape ; 
 and the heroines, Shirley and Caroline, so felicitously 
 contrasted, so finely harmonised, so perfectly life-like, 
 are embodiments of the pride and love with which she 
 regarded the girls of England and, above all, the girls 
 of Yorkshire. 
 
 In Shirley we see Charlotte Bronte in her ordinary 
 mood, the mood in which she most broadly, simply, 
 unconstrainedly reveals herself. Her genius shows its 
 strength most decisively in Jane Eyre. Her most 
 mature philosophy and her most carefully elaborated 
 style are to be found in Villette. The former was 
 written under high pressure, her feelings greatly 
 excited, her genius making its critical, dead-lift 
 attempt to establish a reputation ; the latter was 
 also composed with conscious, painful effort, under 
 a sense of duty. Shirley was written under more 
 ordinary circumstances, in the natural outflow of 
 sympathy and imagination. The shadow of death 
 falls upon the page at the beginning of the third 
 volume, written when the grave had just closed 
 upon Emily and Anne ; but the spirit of the book 
 is cheerful. Upon none of her characters does 
 
Shirley. 315 
 
 Charlotte Bronte lavish, such glad enthusiasm as 
 upon Shirley Keeldar and Caroline Helstone. They 
 are English girls, and Charlotte Bronte, having lived 
 in a Continental school, cherished a firm persuasion 
 of the superior worth and attractiveness of the girls 
 of England. They are Yorkshire girls, and Charlotte 
 Bronte, though she loved England well, loved York- 
 shire better, and was almost fiercely proud of the 
 stalwart lads and brave and bonny lasses of the dales 
 and moors. There is also, to my thinking, a natural 
 fitness in the circumstance that, in a woman's novel, 
 the chief part among the characters is played by 
 women. Rochester might have given his name to 
 the book in which he figures almost as well as the 
 little governess ; but neither of the Moores is half so 
 prominent in the Shirley group of personages as 
 Shirley herself. Louis Moore, who holds technically 
 the place of hero as the accepted lover of the heroine, 
 is hardly heard of until the third volume ; and his 
 brother Kobert, though we see him sooner, stands 
 third in the order of interest, Shirley and Caroline 
 being first and second. Women, though they may 
 write passionately and splendidly about men, write, 
 nevertheless, most congenially, and with greatest 
 reality and accuracy of knowledge, about women. 
 There is, accordingly, I repeat, more ease in Shirley, 
 more free and natural and brilliant play of the 
 author's faculties, than in her other books. In it, also, 
 more than elsewhere, have we her idea of women's 
 rights and wrongs. It was published about eighteen 
 months after Jane Eyre. 
 
316 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 There is almost no plot, but the story is sufficiently 
 well planned to secure for the reader the interest of 
 mild surprise. The question all-important from the 
 novelist's specific point of view who is to marry the 
 heroine, is made adequately perplexing throughout the 
 first and second volumes. Every one supposes that 
 Kobert also called Gerard Moore will marry Shir- 
 ley, and yet no unfair means are made use of to 
 convey that impression to the reader. Nothing could 
 be more natural, yet nothing more dramatic, than the 
 interview between Kobert and Shirley, witnessed by 
 Caroline ; and Robert's account to his friend Yorke of 
 his proposal to Shirley is quite masterly, alike in in- 
 vention, in humour, in truth to human nature in 
 general, and in exactitude of correspondence with 
 the characters of Moore and of Shirley in particular. 
 The passage, however, must be read to be appreciated. 
 I abridge some of the sentences, yet it is so long that 
 I can quote but part. 
 
 "Yorke, if I got off horseback, and laid myself down across the 
 road, would you have the goodness to gallop over me backwards 
 and forwards about twenty times ? " " Wi' all the pleasure in life, 
 if there were no such thing as a coroner's inquest." " Hiram 
 Yorke, I certainly believed she loved me. I have seen her eyes 
 sparkle radiantly when she has found me out in a crowd ; she has 
 flushed up crimson when she has offered me her hand, and said, 
 ' How do you do, Mr. Moore ? ' My name had a magical influence 
 over her ; when others uttered it she changed countenance I 
 know she did. She pronounced it herself in the most musical of 
 her many musical tones. She was cordial to me; she took an 
 interest in me ; she was anxious about me ; she wished me well j 
 she sought, she seized every opportunity to benefit me. I con- 
 sidered, paused, watched, weighed, wondered ; I could come to but 
 one conclusion this is love. I looked at her, Yorke ; I saw in her 
 
Bobert's Proposal. 317 
 
 youth and a species of beauty. I saw power in her. Her wealth 
 offered me the redemption of my honour and my standing. I owed 
 her gratitude. Young, graceful, gracious my benefactress, at- 
 tached to me, enamoured of me I used to say so to myself; dwell 
 on the word ; mouth it over and over again ; swell over it with a 
 pleasant, pompous complacency with an admiration dedicated 
 entirely to myself, and unimpaired even by esteem for her ; indeed, 
 I smiled in deep secrecy at her na'ivete and simplicity, in being the 
 first to love, and to show it. That whip of yours seems to have a 
 good heavy handle, Yorke ; you can swing it about your head, and 
 knock me out of the saddle, if you choose. I should rather relish 
 a loundering whack." 
 
