The Express.
London, England, 1851-06-20 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. By ELLPI and
At BELL. A new edition, revised, with a Biogra-
phical Notice of the Anthers, a Selection from their
Literary Remains, and a Preface. By CUREER BELL.
Smith, Elder, sad Co.
However questionable the assumption of a mascu-
line pseudonym by a female writer may bo in ordi-
nary cases, it must be confessed that, as regards the
authoress of " Jane Eyrc" and her sisters, there was
considerable justification for it. Few writings of
the day evinced a more masculine vigour of thought
and style than those of two at least out of the three
sisters. Not their ideas or their style, alone, but
the whole tenor of their works—their choice of sub-

jects, the coarse and violent characters they seemed
to delight in pourtraying,and their unreservc in deal-
ing with some of the most repulsive incidents of
human existence, at first almost forbid the suspicion
that such productions could proceed from a female
pen. So that had the secret been better kept on their
own part, we doubt that the public would soon have
arrived at a solution of the mystery. To our minds,
at the time, the most suspicious greumstance in the
transaction was the cordial union of three brothers in
a literary, undertaking. To any one who reflected
how rarely anything that can be called harmony ex-
ists between a large family of brothers, there seemed
something fabulous in the association of the three
neophytes " Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell." And
hence, possibly, the suspicion, unjust and detrimental
to all the parties concerned, that the writer of '
" Jane Eyre was "like Cerberus, three gentlemen
in one," and that the other works published
under the names of one or other of the trio, were
crude and early essays of the genius which first
found its adequate expression in " Jane Eyre ;" an
imputation which, if well founded, would have im-
plied a more than ordinary haste on the author's
part to trade in the reputation he had suddenly
Sc—.
Altogether it must be admitted that there was a
good deal of awkwardness in the mode in which the
three sisters made their respective debuts. And it is
only in the Preface to the volume now before us,
that the veil of mystery is removed—partially lifted
we should say, for while thefemininity is unreservedly
admitted, the surname is still withheld, and the so-
called biographical details are needlessly vague and
mythical. The pseudonyms Ellis and Acton, and
the real names Emily and Anne, are used promis-
cuously, until the matter-of-fact reader gets rather
confused. So that, on the whole, though the mo-
tives of the authoress of " Jane Eyre," in thus vindi-
cating her sisters' memory, and associating their
works with her own, in a form calculated for exten-
sive circulation, arc most creditable, we think she
would have done better in abandoning the anony-
mous altogether, and accepting frankly that noto-
riety, which, in times like ours, it is impossible for
any really successful and popular writer to escape.
We are the more inclined to take this view of the
case, because the existence of so large an amount of
literary promise in one family is, even in days of
universal cultivation like ours, almost unexampled,
and would of itself excite an amount of surprise
and inquisitiveness, which no degree of feminine
reserve, or feminine dexterity either, could hope
to defeat. Nor is it the mere quantity of ability dis-
played by three young and unknown writers that
was calculated to call forth wonder and admiration,
but the quality of it. Seldom were first publications
so free from what are wont to be the worst vices of
the female pen • or so rich in that directness and
energy which had hitherto been supposed to be the
exclusive appanage of manhood; and which even
such a writer as De Staid mar be suspected of hav-
ing rather borrowed from her male adorers—the
Narbonncs, Constants, Schlegcls, &c. than ela-
borated out of her own resources. The literature of
the day has been, in some respects, so extensively
vitiated, by feminine influences and examples, that it
' was after all consoling to have it placed beyond
doubt that the breadth and reality, the pith and
energy—we might almost say the Cromwellian rag-
gedness—which characterise " Jane Eyre," had an
exclusively feminine origin.
The like masculine powers are visible to the same,
or, perhaps, a greater extent in " Wuthering Heights."
It happensfortunately, to be the one among the " Bell"
novels, which we did not read on its first appearance,
and accordingly it has come upon us with all the
force and charm of novelty. Inferior to " Jane
Eyre" in all those qualities by which popularity is
won, it is equal in vigour and originality. As a
work of promise—an evidence of innate power—we
should say it is oven superior; and that of the three
sisters decidedly the most masterly and original
genius was Emily. It would excite bitter regrets for
the early death of one so gilled, if it were not that
such precocious power seems to have almost a neces-
sary connexion with that physical delicacy Laid ex-
treme nervous susceptibility, which are so frequently
the forerunners of pulmonary disease.
The peculiatiticsof writers of this constitution are,
we think, too little attended to by the critics of their
works. Doubtless if Novalis, Shelley, and Keats had
lived longer, they might and most probably would
have produced something artistically more perfect
than anything they left behind them. But it seems,
nevertheless, a great mistake to characterise the best
of their actual remains as crude and immature.
Men of that temperament are often more completely
developed at twenty, than others are at forty ; and
we fear many of the imperfections exhibited iii their
existent works are such as no prolonged life. or addi-
tional experience would have cured them of. On the
contrary, we should rather say that a morbid maturity,
a too great ripeness and richness is the main charac-
teristic of their writings. A nice observation will find
ten times more boyishness and immaturity even in the
later poems of the blase Byron, than in those which
Keats and Shelley produced at a much earlier age.
It is here that wo part company with the few
critics who have condescended to take any special

