FORTY YEARS LATER.

It was many years after the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's book before any further attempt was made to enter the field of Brontë biography. Mr. (now Sir) Wemyss Reid was the first to supplement what had been written. His book was published exactly twenty years after Mrs. Gaskell's-in 1877-under the title of Charlotte Bronte: a Monograph; and it owes its origin to Sir Wemyss Reid's friendship with Miss Ellen Nussey-Charlotte Brontë's school friend, who lived and still lives in the neighbourhood of Leeds. Sir Wemyss Reid was the editor of the Leeds Mercury. He had come to the conclusion, from conversation with Miss Nussey, that Mrs. Gaskell had given rather too sombre a character to the story of the Brontë family. In reading over the abundant correspondence in Miss Nussey's possession, he found passage after passage which showed indications of a happy and genial atmosphere surrounding the Brontë children. Added to this, the fact that there were a great number of letters to Miss Nussey which had not been published at all, and others which had only appeared in small fragments, and one sees a ready justification for Sir Wemyss Reid's Monograph, which was gracefully written, and received a cordial reception. Mr. Swinburne wrote his famous Note on Charlotte Brontë the same year, as a kind of criticism of Sir Wemyss Reid's book. It was, in fact, a review in the Spectator of the Monograph, in which it was stated that "the work of Charlotte Brontë would some day be regarded as evidences of exceptional intellectual power," which drew

These letters are published by permission of Mr. Joshua Taylor, the late Miss Mary Taylor's

executor.

from Mr. Swinburne his Note. Intellec

tual power! To the poet "the names of Charlotte and Emily Brontë made up with Mrs. Browning a perfect trinity for England of highest female fame.'

The

Haworth Past and Present, by Mr. Horsfall Turner, was published in 1879; and The Birthplace of Charlotte Brontë, by Mr. William Scrutton, in 1884. Miss Mary Robinson's Emily Brontë appeared a year earlier, and Mr. Francis Grundy's Pictures of the Past, and Mr. Francis Leyland's The Bronte Family, both added largely to our knowledge of the unattractive personality of Branwell Brontë. Mr. Augustine Birrell wrote a pleasant little sketch of Charlotte Brontë in 1887, in which he told over again the story with his accustomed brilliancy. Bronte Country, by Mr. Erskine Stuart in 1888, and The Brontës in Ireland, by Dr. Wright in 1895, practically complete the list of books dealing with the subject. Entering late upon the field, I desire to acknowledge the pleasure and the interest with which I have read every one of these books; although I am naturally not indisposed to emphasise the fact that they all lack the condition under which Mrs. Gaskell's biography was undertaken, and under which I have now engaged in an attempt to supplement them-that is to say, the sanction of Charlotte Brontë's husband and literary executor. Without that sanction it was not legally possible to publish a single letter written by the author of Jane Eyre.

Of

Three or four years have gone by since Miss Ellen Nussey placed in my hands a printed volume of some 400 pages, which bore no publisher's name, but contained upon its title-page the statement that it was The Story of Charlotte Brontë's Life as told through her Letters. These are the letters-370 in number-which Miss Nussey had lent to Mrs. Gaskell and to Sir Wemyss Reid. these 370 letters Mrs. Gaskell published quite 100, and Sir Wemyss Reid an additional 40. It was explained to me that the volume had been privately printed under a misconception, and that only some dozen copies were extant. Miss Nussey kindly asked me, knowing my interest in the subject, if I would undertake to write something around what might remain of the unpublished letters; and if I saw my way to do anything which would add to the public