 " Tak' patience, Robert, till the moon rises, and I can see you. 
 Speak plain out ; did you love her or not ? I should like to 
 know; I feel curious." "Sir sir I say she is very pretty, in 
 her own style, and very attractive. She has a look, at times, of a 
 thing made out of fire and air, at which I stand and marvel, with- 
 out a thought of clasping and kissing it. I felt in her a powerful 
 magnet to my interest and vanity : I never felt as if nature meant 
 her to be my other and better self. When a question on that head 
 rushed upon me I flung it off, saying brutally, I should be rich 
 with her, and ruined without her ; vowing I would be practical, 
 and not romantic." " A very sensible resolve ! What mischief 
 came of it, Bob ? " 
 
 "With this sensible resolve, I walked up to Fieldhead one 
 night last August : it was the very eve of my departure 
 for Birmingham, for you see I wanted to secure fortune's 
 splendid prize : I had previously dispatched a note, request- 
 ing a private interview. I found her at home, and alone. 
 She received me without embarrassment, for she thought I came 
 on business ; I was embarrassed enough, but determined. I hardly 
 know how I got the operation over ; but I went to work in a hard, 
 firm fashion, frightful enough, I daresay. I sternly offered my- 
 self my fine person with my debts, of course, as a settlement. 
 It vexed me ; it kindled my ire, to find that she neither blushed, 
 trembled, nor looked down. She responded : ' I doubt whether I 
 have understood you, Mr. Moore.' And I had to go over the 
 whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly as A B C, before she 
 would fully take it in. And then, what did she do ? Instead of 
 faltering a sweet Yes, or maintaining a soft, confused silence 
 
318 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 (which would have been as good), she started up, walked twice 
 fast through the room, in the way that she only does, and no other 
 woman, and ejaculated, ' God bless me ! ' Yorke, I stood on the 
 hearth, backed by the mantelpiece ; against it I leaned, and pre- 
 pared for anything everything. I knew my doom, and I knew 
 myself. She stopped and looked at me. ' God bless me ! ' she 
 pitilessly repeated, in that shocked, indignant, yet saddened 
 accent. 'You have made a strange proposal strange from you; 
 and if you knew how strangely you worded it, and looked it, you 
 would be startled at yourself. You spoke like a brigand who 
 demanded my purse, rather than like a lover who asked my heart.' 
 I looked at her, dumb and wolfish: she at once enraged and 
 shamed me. ' Gerard Moore, you know you don't love Shirley 
 Keeldar.' I might have broken out into false - swearing ; vowed 
 that I did love her ; but I could not lie in her pure face Besides, 
 such hollow oaths would have been vain as void : her female heart 
 had finer perceptions than to be cheated into mistaking my half- 
 coarse, half-cold admiration, for true-throbbing, manly love. 
 ' What next happened ? ' you will say, Mr. Yorke. Why, she 
 sat down in the window-seat, and cried. She cried passionately : 
 her eyes not only rained, but lightened. They flashed, open, 
 large, dark, haughty, upon me : they said ' You have pained me ; 
 
 you have outraged me ; you have deceived me You 
 
 once high in my esteem are hurled down ; you once intimate in 
 my friendship are cast out. Go ! " 
 
 Do we not fee], as we read, that this passage was 
 written with all Charlotte Bronte's heart, and not only 
 with all her heart, but with all her conscience ? She 
 lived much in the sense of duty, and no part of her 
 duty as a novelist did she more vividly conceive, or 
 more fervently grasp, than that of guarding the sacred- 
 ness of passion. True affection was in her view an 
 indispensable element in the right formation of the 
 marriage tie; and her frame quivered with indignation, 
 her pen emitted lightnings, when selfishness and 
 worldliness tried to pass off some desecrating sem- 
 
Mercenary Marriage. 319 
 
 blance of true love for the genuine feeling. With, 
 intense emphasis she would have echoed Tennyson's 
 anathema on " the social lies that warp us from the 
 living truth." And it was a great occasion for her 
 when she could punish the hypocrisy that mimicked 
 love, in the person of Robert Moore, an able, success- 
 ful, upright man, quite as high-minded as the average 
 of his sex, and hardly conscious that, with his trades- 
 man's instinct, he was perverting and profaning, in his 
 proposal to Shirley, the very idea of marriage. Char- 
 lotte had inherited from her father a jealousy of the 
 trading fraternity. She thought that, in the French 
 war, if the landed gentry had allowed them, the 
 merchants of England would have sold her honour for 
 an extension of their markets. " During the late war " 
 these are her words " the tradesmen of England 
 would have endured buffets from the French on the 
 right cheek and on the left ; their cloak they would 
 have given to Napoleon, and then have politely offered 
 him their coat also, nor would they have withheld 
 their waistcoat if urged ; they would have prayed 
 permission only to retain their one other garment, for 
 the sake of the purse in its pocket." We need not in- 
 quire whether this censure is altogether Justin an histo- 
 rical point of view ; Charlotte Bronte was, at all events, 
 right in sharply resenting the intrusion of mercantile 
 calculation into the sphere and function of the affections. 
 It is, perhaps, worthy of remark though the matter 
 is not of much moment that, at the time when she 
 wrote Shirley, Charlotte Bronte was timorously 
 
