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"I ' m afraid it -will try my eyes too much . " "But it is not in manuscript ; it is printed . " "My dear , you ' ve never thought of the expense it -will fce ! It -willbe almost sure to te a loss , for how can you get a book sold ? No one knows you , or your name . " " But , papa , I don ' t think it will be a loss : no more will you , if you will let me read you a review or two , and tell you more about it . " So she sat down and read some of the reviews to her father , and then giving him . the copy of Jane Et / re that she intended for him , she left him to read it . When he came into tea , he said , " Girls , do you know Charlotte has been writing a book , and it ' s much better than likely ? " . . The discovery of herself to her publisher as Currer Bell is exceedingly dramatic and interesting ; but we are already outrunning our space . Literary success did not terminate the trials of the Bronte family . Charlotte lost her sister Emily , then her last sister , Anne ; we have already
artist tribe , whether in music , painting , or poetry , to be in one sense vagrant . The eminent litterateur to -whom the remark was addressed com * bated it with ability and with the authority of a most prosperous and distinguished position . Currer Bell herself put in a remark or two—warmed into ^ the subject—with a fire that forgot restraint , took the defence of the original position out of the mouth of the unknown gentleman who had started the question , and pressed hard upon the polished litterateur who disclaimed the vagabondage cf the artist tribe . So much for the vis of artist life in her . We have given her own testimony as to the enjoyment which she really received , and nothing can extinguish the force of the words which she uttered to her husband— " We have been so happy . "
mentioned the brother ' s death . The father was accompanied by his sole remaining daughter to Manchester , and she remained with him during an operation for cataract . This time of her life seems to have been cheered only by the prosperity of the pen , and the pleasure which it enabled Charlotte to give to her aged father until the approach of the last year of her life . In May , 1854 , she became the wife of the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls ; and a very happy wife she was during a few short months ; but ere the anniversary of her marriage , she had ceased to live . There is something inexpressibly touching in the conclusion of her life , and the desolate state in -which it left her husband and her father . She had been for some time in * ' a low , wandering delirium . " Awakening from it for an instant , she saw her husband ' s woe-worn face , and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer that God would , spare her . " Oh ! " she whispered forth , " I am . not going to die , am I ? He will not separate us , we have been so happy . "
Early on Saturday morning , March 31 st , the solemn tolling of Haworth ch . uxch-Dell , spoke forth the fact of her death to the villagers who had known her from a child , and whose hearts shivered , within them as they thought of the two sitting desolate and alone in the old grey house . . . . . Few beyond that circle of hills knew that she , whom the nations praised far off , lay dead that Easter morning . Of kith and kin she had more in the grave to which she was soon to be borne , than among the living . The two mourners , stunned with their great grief , desired not the sympathy of strangers . One member out of . ' most-of the families in the parish was bidden to the funeral ; and it became aa act of selfdenial in many a poor liousehold to give up to another the privilege of paying their last homage to her ; and those who were excluded from the formal train of mourners thronged the churchyard and church , to see carried forth , and laid beside her own people , her whom , not many months ago , they had looked at as a pale , white bride , entering on . a new life with trembling , happy hope . ~
Among those humble friends who passionately grieved over the dead , - was a Tillage girl who had been seduced some little time before , but who had found a holy sister in Charlotte . She had sheltered her with her help , her counsel , her strengthening words ; hadministered to her needs in her . time of trial . Bitter , bitter-was the grief of this poor young woman , when she heard that her friend was sick unto death , and deep is her mourning until this day . A blind girl , living some four miles from Haworth , loved Mrs . Nicholls so dearly that , with many cries and entreaties , she implored those about Iier to lead her along the roads , and over the moor-paths , that she might hear the last solemn words , '" Earth to earth , ashes to ashes , dust to dust ; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life , through cur Lord Jesus Christ . " , v ' . ' ¦ .-. ¦ ' ¦¦ - . ¦ : ¦' ., Such were the mourners over Charlotte Bronte's grave .