appreciation of the friend who from early childhood until now has been the most absorbing interest of her life. A careful study of the volume made it perfectly clear to me that there were still some of these letters which might with advantage be added to the Brontë story; and that there were others which forty years ago, and even twenty years ago, needed to be safeguarded by the tantalising veil of initials and dashes, but could now be made to speak more effectively without the necessity for secrecy. At the same time arose the possibility of some veto being placed upon their publication. An examinaAn examination of Charlotte Brontë's will, which was proved at York by her husband, the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, in 1855, suggested abundant misgivings. I made up my mind to try and see Mr. Nicholls. I had heard of his disinclination to be in any way associated with the controversy which had gathered round his wife for all these years; but I wrote to him nevertheless, and received a cordial invitation to visit him in his Irish home. It was exactly forty years to a day after Charlotte died, when I alighted at the station in a quiet little town in the centre of Ireland, to receive the cordial handclasp of the man into whose keeping Charlotte Brontë had given her life. It was one of many visits, and the beginning of an interesting correspond ence. Mr. Nicholls placed all the papers in his possession in my hands. They were more varied and more abundant than I could possibly have anticipated. They included MSS. of childhood, of which so much has been said, and stories of later life, one fragment indeed being apparently later than the "Emma" which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for 1856, with a note by Thackeray. Here were the letters which Charlotte Brontë had written to her brother and to her sisters during her second sojourn

in Brussels. Here was the very letter addressed to her aunt when she was anxious to make the experiment of foreign schooling. Here also were the love-letters of Miss Maria Branwell to her lover Patrick Brontë, which are referred to in Mrs. Gaskell's biography. But this is neither the place nor the time in which to describe the material in my possession. It is sufficient to say that it has been supplemented from many sources, and that Mr. Nicholls's permission and assistance have secured for me the cordial help of many of Charlotte Brontë's friends. The son and executor of Mr. W. S. Williams has placed the complete series of his father's letters in my keeping, and these letters, only a few of which were seen by Mis. Gaskell, were described by her as by far the most beautiful and interesting that she had read. The executors of Miss Mary Taylor and of Mr. James Taylor-two friends of Charlotte Brontë's, who, curiously enough, were in no way related-have given me permission to publish correspondence. The lady from whose letters Mrs. Gaskell quotes as the "Brussels friend," and whose name has never yet appeared in any biography of the Brontës, has lent me letters and furnished valuable reminiscences of her school-days with Charlotte Brontë at the Pensionnat Heger; and from every quarter I have received valuable help.

The new material, in brief, includes several hundred hitherto unpublished letters and numerous other documents of considerable novelty and literary interest. The Brontë cult, it is acknowledged on all hands, is rather growing than declining with the flying years, and it is hoped that the material thus gathered together may do something, however slight, to still further augment the number of Charlotte Brontë's admirers.

Clement K. Shorter.

Philip Becker Goetz.

Mr. Coventry Patmore is among those of the critics of his time who have earned the right to criticise the considerable performances of others by considerable performances of their own. No one, it is to be supposed, will now dispute either the significance or the permanency of the addition which he has made to the poetical literature of his century, or question that among its characteristics is a strength of intellect which should entitle his critical utterances to a respectful hearing. It cannot be denied that some of the early judges of his poems, including even so sane and mature a censor as Matthew Arnold, were far from impressed with this intellectual force, but the cause was simply, as in Wordsworth's case, impatience with certain prosaic constituents of his poetical work, feeble, no doubt, if regarded in themselves, but rather examples of misdirected strength if viewed in connection with the masculine energy and penetrating sagacity of the far more extensive and important portions of The Angel in the House. It is, indeed, somewhat startling to find such loftiness and gravity not seldom in perilous propinquity to the ludicrous, but this is a symptom of the curious duality that runs through Mr. Patmore's work, and sometimes almost seems to part both the poet and the critic in twain. Though it could never have been questioned that The Angel in the House and the Odes proceeded from the same pen, it is still certain that the latter are by no means the kind of composition that the admirers of the former would have expected from their poet; and equally so that readers only acquainted with the Odes must feel considerable surprise on extending their knowledge to The Angel in the House. Similar instances may be produced. The Second Part of Faust, for instance, bears little visible resemblance to Götz von Berlichingen, but in this case the discrepancy is the result of a long harmonious evolution, demonstrably influenced by successive stages of experience and culture, while in Mr. Patmore's it is difficult to trace it to anything, unless

