Charlotte Brontë.

393

acquaintance with the classics to an extent very rare among men so multifariously occupied as he was. In one ambition only he altogether failed; but unfortunately that ambition was his most burning and unquenchable one. There was some. thing almost pitiable about the way in which he went on publishing poem after poem without ever attaining such success as would place him high even in the second rank of writers of verse. Nature, bountiful to him in many respects, had denied him the poetical faculty; even his highest performances of this kind would have been better had they been written in prose. His son, the present Lord Lytton (born 1831), better known as a writer under his pseudonym of "Owen Meredith," has been more fortunate in his poetical attempts. All his poems, if occasionally marred by faults of diction and sentiment, have about them that indescribable something which distinguishes the work of a genuine poet from that of the mere verse-writer. Few novels have made a greater sensation at their first appearance than "Jane Eyre," published in 1847. All competent critics, however much they might differ about certain. features in the work, were agreed in acknowledging its original power and its thrilling interest, and conjectures were rife as to who could be the unknown "Currer Bell" whose name appeared on its title-page. Most of these conjectures were very wide of the mark. "Currer Bell" was the name adopted by Charlotte Brontë, a poor girl, brought up in a homely parsonage amid the bleak wilds of Yorkshire, without any literary friends to aid her in her struggle for fame. There are few more interesting and pathetic stories than that of her and her gifted sisters Emily and Anne. Charlotte, the eldest of the three, was born at Thornton, in Bradford parish, in 1816. Four years later her father, who was a clergyman, removed to Haworth, and there she was brought up and wrote her wonderful novels. Her life was a sad one enough, chequered by poverty, by poor health, by family trials, and by the yearnings of an ambition which was late in finding any fit field for its exercise. All the family were remarkably gifted, and many were the manuscripts which proceeded from their pens,

but it was not till

1846 that Charlotte appeared before the public as an author. In that year was published (at the expense of the writers) a small volume of poems "by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell," the two last names being the pseudonyms of her sisters Emily and Anne. It attracted very little attention. "The book was printed," wrote Charlotte, in the biographical notice of her sisters; "it is scarcely known, and all of it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell." During the same year a tale of Charlotte Brontë's, "The Professor," was plodding a weary round among the London publishers. "Currer Bell's book," she says, "found acceptance nowhere, nor any acknowledgment of merit, so that something like the chill of despair began to invade his heart." Two other novels, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily Brontë, a tale of great, though morbid and undisciplined power, and "Agnes Grey," by Anne Brontë, had found publishers, though on such terms as could afford no gratification to the authors; but Charlotte found no gleam of encouragement till the MS. of "The Professor" was returned to her by Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co., to whom it had been submitted, along with a courteous letter, declining the tale, but adding that a novel in three volumes would meet with careful consideration. "Jane Eyre," on which she had been for some time engaged, was accordingly sent to them, and at once accepted. Its publication soon after gave her at once a fame and popularity which suffered no diminution from her two succeeding novels, "Shirley" (1849), in which she availed herself of her experience of Yorkshire character, and "Villette" (1852), in which she made use of some of the material of "The Professor," containing faithful transcripts from her experiences as teacher and pupil in Belgium. In 1854 she married Mr. Nicholls, who had been for eight years her father's curate. The union was a very happy one; but her health, always delicate, gave way, and she died in March 1855. Her two sisters had preceded her to the still country. Charlotte Brontë's life was written with admirable literary skill and good taste by her friend Mrs. Gaskell (1810-1865), herself a novelist of high merit. Among her best-known works are

Charlotte Brontë's Writings.

395

"Mary Barton," a story of factory life, "Ruth," and "Crauford."