320 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 anxious to disguise the fact that she was a woman. 
 Some of the rugged strength, verging on coarseness, 
 in the conversation between Moore and Yorke, may 
 have heen intended to countenance the notion that 
 Currer Bell was a man. But if this motive was 
 present with her, it did not drive her to extravagance ; 
 possibly it may have assisted her in sympathetically 
 realising how a man would feel under the circum- 
 stances described by Moore. In that invitation of 
 Moore's to Yorke to give him a loundering whack with 
 his whip, there is a subtly imaginative, a veritably 
 Shakespearian, penetration into the feelings of a proud 
 man who has made an immense fool of himself. The 
 power displayed in the whole passage strikes me as 
 amazing. I know no woman novelist, not even George 
 Eliot, who has quite equalled it; and yet George Eliot, 
 as she shows in such a passage as that describing the 
 fight between the young squire and Adam Bede, can 
 see very far into the heart of the male creature. 
 
 But the view presented of Shirley Keeldar in this 
 passage may convey to the reader a one-sided idea of 
 her character. Capable she indeed was of scorn and 
 severity, but she was not without more maidenly 
 qualities. Let us look at her in a softer aspect. 
 
 She takes her sewing occasionally ; but, by some fatality, she is 
 doomed never to sit steadily at it for above five minutes at a 
 time. Her thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce 
 threaded, when a sudden thought calls her upstairs. Perhaps 
 she goes to seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed 
 needle-book, or older china-topped workbox, quite unneeded, but 
 which seems at the moment indispensable ; perhaps to arrange her 
 
A Day with Shirley. 321 
 
 hair, or a drawer which she recollects to have seen that morning 
 in a state of curious confusion ; perhaps only to take a peep from a 
 particular window at a particular view, whence Briarfield Church 
 and Kectory are visible, pleasantly bowered in trees. She has 
 scarcely returned, and again taken up the slip of cambric or 
 square of half-wrought canvas, when Tartar's bold scrape and 
 strangled whistle are heard at the porch door, and she must run to 
 open it for him. It is a hot day ; he comes in panting. She must 
 convey him to the kitchen, and see with her own eyes that his 
 water-bowl is replenished. Through the open kitchen door the 
 court is visible, all sunny and gay, and peopled with turkeys and 
 their poults, peahens and their chicks, pearl-flecked guinea fowls, 
 and a bright variety of pure-white, and purple-necked, and blue 
 and cinnamon -plumed pigeons. Irresistible spectacle to Shirley ! 
 She runs to the pantiy for a roll, and she stands on the door- step 
 scattering crumbs. Around her throng her eager, plump, happy, 
 feathered vassals. John is about the stables, and John must be 
 talked to, and her mare looked at. She is still petting and patting 
 it, when the cows comes in to be milked ; this is important ; 
 Shirley must stay and take a review of them all. There are, 
 perhaps, some little calves, some little new-yeaned lambs it may 
 be twins, whose mothers have rejected them. Miss Keeldar must be 
 introduced to them by John must permit herself the treat of feed- 
 ing them with her own hand, under the direction of her careful foot- 
 man. Meantime, John moots doubtful questions about the farming 
 of certain " crofts," and " ings," and " holms," and his mistress is 
 necessitated to fetch her garden-hat a gipsy-straw and accompany 
 him, over stile and along hedge-row, to hear the conclusion of the 
 whole agricultural matter on the spot, and with the said " crofts," 
 " ings," and " holms " under her eye. Bright afternoon thus wears 
 into soft evening, and she comes home to a late tea, and after tea 
 she never sews. After tea Shirley reads, and she is just about as 
 tenacious of her book as she is lax of her needle. Her study is the 
 rug, her seat a footstool, or perhaps only the carpet at Mrs. 
 Prior's feet ; there she always learned her lessons when a child, 
 and old habits have a strong power over her. The tawny and lion- 
 like bulk of Tartar is ever stretched beside her ; his negro muzzle 
 laid on his fore paws, straight, strong, and shapely, as the limbs of 
 an Alpine wolf. One hand of the mistress generally reposes on the 
 loving serf's rude head, because if she takes it away he groans and 
 is discontented. 
 
 21 
 
322 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 Caroline Helstone is more regularly beautiful and 
 more nearly common-place than Shirley. Every curve 
 in her girlish figure is graceful, her skin delicate and 
 of lovely colour ; her brown hair falls about her neck in 
 picturesque profusion, her fine eyes are " gifted at 
 times with a winning beam that stole into the heart, 
 with a language that spoke softly to the affections." 
 Intelligent and gentle, she was no sooner known than 
 liked by the more sprightly heiress, and an intimate 
 friendship grew up between them. In their talks, they 
 furnish Charlotte Bronte with an opportunity for airing 
 her opinions upon various questions, chiefly that of 
 the social position, duties, claims, and sufferings of 
 women; in their walks, they lend her occasion for 
 introducing those landscape glimpses which greatly 
 enhance the charm of the novel. " Glimpses " they 
 are rather than elaborate views hence perhaps some 
 part of their fascination ; we catch sight of them as we 
 pass, wishing always at the moment that we could see 
 more of them, yet aware that the novelist does well 
 to keep her word-pictures strictly subordinate to her 
 story. The girls agree upon it that " England is a 
 bonny island," and that "Yorkshire is one of her 
 bonniest nooks." When they halt on the brow of the 
 Common, we peep over their shoulders and look down 
 " on the deep valley robed in May raiment ; on varied 
 meads, some pearled with daisies, and some golden 
 with king-cups." The spring verdure smiled in clear 
 sunlight, emerald and amber gleams playing over it. 
 " On Nunnwood the sole remnant of antique British 
 
