1017] on The Brontes: A Hundred Years After 157 



That we love is a necessary education, even if, as in her case, it may 

 be associated with a cruel penance. AVe see the result of the great 

 ordeal in her books, whicli, like dropping torches, set other hearts on 

 fire, and can thrill even old hearts which have almost forgotten how 

 to vibrate. 



It is well to note that it is passion that is the inspiration of the 

 two great books upon which her fame principally rests. Intellectu- 

 ally Charlotte Bronte was narrow. Her sympathies were for the 

 most part the children of habit, and her religion a strait-waistcoat. 

 After her Brussels' experience, however, her heart spoke out. She 

 was no longer narrowed by her early prejudices or iron habits, or 

 confined by the swaddling bands of her religion. She spoke loudly 

 and deeply to other people who have hearts. It was thus, then, that 

 she was great ; it was thus that Harriet Martineau's criticism was as 

 beside the mark as it would be to condemn a rose for having red 

 petals. 



Here was her great success. A compound of great passion and 

 deep grief, and that in spite of the many minor faults that critics 

 could find with her works. Many of her expressions are hopelessly 

 clumsy. Her real great books were crude in thought, lacking in 

 humour, and had quite a narrow range of sympathy. A great many 

 women writers of fiction have l)een her superiors both in art and in 

 intellect ; but none of their works, which pass us without touch'ng 

 any deep chord, are comparable with these works of hers, which 

 contain the grandeur of one over-mastering emotion. 



It was this great quality which, when " Jane Eyre " first appeared, 

 caused a good deal of unfavourable criticism from the bloodless 

 prudes and the paltry critics ; but these had to stand aside— the 

 book might not be praised, but it was read. It is this quality which 

 keeps her words alive to-day. 



A favourite question of the quidnuncs of literature when a writer 

 dies is, " "Will he live ? " It is a question which it is impossible to 

 answer. The answer to it depends not on our estimate of the dead 

 man's or woman's literary merit, but on our knowledge of the tastes 

 and intelligence of the future readers of books. It is difficult to 

 judge even of contemporary merits, or to foretell from one day to 

 another the success or failure of a book or a work of art. Thus,' we 

 know that six publishers at least refused to have anything to do with 

 Charlotte Bronte's " Professor." AVe know that the early venture of 

 the lives of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, the publication of their 

 " Poems," which cost them £50, was a misadventure, for, notwith- 

 standing the great excellence of some of these, only two copies of the 

 book were sold ! We know that Charlotte Bronte's publishers only 

 paid her in the aggregate £1500 for the entire copyright of her three 

 great novels. Are these facts the measure of greatness ? "We know, 

 of course, that the publisher sits in the coach, and the author is 

 between the shafts. But when we remember, that an author for a 