Charlotte Brontë had high notions of her calling. In signal contrast to the many lady-novelists, who nowadays pour forth. novel after novel with such unceasing rapidity that the panting critic toils after them in vain, she published nothing till it was as good as she could make it, and never wrote except when she felt that she was really in the vein for doing so. Like all who labour conscientiously, she has had her reward. Her works have not, like many other fictions, been sought eagerly at circulating libraries for a season or two and then forgotten; on the other hand, they have taken a secure place in the list of English classics. Her style is intense, vivid, and glowing; and in the descriptions of certain aspects of nature — for example, of a stormy, cloudy sky-it would be hard to mention a writer who is her superior. There are no dull places in her narratives. Everywhere we find that vigour and animation which are a sure sign of a writer having fully matured his conceptions. Harriet Martineau complained that in her novels she always wrote as if love was woman's chief, almost woman's only, interest in life. There is a good deal of force in this remark, but no writer had ever a more pure and highsouled idea of what passionate love really is than Charlotte Brontë had. Her want of knowledge of the usages of society, and her limited experience of life and manners, led her into some mistakes, but they are so comparatively insignificant as in no way to detract from the nobleness of her work. We entirely agree with Mr. W. C. Roscoe1 in utterly repudiating the cry of "coarseness" with which "Jane Eyre," in particular, was assailed. "Coarse materials, indeed," he says, "she too much deals with, and her own style has something rude and uncompromising in it not always in accordance with customary ideas of what is becoming in a female writer; but it would be scarcely possible to name a writer who, in handling such difficult subject-matter, carries the reader so safely through by the

1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 351.

serene guardianship and unconsciously exercised influence of her stainless purity and unblemished rectitude."

It has been well said that if, after the university method, we arranged our dead authors in order of merit, the only novelists since Scott who would by general consent be placed in the first class would be Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot; other names, indeed, would be added by many, but hardly any other would receive a unanimous suffrage. As everybody knows, George Eliot was the pseudonym under which a female writer, Mary Anne Evans, chose to veil her identity. She was born in 1820 at Griff House, near Nuneaton, in Warwickshire, the daughter of Robert Evans, a land agent there. She received an exceptionally good education, and in 1846 began her literary career by a translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," for which she received the beggarly pittance of £20. In 1851 she removed to London to assist Mr. John Chapman in editing the Westminster Review, to which, between the years 1852 and 1859, she contributed several articles. Her connection with the Review brought her into contact with George Henry Lewes (1817-1878), himself a writer and philosopher of some mark, to whom she linked her fate. In 1857 her first work of fiction, the “Scenes of Clerical Life," appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. They did not attract much notice at first, though Dickens, to his honour be it said, recognised their rare merit as successive instalments came out. In 1859 appeared "Adam Bede," which at once elevated her to the front rank among the imaginative writers of her time. Then followed the "Mill on the Floss" (1860); "Silas Marner" (1861); "Romola" (1863); "Felix Holt" (1866); a poem, "The Spanish Gipsy" (1868); "Middlemarch" (1872); “Daniel Deronda" (1877); and “Impressions of Theophrastus Such" (1879), which, for want of a better name, may be described as a volume of essays. In May 1880 she married Mr. J. W. Cross. The union was a happy but brief one, lasting only seven months. On Decem ber 22, 1880, the great novelist expired.

George Eliot's personal characteristics are thus described

George Eliot.

397 by one who knew her well: 1" Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with the bent of her soul. The deeply lined face, the too marked and massive features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was the more impressive, because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the outward harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal—all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence of a wise benignant soul. But it was the voice which best revealed her, a voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her uttered words with the mystery of a world of feeling that must remain untold. . . . And then, again, when, in moments of more intimate converse, some current of emotion would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was one not to be forgotten."

...

Like Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot was a most painstaking and conscientious writer. No ill-considered or slipshod sentence ever fell from her pen. Her rich culture and large knowledge of life in all its manifestations, give a breadth and accuracy to her delineations of character which are lacking in the products of Charlotte Brontë's more fiery and impetuous. genius. Her sympathy with all classes of society was wide, and proceeded from the general source of all such sympathythorough insight into their several modes of thought and life. Herself an unbeliever, she could do full justice to those of intense religious convictions, analysing and describing them in a way which showed that she thoroughly understood them. Her humour cannot be said to be of equal excellence and spontaneity to that of Dickens or Thackeray, but it is excellent of its kind, quiet and unobtrusive, and full of that kindly yet

1

1 Mr. F. W. H. Myers in the Century Magazine for November 1881.