Landscape Glimpses. 323 
 
 forest in a region whose lowlands were once all sylvan 
 chase, as its highlands were breast-deep heather 
 slept the shadow of a cloud ; the distant hills were 
 dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted like 
 mother-of-pearl ; silvery blues, soft purples, evanes- 
 _cent greens and rose-shades, all melting into fleeces of 
 white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye as 
 with a remote glimpse of heaven's foundations." 
 Caroline promises to take Shirley into the pleasantest 
 places in the old forest. " I know where wild straw- 
 berries abound; I know certain lonely, quite untrodden 
 glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some yellow as 
 if gilded, some a sober gray, some gem-green. I know 
 groups of trees that ravish the eye with their perfect, 
 picture-like effects : rude oak, delicate birch, glossy 
 beech, clustered in contrast ; and ash trees stately as 
 Saul, standing isolated, and superannuated wood- 
 giants clad in bright shrouds of ivy." Do not the 
 words gleam like jewellery, set in silver and fine gold? 
 Almost invariably these limnings from Nature are 
 as remarkable for fidelity as for beauty. In fact, I can 
 recall but one instance in which I doubt the correct- 
 ness of the delineation. It occurs in the following 
 sentence, descriptive of moonlight. " Tree and hall 
 rose peaceful under the night sky and clear full orb ; 
 pearly paleness gilded the building; mellow brown 
 gloom bosomed it round ; shadows of deep green 
 brooded above its oak- wreathed roof." So far as my 
 own observation and it has been somewhat careful 
 enables me to speak, moonlight shows no colour except 
 
 212 
 
324 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 in the sky. Wet roofs gleam brightly in strong moon- 
 shine, but no shadow cast by the moon can be discri- 
 minated as green. It is perhaps legitimate, how- 
 ever, for the word-painter to derive more colour from 
 association of ideas than the painter with pigments 
 can dare to transfer from palette to canvas. Generally 
 speaking, Charlotte Bronte's descriptions are photo- 
 graphically and more than photographically, to wit 
 sympathetically and lovingly, correct. " It was a 
 peaceful autumn day. The gilding of the Indian 
 summer mellowed the pastures far and wide. The 
 russet woods stood ripe to be stripped, but were yet 
 full of leaf. The purple of heath-bloom, faded but not 
 withered, tinged the hills'. The beck wandered down 
 to the hollow, through a silent district ; no wind 
 followed its course, or haunted its woody borders. 
 Fieldhead gardens bore the seal of gentle decay. On 
 the walks, swept that morning, yellow leaves had 
 fluttered down again. Its time of flowers, and even of 
 fruits, was over; but a scantling of apples enriched the 
 trees ; only a blossom here and there, expanded pale 
 and delicate amidst a knot of faded leaves." Miss 
 Martineau speaks of Wilson's descriptions as bringing 
 the scents of the moorland into the sick-room ; I can 
 aver that the preceding words, at that particular point 
 where the scantling of apples and the blossoms linger- 
 ing here and there among the leaves are mentioned, 
 have produced in me what seemed the actual physical 
 sensation of being in a country garden amid faint scents 
 of apples. References abound in Shirley to the wind, 
 
The Duty of Endurance. 325 
 
 whether the storm wailing and raging about the hall 
 at midnight, or the gale filling the vault of the clear 
 moonlit sky with silver-hued, swift-sailing clouds. 
 11 No Endymion will watch for his goddess to-night : 
 there are no flocks out on the mountains ; and it is 
 well, for to-night she welcomes ^Eolus." 
 
 There is a great deal of ethical teaching in this 
 book; but it is thrown in so skilfully that, like the 
 descriptions of scenery, it never suggests the idea of 
 padding. The main precept which, here and else- 
 where, Charlotte enforces, is that of entire, unques- 
 tioning submission to the inevitable. The Arabian 
 prophet was not more sternly resolute in enjoining 
 submission to fate. " Take the matter as you find it. 
 Ask no questions ; utter no remonstrances. It is your 
 best wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got 
 a stone ; break your teeth on it, and don't shriek 
 because the nerves are martyrised. You held out 
 your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. 
 Show no consternation : close your fingers firmly upon 
 the gift ; let it sting through your palm. Never mind. 
 In time, after your hand and arm have swelled and 
 quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will 
 die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to 
 endure without a sob." This is the ethical lesson 
 which Charlotte Bronte never tires of enforcing, but 
 necessity generally takes, for her, the form not of a 
 dead, inexorable fate, but a Father-God. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 THE BRONTE GENIUS RETROSPECT INFLU- 
 ENCE OF SCOTT AND WILSON LOVE OF 
 SCOTLAND M. HEGER 'S INFLUENCE CHAR- 
 LOTTE'S IDEA OF LOVE THE YORKSHIRE 
 SCHOOL OF LITERATURE THE DEATHS OF 
 EMILY AND ANNE THE MARRIAGE AND 
 DEATH OF CHARLOTTE. 
 