A portrait of Charlotte Bronte is prefixed to the first volume of the biography , and Mrs . Gaskell considers it a good likeness ; it is by a firstrate artist , "but it is not one of his happiest efforts ; it errs especially in g iving an idea of length , and therefore of height . Her father thought that it looked too old , and that the features were not perfect , but that th ( Texpression was wonderfully good and like her . Mrs . Gaskell thus describes her original : — She is ( as she calls lierself ) undeveloped , thin , and more than half a head shorter than I am ; soft brown hair , not very dark ; eyes ( very good and expressive , looking straight open at you ) of the same colour as her hair ; a large mouth ; the forehead square , broad , and ratlier overhanging .
But even the graphic power of Mrs . Gaskell falls short . Charlotte Bronte said of herself that she was " so ugly that people avoided looking towards her a second time , "—the natural idea of an artist conscious of personal defect , and shy in feeling ; but it is extravagantly untrue . The forms of the face were not symmetrical , but they were rough rather than unpleasin ^ . The countenance was commanding , opening into an expression of extremej frank animated , and kindly interest ; and the upright carriage of the head gave a certain upright character to the very expression of the countenance . Beneath this powerful head were shoulders not broad but rather squarely set , and a body almost destitute of thorax ; a figure , indeed , not very unlike those _ which Richard Doyle once rendered so familiar in his fanciful grotesque drawings of little ladies seated on flowery arabesques , fairylike in size with a certain animated grace .
The effect of the book is melancholy . A stern sense of duty appears to be the one whole support for a frail nature through trials mor « severe than flesh is ordinarily made to bear ; a vehement disposition , chastised by that consciousness of duty , under the control of an admirable sense and rendered almost calvinistic in its strictness . But this , we conceive is only a superficial view : within that imprisonment of constraint was a really free spirit . Charlotte E route was , above all things , an artist . A characteristic trait of this internal fire , not recorded in Mrs : Gaskell ' s volumes was once called forth accidentally at a literary party , and , slight as it is , it afibrds an ht into her natureSeveral
insig . attempts had been made to draw out th « reserved young lady , then the newest lion of society . She answered with her eyes rather than her lips , ami appeared to be observing more than responding . A gentleman in the party hazarded an opinion that the class of artists ia always , us ho expressed it roughly , " vagabond , " from the twofold circumstance , that the artist has to deal with the native passions of human nature in their full development , and that he has to observe in his feolin " and therefore in liis actions , permanent laws which are seldom consistent ¦ wit h the transitory laws of usage and fashion ; hence the tendency of the
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THE MYSTERY OF SHAKSPEARE . The Philosophy of the Plays of iShakspere Uti / blded . By Delia Bacon . With a Preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne . Grcombridge and Sons Delia Bacon-withholds , for the present , her historical key to the Elizabethan art of tradition , which was originally designed as the first division of this voluminous argument . It is complete , - . perfect , and irresistible ; yet , as a mere evidence , it is less sublime than an exalted system of critical demonstration , such as is now set forth in two books , four parts , thirty-one chapters , and an introduction ! , prefaced by the magnanimous irony of Mr . Nathaniel Hawthorne . Mr . Hawthorne was solicited to occupy the portal of Delia Bacon ' s palace of pure logic , and to encourage the advances of the timid visitor . It was an embarrassing situation . He could not profess himself a disciple , therefore lie took rank as an admirer ; , he could not swallow the theory , so he praised the flavour . Nor could he even consent to paraphrase the new utterances of Bacon ' s authority ; consequently , the preface is crowded with , extracts from the book . The unpublished historical demonstration , which the autlior of The Scarlet Letterhas been careful not to read , has been omitted , sayeth Delia , in order that nothing may interfere with the internal testimony of her hypothesis , which , without the