trasted with one of prosaic commonplace; so in the Odes pure spiritual rapture and marvellous spiritual introspection contrast with unlovely seethings of political passion. In the critical department of Mr. Patmore's work a corresponding duality exists, perhaps best defined by the remark that he belongs to the exceedingly small class of men. who have a stronger hold upon and a more lively apprehension of principles existing in the abstract than of principles embodied in individuals. With ordinary men it is different; such can seldom so much as see a principle until it is incarnated in a person. Mr. Patmore is an extraordinary man, and few things in him are more extraordinary than his constant and quiet enunciation of subtle truths, which a discerning reader receives with thankfulness as invaluable additions to his own intellectual store. At the same time, his imperfect grasp of, or frigid indifference to, the actual works which he professes to be criticis

ing render him much happier in the exposition of such principles than in the application of them.

To enunciate this proposition without endeavouring to establish it by examples would be to fall ourselves into the error which we are imputing to Mr. Patmore. We must, therefore, produce one or two, at the risk of appearing censorious. Among his essays is one on William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, one of the most exquisite of our singers, but whose poems, being written in a provincial dialect, are but little known. Mr. Patmore reveals his own high appreciation of Barnes in the title of his essay, "A Modern Classic," and this is literally nearly all that he does for him. There are several pages of admirable remarks about the principles of art in general, and just two pages about Barnes himself, in which he is rather damaged than otherwise by a wholly gratuitous comparison of his poetry to Spenser's Epithalamium. There is praise, to be sure, but it is all ipse dixit, not a single line of Barnes himself is quoted in confirmation or illustration, and, unless the reader has much more respect for ipse dixits than he ought to have, his case can only be that of the man who beholds his natural face in a glass. The essay closes very inconsistently with a complaint that people do not read Barnes, but how can they be expected to go out of their way to master an unfamiliar dialect unless convinced that it is worth their while? And can they be convinced by two pages of mere assertion? The essay, therefore, is wholly ineffective as concerns its professed purpose, and we can attribute the failure to nothing but Mr. Patmore's indifference to persons in comparison with principles. His admiration for Barnes is sincere, but tepid; the man is nothing to him in comparison with the views which he can be made to suggest. A critic like Macaulay or Carlyle would have got rid of generalities as soon as possible, tackled the man himself, drawn a picture of him which would have set the world gazing, and expatiated upon his beauties in a way to send their readers after his books. Mr. Patmore's indifference to the critic's proper theme-his author-compared to the opportunities a nominal review affords for theorising, is equally exemplified in his very disappointing essay upon one of the most in

teresting of recent poetical apparitions, Francis Thompson. Francis Thompson. Mr. Thompson's attitude is the truly remarkable one of a nineteenth-century poet trying to make himself as much of a seventeenth-century poet as he can, and failing doubly by falling short of the beauties of his models on the one hand, while far transcending their extravagances and absurdities on the other. Yet there is so much native genius in this sorely misguided writer that he merely needs to rid himself of his affectations, and to write with the simplicity and gravity of Mr. Patmore himself (whom he cannot but appreciate, since he owns to stealing from him), to become a bright ornament to English poetry, while otherwise the only alternative for him will be kindly oblivion or an immortality of ridicule. Mr. Patmore's refined taste cannot but have been shocked at Mr. Thompson's vagaries, but his interest in his subject is apparently too languid to prompt him. to notice them as he should; the advice which it would so well have become the veteran poet to tender, and to which the younger poet would not have been inattentive, is not given, and Mr. Patmore is partly responsible for the publication of a second example from the same hand of genius expended in grieving the judicious.