 IT is seldom that the critic has so enticing a bit of 
 work cut out for him as is afforded by the Bronte 
 literature, and in particular by Charlotte Bronte. The 
 mysterious thing called genius, of which critics ought 
 to feel themselves the humble ministers and hiero- 
 phants, has not often lent himself so kindly to scientific 
 inquisition. The celestial spark, the immortal germ, 
 can in this instance be traced in its origin, followed in 
 its development, estimated in its fruits. 
 
 An eccentric Irish lad, his brain full of Calvinistic 
 theology, his heart of stiff old Tory pride and not 
 ungenerous prejudice, with thin but genuine melodies, 
 like tinklings of sheep bells, ringing in his head, conies 
 to Yorkshire, divests himself of his Irish name, 
 Prunty, apparently also of all Irish national feeling, 
 marries a Cornish girl, frail but fine, and is found, 
 
The Bronte Genius. 327 
 
 about the time of the passing of the Reform Bill, a 
 widower, with one son and three daughters, clergyman 
 of Haworth, a poor sequestered parish, high up among 
 the clouds and moors of Yorkshire. From Patrick 
 Prunty, self -named Bronti or Bronte, his daughter 
 Charlotte and her sisters derived that " very fiery 
 particle " of genius which all his children seem to 
 have possessed. The one son led those who knew 
 him in early boyhood to believe in his splendid 
 abilities ; but he was so soon and so utterly wrecked, 
 morally and mentally, that were it not for his relation- 
 ship to his sisters, his name would not for an hour 
 have escaped oblivion. The moral conditions with 
 which girls are environed in England never vindicated 
 themselves so impressively as in the contrast presented 
 by the unredeemed and heart-rending failure of Bran- 
 well Bronte and the noble success of his sisters. Those 
 passions which, under due governance of moral law, 
 might have been impelling forces to bear him to 
 honour and fame, became fiends that tare him as he 
 wallowed foaming. This is the grand lesson of his 
 life ; and it is one worthy of being laid stress upon ; 
 for there are some in these days who would sneer 
 down, as Philistinism and bad form, that reverence 
 for moral law which has characterised the sovereigns 
 of literature generally, and most conspicuously of all, 
 the sovereigns of that literature whose highest thrones 
 are occupied by Milton and Shakespeare. 
 
 As a Tory, old Bronte may be credited with a double 
 measure of that enthusiasm for Scott which was at its 
 
328 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 height when his daughters were passing from child- 
 hood into girlhood. The poems and novels of Scott 
 and Blackwood's Magazine were the delight of the 
 " family of poets " of Haworth Parsonage. Under the 
 auspices of Scott and Wilson, Scotland became dear to 
 Charlotte Bronte a circumstance otherwise natural, 
 for Scotland and Yorkshire have varied and close 
 affinities, and the vernacular of the latter is almost 
 the same as the tongue of Burns. She preserved 
 throughout life an affectionate feeling towards the 
 northern part of the United Kingdom, in striking 
 contrast with the bitter, cold, and grudging spirit 
 with which the London schools, whether of poetry or 
 of science, have always regarded Scotland. A visit 
 to that country, after she had become famous, did not 
 destroy her prepossession in its favour. The very 
 names of Melrose and Abbotsford were to her " music 
 and magic." " My dear sir," she wrote to a London 
 friend, " do not think I blaspheme when I tell you 
 that your great London, as compared to Dunedin, 
 ' mine own romantic town,' is as prose compared to 
 poetry, or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic, 
 compared to a lyric, brief, bright, clear, and vital as a 
 
 flash of lightning You have nothing like 
 
 Arthur's Seat, and, above all, you have not the Scotch 
 national character ; and it is that grand character, 
 after all, which gives the land its true charm, its true 
 greatness." Scott's delineations of the peasants and 
 freebooters of Scotland may have encouraged Char- 
 lotte Bronte to attempt a similar portraiture of the 
 
M. Heger. 329 
 
 people of Yorkshire ; and from no author could she 
 have caught the contagion of an impassioned joy in 
 forest, moor, and stream, more genially than from 
 Wilson. 
 
 But it was France that lighted the torch of her 
 genius. After being partly educated in England, and 
 serving some time, with indomitable energy, as a 
 governess, she went to Brussels, and came under the 
 influence of M. Heger. He saw the powers of her 
 mind, encouraged her in composition, taught her to 
 sharpen and burnish her French devoirs, and thus 
 prepared her to make her debut as an English author 
 in one of the most nervous, terse, and brilliant styles 
 in the whole range of English prose a style with no 
 fault except a certain uniformity, a too sustained 
 alertness and trenchancy, a style quite perfect as 
 a music of battle and of march, but far less adapted 
 than some styles, notably than the style of Thackeray, 
 to express the sauntering moods, to suit the 
 meditative hours, that will not fail to occur in our 
 earthly pilgrimage. One cannot think without a 
 smile of the immense part played by M. Heger and 
 her Brussels residence in the history of Charlotte 
 Bronte. Choleric yet good-hearted, highly intelligent 
 yet not without moodiness and whimsicality, M. 
 Heger displayed that "force du caractere recouvrant une 
 vibrante tendresse," that combination of masculine 
 strength with feminine tenderness, which M. Eugene 
 For9ade, in his admirable critique on Shirley, declares 
 to be irresistibly attractive to women, and which is 
 
330 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 the keynote of all Charlotte Bronte's characteristic 
 heroes. In her first and last books the Professor and 
 Villette the scene is principally laid in a Brussels 
 school ; and in Shirley she puts Flemish blood into 
 the veins of the brothers Moore, and avails herself of 
 the opportunity thus offered her of airing her French. 
 In Villette there is more French than belongs legiti- 
 mately to an English novel. 
 