obstruction of facts , will lure the reader into sweet faith , whereas , had Delia discharged her double-shotted evidences , the world might have been " stupined and overpowered . " This arrangement , it is hoped , will satisfy all minds of the first order , feeding on the essence of reason ; minds of the second order , insisting upon proofs ., will have their turn ; but if they are stunned by the Elizabethan key , they are not to say that X ) elia Bacon failed to warn them . She has discovered that Lord Bacon , conspiring with Sir Walter Raleigh , made use of William Shakspeare ' s name to conceal the authorship of the oracles , commonly called p lays , in which those plotters against the human intellect embodied new religious and political creeds , suggestions of sedition , heresy , and dangerous thinkings . Her essay , therefore , is a turning out of the inner readings inf Shakspeare ' s dramas , the mysterious inclusions of one idea within another , representing a philosophy of a kind that no professor could have ventured openly to teach in the days of Elizabeth and James . The Plays were Enigmas . So says Delia Bacon . " It is for the public to say whether she has proved her theory , " adds Mr . Hawthorne , who then kisses hands , and bows hims « lf out in this fashion : —
In the -worst event , if she has failed , her failure will be more honourable than , most people ' s triumphs ; since it must fling upon the old tombstone , at Stratford-on-Avon , the noblest tributary wreath that has ever lain there . ., *" -. Shakspeare ' s poetry , then , is hieroglyphic ; its esoteric value isnowforthc first time made known ; it is a beautiful form permeated withthe blood of a strange and daring philosophy . But Miss Bacon ' s method itself is slightly obscure—especially her statement of the Proposition , from which we vaguely gather that the intellectual growth of the Elizabethan , age , branching into allegory , fable , drama , Latin treatise , the Instauration , sonnet , lyric , and syllogism , is traceable to one source , to a single designing , almost omnipotent mind ; but it confuses us not a little to discover that this single mind -was the joint property of Bacon and Raleigh , and perhaps of other unknown partners . Revolution is shadowed forth in the whimsies of Titania ' s dream ; treason lurks under the Masque of Comus . Whatever Jonson may urge , until he rises from the dead and suffers cross-examination in the Delian tongue , his record may as -well be kept shut , for no one will believe him- —who believes Delia .
In Lear , the intellectual traitors of the age struck at the royal prerogative . "Of course it was not possible that the prerogative should be openly dealt with at such a time" — "I think the king is but a man as lam , " is consequently Bacon ' s 1113 'Stie way of unhinging the right divine . Lear , in point of fact , is a body of philosophic lessons for the enlightenment of princes and the chastening of their pride . Here Bacon proves himself to be a Leveller , a new Prometheus , an aspiring ^ Titan , a Benefactor , a Poet , and a Prophet , sporting with doctrines which , if publicly avowed , would bring his head to the block . In Julius Ccesar he explains the empirical system of treatment in diseases of tlic commonweal ; he is still a Literary Shadow ; in Coriolanus he propounds the scientific cure of the commonweal , liis dramatic expositions forming a manual for the study of the Prince of Walea :
But probably this Princo wus not aware that his father entertained at Whitehall then , not a literary Historian , merely—u Book-maker , able to compose narratives of the past in an orderly chronological prosaic manner , according to the received method —but a Show-man , also , an Historical Show-man , "with such new gifts and arts ; n , true Magician , who hud in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of reve ' aling , not the past nor the present only , but the future , " witli a near aim , " an aim so near that it might well seem " magical ; " and that a cloud was flaming in it , even then , " which drizzled blood upon the Capitol . " This Prince of Walea did not knp-w , any more than lily father did , thut they hud in their court then an historical scholar -- _? aI- _» --1 __ - _? --. 1 __ - *» .-1 T— * t * . 1 . . ¦ mm _ __ ? with sudi aiindomitable iion for the
* » - pas . stage , with such a decided turn for acting one who folt himself divinely prompted to a part in that theatre which ia the ( Jlolc —one who had laid out all for his share' in thut . They did not cither of them know , fortunately for us , thut they hud in their royul train such an Historic Sport-manugcr , such a 1 ' roBpcro fur-Masques ; that there wasatruo " I'hil-harmonus" there with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship . They did not know that they had in that scrvunt of tue crown , so supple , ho " patient—patient as the midnight sleep , " patient as the ostler that for tho poorest piece will bear the knavo by the volume "—such a born aspirant for rwlc ; one who had always hia oyo on tho throne , one who had always in maud their usurpation of it . They did not know that they had a Hamlet
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_ April 18 , 1857 . ] THE LEAPER , 377
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Leader (1850-1860), April 18, 1857, page 377, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2189/page/17/
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