If we are right in considering Mr. Patmore's most serious defect as a critic to be that imperfect regard for his theme which leads him to make his author less his quarry than his stalkinghorse, it will follow that his critiques. upon other writers are comparatively ineffective as wholes, and chiefly memorable for the number of admirable things for the enunciation of which they serve as excuses. Such is indeed the case. Critics far inferior to Mr. Patmore have given more adequate accounts of many of the writers treated by him, and the reason, if we mistake not, is that they have made up in sympathy for what they lacked in discernment. Most profoundly does Wordsworth declare concerning the man of genius :

You must love him, ere to you

He will seem worthy of your love. This essential qualification, unfortunately, is almost always absent from Mr. Patmore in his relation to the ostensible subjects of his criticisms. is, indeed, far from incapable of gener

ous admiration. We meet ever and ever and anon with gleams of cordial appreciation of Dante, of Goethe, of Hegel, of the Spanish mystics, but, unfortunately, these are the people he is not criticising. Were he to give us detailed studies of of these, we should expect work of any the most satisfactory character and of the highest value. But, unhappily, his critical energy has been mainly spent in reviewing authors whose high standing in the republic of letters he must acknowledge, but whom, nevertheless, he can only bring himself to half admire. To employ one of his own quaint similes, it is as impossible to produce great criticism under such conditions as to breed a whale in a duckpond. A good example of his dealings with a great writer imperfectly apprehended, because imperfectly relished, is his treatment of Rossetti. As he seems on the point of winding up an essay containing many just remarks, but pitched throughout in far too low a key, it suddenly occurs to him that something remains to be said. "In much of his work there is a rich and obscure glow of insight into depths too profound and too sacred for clear speech, even if they could be spoken. Most true! but surely this was the saying to have put into the forefront of the battle. It should have

66

been the text from which the whole sermon was preached, instead of an ornamental appendage at the extremity, like the Troll King's Sunday tail. And so it would, had Mr. Patmore in his dealing with his great contemporary been able to summon to his aid the love that when wisdom fails makes Cythna wise''; nor would he then have committed himself to the astounding assertion that the wonderful "Burden of Nineveh" might have been written by Southey! This reserved attitude This reserved attitude may in a measure be excused as a reaction against the extravagant adulation of writers who show any sort of promise, a nuisance never more obnoxious than now. But the caution which is certainly in place when immature critics pronounce on writers of dubious position is needless when writers of Rossetti's established fame are sifted by men of the intellectual calibre of Mr. Patmore. And, as Darwin's exclusive devotion to science ultimately deprived him of the faculty of appreciating poetry, so the critic who holds enthusiasm

in perpetual check is likely to ultimately experience an atrophy of the faculty itself.

Quoth the beggar, See your sins!

Of old, unless I err,

You had brothers for inmates, twins,
Date and Dabitur.

When Date was in good case,

Dabitur flourished too :
For Dabitur's Lenten face

What wonder if Date rue?

And now we may turn from the ungrateful but needful task of fault-finding, and accompany Mr. Patmore to the ground where he is stronger than any living English critic. No one has a gift like him for the intuitive discernment and convincing statement of novel and yet simple truths. As in his poetry, so in his criticism, his exquisitely uttered prayer has been granted.

Thou primal Love, who grantest wings
And voices to the woodland birds,
Grant me the power of saying things

Too simple and too sweet for words. It is true that these inspired utterances are sometimes exaggerated into paradoxes, and, though irrefragable in the realm of general principle, are often grievously distorted in their application

to individual cases and circumstances.

The

But this is merely the tribute which every artist and thinker must in some department or other of his work pay to mortality. Mr. Patmore's special limitation, as it appears to us, is the difficulty he finds in bringing himself down from the ideal to the concrete. greater should by rights include the less, but with him clear comprehension of an æsthetic or spiritual truth is no guarantee for its correct application to the case of the next author, or institution, or social tendency that he may happen to encounter. This does not in the least detract from the beauty and value of the original enunciations. How great this is, we may be allowed to establish by a few examples.

Men of vigorous apprehension look at the heavens of truth as it were through a powerful telescope, and see instantly as realities many living lights which are quite invisible to the common eye. But contemplation is like the photographic plate which finds stars that no telescope can discover, by simply setting its passively expectant gaze in certain indicated directions so long and steadily that telescopically invisible bodies become apparent by accumulation of impression.

The follies of a Blake or a Hartley Coleridge are venial when compared with those of the