 It is beautiful, however, to see how the genial, 
 brave, and healthy nature of our Yorkshire girl takes 
 what is good, and rejects all that is evil, in the 
 influence of the Continent and of France. Like a 
 fair flower, she draws from the morass its richness, 
 turns it into petals of loveliest form, lifts them to be 
 bathed in the colours of heaven, and lets the poison 
 alone. It is a marvellously stupid and superficial 
 mistake to suppose that Charlotte Bronte assails 
 English marriage, or any of the ideas characteristically 
 attached to marriage in England. What she assails, 
 both in Jane Eyre and in Shirley, is loveless marriage, 
 lucre-made. What she denounces is the laying of 
 young hearts on the altar of the god of this world. 
 " See him," she makes Shirley say, describing to a 
 wretched worldling the activity of his base divinity, 
 " busied at the work he likes best making marriages. 
 He binds the young to the old, the strong to the 
 imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius, and 
 fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is 
 hatred secret hatred ; there is disgust unspoken 
 disgust ; there is treachery family treachery ; there is 
 
Charlotte's Idea of Love. 331 
 
 vice deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, 
 children grow unloving between parents who have 
 never loved ; infants are nursed on deception from 
 their birth : they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt 
 with lies. Your god rules at the bridal of kings look 
 at your royal dynasties ! Your deity is the deity of 
 foreign aristocracies analyse the blue blood of Spain ! 
 Your God is the Hymen of France what is French 
 domestic life ? All that surrounds him hastens to 
 decay ; all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. 
 Your god is a masked death." Marriage without 
 affection was in her eyes desecration ; but she shrank 
 with equal aversion, and with still more vehement 
 contempt, from the degraded feelings that are too 
 often passed off for love in the literature and on the 
 stage of France. " When I see or hear either man or 
 woman," she writes, " couple shame with love, I know 
 their minds are coarse, their associations debased. 
 . . . In their dense ignorance they blaspheme 
 living fire, seraph-brought from a Divine altar. They 
 confound it with sparks mounting from Tophet." She 
 refers with bitter scorn to those who mistook the 
 sympathetic intensity of her descriptions of spiritual 
 passion for sympathetic intensity of an ignobler sort. 
 I have spoken of Emily Bronte as a woman of, in 
 some sense, more wonderful and original genius than 
 that of her sister. Charlotte has not left anything 
 evincing such subtle, far-brought, and magical power 
 as the group of Heathcliff and Cathy, nor had her in- 
 tellectual glance, in the last resort, the same pene- 
 
332 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 trating finality as Emily's ; and she herself agreed 
 with all the best judges in awarding the palm of 
 poetic superiority to Ellis Bell. Nevertheless, it is 
 Charlotte that must be pronounced, on the whole, the 
 chief of the sisters, the head of this unique and most 
 interesting Yorkshire school of literature, a school 
 that may outlive English as a spoken language, and 
 that was founded, established, and closed by three 
 provincial governesses, the oldest of whom died before 
 forty. Charlotte stands between Emily and Anne, 
 the mean between two extremes. Emily was hard 
 too hard. In her books and in her life she lacked 
 expansion and geniality. She was unhealthy, with 
 deficient stamina, a circumstance quite compatible 
 with spasmodic and contracted strength. She has 
 left little, and that little imperfect ; and yet it may 
 be doubted whether, if she had lived, she would have 
 done much more or much better ; for there is hardly 
 a trace of youngness in her work. Anne, though also 
 a woman of unquestionable genius, fell short in force- 
 Her verses are, indeed, of great value ; they express, 
 with faultless simplicity, clearness, tenderness, feel- 
 ings absolutely sincere, and as pure as the waters of a 
 mountain spring ; but both her thoughts and her feel- 
 ings were limited in range. Charlotte had ten times 
 the power of Anne, and her nature was more healthy 
 and genial, her culture more comprehensive, than 
 Emily's. On the whole, therefore, we must, I repeat, 
 assign her the first place among the sisters. 
 
 As the Norwich school of painters, old Crome, 
 
The Yorkshire School of Literature. 333 
 
 Cotman, and their few brothers of genius, made the 
 low, dune-bordered shores, and windy downs, and 
 lingering rivers, and bits of tufted woodland, that 
 form the scenery of Norfolk, memorable in art, so the 
 Bronte sisters drew the eyes of all the world towards 
 their native Yorkshire. It is a rugged land, inhabited 
 by a proud, independent, sturdy, and strong-brained 
 race, with rather a grating edge towards strangers, 
 and marked individuality of character. Emily Bronte's 
 old Joseph will vie with the peasants of Scott ; and a 
 French critic remarked that, after reading Shirley, 
 one could swear that he had lived in the world of 
 Yorkshire. Keen-witted, observant, sarcastically con- 
 temptuous of sentiment, but at heart true and kind, 
 the Yorkes and Helstones of Shirley, as well as a 
 number of peasants and mechanics, are speaking por- 
 traits from the West Riding. Eugene Fo^ade 
 amusingly describes the Yorke children as a half- 
 dozen " d'enfans terribles qui sont le plus bizarre 
 echantillon d' education presbyterienne, solitaire, ego'iste, 
 spontanee, qu'eut pu rever Jean-Jaques." 
 
 Were it but for this realisation of a type of cha- 
 racter belonging to a territory as large as that of 
 ancient Attica, Charlotte Bronte would take prece- 
 dence of Miss Austen. Mr. G. H. Lewes who, like 
 Macaulay, overrated that celebrated novelist, wrote 
 advising Charlotte to follow the counsel shining out 
 of his idol's " mild eyes," which counsel he summed 
 up in the formula, " to finish more and be more 
 subdued." In reply she commented politely, but with 
 
334 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 pungent effect, both upon the precept given and the 
 example suggested. " When authors write best," she 
 says, "or at least when they write most fluently, an 
 influence seems to awaken in them, which becomes 
 their master which will have its own way putting 
 out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain 
 words, and insisting on their being used, whether 
 vehement or measured in their nature ; new-moulding 
 characters, giving unthought-of turns to incidents, re- 
 jecting carefully-elaborated old ideas, and suddenly 
 creating and adopting new ones. Is it not so ? And 
 should we try to counteract this influence ? Can we, 
 indeed, counteract it?" There is, of course, but one 
 answer to these weighty and pertinent questions. 
 Charlotte Bronte was not only right in maintaining 
 against Mr. Lewes that authors ought to listen to the 
 voice of their genius and obey it to nurse their fire 
 instead of subduing it but expressed the prime canon 
 of all criticism, when criticism attempts to direct the 
 artist. To advise the writer to subdue his fire is to 
 give him the counsel by which Meer Jafner ruined 
 Surajah Dowlah at PI assy, namely, to call off his force 
 in the crisis of the battle. 
 
 Turning to the subject of Miss Austen, Charlotte 
 professes herself " puzzled" by her critic's enthusiasm. 
 She had sent for Pride and Prejudice, which Mr. 
 Lewes extolled above any of the Waverley novels. 
 "And what," she proceeds, "did I find? An accu- 
 rate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face ; 
 a carefully-fenced, highly-cultivated garden, with neat 
 
Miss Austen and Charlotte Bronte. 335 
 
 borders and delicate flowers ; but no glance of a bright, 
 vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no 
 blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live 
 with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but 
 confined houses." Admiration for George Sand she 
 can (she says) understand, for whatever Sand's defects, 
 she has grasp of mind, sagacity, profundity. But 
 " Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant." This is 
 true, and nearly the whole truth. Miss Austen has 
 inexpressible and inestimable delicacy of sentiment. 
 Her heroines possess a sweetness all their own, a 
 melodious tenderness and sense and goodness which 
 make their way into our heart of hearts, and remain 
 there for ever. Her old admirals, too, and her clergy- 
 men and young naval officers are singularly true to 
 life. But she has no invention, no incident. Her 
 characters walk out in pairs, like boarding-school girls 
 (only that one in each pair is a gentleman and a 
 lover), drive in phaetons, " taake their regular meals," 
 consult for weeks about private theatricals, and live, 
 on the whole, about as quietly as tulips in a Dutch 
 garden. Now, it is a universal truth in criticism 
 that great passion and great thought require a frame- 
 work of great incident for their display. The works 
 of Homer and of Shakespeare the two greatest 
 delineators of passion and character are as great in 
 incident as in knowledge of human* nature. Void 
 of invention, void of imagination, depending solely 
 on her observation and her sentiment, Miss Austen 
 belongs distinctively to the minor schools of lit- 
 
336 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 erary art; Charlotte Bronte, gifted, as Jane Eyre 
 and Shirley conclusively prove, with both, is a 
 sister, though perhaps a little sister, of the great 
 imaginative story-tellers of the world : Homer and 
 Scott, Sophocles and Shakespeare. The same honour 
 belongs, I think, to George Eliot, who knows the 
 worth of incident, and certainly stands higher than 
 Charlotte Bronte in reach of thought and variety of 
 power, but has never equalled her in the dewy bril- 
 liance, the felicitous splendour, >f a few passages, and 
 cannot, at her best, describe scenery with the witching 
 charm and freshness of the Yorkshire girls. George 
 Eliot has suffered from science, that cold Siren on 
 whose breast Goethe laid his head, until he was 
 gradually transformed from the inspired poet of Faust, 
 part first, into the droning professor of Faust, part 
 second. 
 
 There is a tragedy, it has been said, in every death- 
 bed, and -^Cschylus might be searched for more moving 
 sadness than that of the deaths of the poetic women 
 of Haworth Parsonage. Almost immediately after 
 BranweH's death Emily became ill, and though the 
 mind remained clear and the will adamantine, the 
 body yielded fast to consumption. Towards the end of 
 November, 1848, the deep, tight cough, the panting 
 breath, " the hollow, wasted, pallid aspect," told her 
 sisters that she was dying. But she would see no 
 " poisoning doctor ; " when one came, she refused to 
 let him enter her presence ; and when Charlotte wrote 
 down her symptoms and, without telling her, sent 
 
The Death of Emily. 337 
 
 them to a London physician, she would not take his 
 medicine. She seemed to defy death. "From the 
 trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the fading eyes, 
 the same service was exacted as they had rendered irj. 
 health." She was, however, dying rapidly, and 
 though she forced herself to her tasks, her interest in 
 everything around her was vanishing with her hold 
 upon life. Charlotte went out and searched the cold 
 December moors for a lingering spray of heather, and 
 took it in to Emily. But it was too late. "The 
 flower was not recognised by the dim and indifferent 
 eyes." So died, at twenty-seven, without a glimpse of 
 the fame that awaited her, the authoress of Wuthering 
 Heights and of that poem of which the main burden is 
 the life-long hiding of God's face from one of His 
 creatures, who had yearned vehemently to behold it. 
 Of hope or of heaven there does not appear to 
 have been one syllable uttered by Emily Bronte 
 throughout her illness. They laid her under the 
 pavement of Haworth Church. Her " fierce, faith- 
 ful bull-dog," to which Emily had been very kind, 
 howled pitifully at her chamber door for many 
 days. 
 
 Anne's death was very different. She had been 
 taken to Scarborough, one of the brightest spots in 
 England, and it was the month of May. On the last 
 Sunday of her life, " the evening closed in with the 
 most glorious sunset ever witnessed. The castle on 
 the cliff stood in proud glory gilded by the rays of the 
 declining sun. The distant ships glittered like bur- 
 
 22 
 
338 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 nished gold ; the little boats near the beach heaved on 
 the ebbing tide, inviting occupants. Anne was drawn 
 in her easy-chair to the window to enjoy the scene. 
 Her face became illumined almost as much as the 
 glorious scene she gazed upon. Little was said, for it 
 was plain that her thoughts were driven by the 
 imposing view before her to penetrate forwards to the 
 regions of unfading glory." Next day she gently 
 asked her physician how long she had to live, bidding 
 him not fear to speak truly, for she did not fear to 
 die. He told her that death was at the door. She 
 looked serene and undistressed. Clasping her hands,, 
 she invoked a blessing on Charlotte and on a friend 
 who waited on her. " Be a sister in my stead. Give 
 Charlotte as much of your company as you can.'" 
 She thanked them both for their kindness to her.. 
 The restlessness of death came upon her, and they 
 carried her to the sofa. " Soon all will be well," she 
 said, " through the merits of our Redeemer." Pass- 
 ing through the gates of death, she still had comfort 
 for her sister. " Take courage, Charlotte ; take 
 courage." Then, " calmly and without a sigh," she 
 fell asleep. God had not hidden His countenance 
 from Anne Bronte. 
 
 Charlotte returned to the lonely parsonage. She 
 leant upon God, and He did not fail her; but the 
 solitude was deep. " The great trial," she writes to a 
 friend, "is when evening closes and night approaches. 
 At that hour we used to assemble in the dining-room 
 we used to talk. Now I sit by myself necessarily 
 
Charlotte's Marriage. 339 
 
 I am silent." On windy nights, in the wailing of the 
 gale in the churchyard and about the parsonage, she 
 fancied she heard the spirits of her sisters trying to- 
 reach her. Balmy days came, and the sun of May 
 lighted the moors, making them " green with young 
 fern and moss, in secret little hollows," but to her they 
 were very desolate "a wilderness, featureless, solitary,, 
 saddening. My sister Emily," she goes on, "had a 
 particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of 
 heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry- 
 leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me 
 of her. The distant prospects were Anne's delight, 
 and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the 
 pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon.'" 
 Is there any poetry lovelier or sadder than that ? 
 
 Life, however, was not yet over for Charlotte. With 
 heroic resolution she stood to her work, habitually 
 dwelling upon the thought of Divine help. " The 
 strength," she had formerly said, in the simple and 
 intense faith of that Calvinism which she learned from 
 her father, and which runs through her books and 
 letters, " the strength, if strength we have, is certainly 
 never in our own selves; it is given us." A change 
 came over her life when, in 1854, she was married to 
 a man she wholly loved. Her friends " thought of the 
 slight astringencies of her Character, and how they 
 would turn to full ripe sweetness in that calm sunshine 
 of domestic peace." Her look brightened. She was 
 sensible of a new warmth at her heart on hearing a 
 villager describe her husband, Mr. Nicholls, as a 
 
340 Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters. 
 
 * l consistent Christian and a kind gentleman," which 
 41 high but simple eulogium" she could, she said, echo. 
 She and her father and her husband, who was her 
 father's curate, lived in the old parsonage on the high 
 moor, the graves around it, the stars above. Her 
 happiness endured but for a few months. With the 
 prospect before her of becoming a mother, she found 
 her health give way. True to her religious principles, 
 she endured all with unflinching patience. At last, 
 awaking from long stupor, she saw from the 
 surrounding faces that she was dying. " Oh ! " she 
 said, faintly, " I am not going to die, am I? He will 
 not separate us ; we have been so happy." I pity 
 those who trace in these words any spirit of irrever- 
 ence. They seem to me as consistent with sincere 
 and profound and affectionate regard for God, as the 
 burst of tears of a glad child, when told by its parent 
 to put down its playthings and go to bed, is consistent 
 with filial love. But more touching words have seldom 
 been uttered. Charlotte Bronte died as she had lived, 
 a godly and honourable woman, one of whom England 
 and the world may be proud. 
 
 lA 
 
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