notice of " Wruthcring lkights," not excel-nag the
editress of the volume, whose sisterly partiality has
not exempted her from partaking the error above
alluded to. Rugged and unsophisticated " Wuthering
Heights" is to an unexampled degree—coarse and ec-
centric in conception and in style, thousands of genteel
readers will throw it aside with contempt or distrust.
But the crudeness and immaturity we altogether
deny. It is not an amiable or attractive work cer-
tainly. But a finer, more consistent, and finished
piece of art in its own way we have not met with
for many a day. With sufficient space, we should
not doubt being able to. justify this assertion. Bat
we have not room to give even a brief analysis of
the plot ; and the work is so much of a piece that
extracts could give no adequate idea of its execution.
Neither do we know any work which it much re-
sembles. It reminds one of " Caleb Williams," and
" Mandeville." But while it wants the breathless
interest of Godwin's novels, it exhibits far superior
powers in the delineation of scenery and character.
The only productions in art to which we can ho-
nestly compare this strange and most original book,
are the paintings of Rembrandt. What Rembrandt
was in painting, this authoress, if she had lived,
would have becomein fiction. There is the same depth
of shade and brilliancy of light, the same marvellous
chiero oscuro ; above all, the same excessive homeli-
ness in form, feature, and conception, towering into
the highest moral grandeur, from the intense
energy and undeviating good faith of the artist.
Men account, or try to account, for Rembrandt's
peculiarities, by his education in his father's mill.
But who taught this young and inexperienced girl
to fathom the darkest depths of the human heart, to
delineate its excesses, and reproduce its glee and
gloom with such homely but genuine power? The
txuthfulness and sterling sense of the authoress of
" Jane Eyre," are sufficiently remarkable. But.here
is the germ at least of something beyond her ; of some-
thing quite unique in its kind. A pourtrayal of
every day life, in a wild and secluded scene be true,
but from the life, with an utter absence of posture-
making, sentimentality, humbug, varnish, or pretence
of any kind, en intense and absolute matter of fact-
nem, of which literature does not, that we arc aware
of, supply any other example.
Not only is the method of the book new ; but to a
Fist extent the material too. A good material, we
.east say, and which has hitherto been unduly ne-
glected; to wit, English nature in the rough, as it is
still to be found primitive, untaught, and unsophisti-
cated in the more lonely districts of the northern
half of this island. Not an amiable choice for a lady
writer, we admit. But if she had the gift to see and,
depict it, why not make use of her Went? If we
' would know the value of the ragged mineral she has
analysed, we must consider what is made of it.
English greatness in all its phases—English liters-
; tare, English science, English commerce, English
empire, English liberty, the championship and chief-

tainry of the civilisation of the wortd.• Nothing can
be grander or more beneficent in its developments.
But in the mere germ and tendency, in the rough un-
smelted ore, still unmined, or if mined cast out as
refuse, it is quite another matter. The very instincts
and energies, which raise the Englishman to great-
ness, or at least to prosperity, when he finds a proper
sphere or any sphere for them, make him rude aid
unamiable, nay not unfrequently cruel and ferocious
to a pitch of insanity, when he can find no channel,
no outlet in any direction for those organising
and dominating powers which are his pecu-
liar endowment from the maker of men. The same
powers which, when disciplined and developed,
might have swayed senates, commanded armies,
created factories, invented machinery, opened new
regions to commerce and civilization, prey upon
themselves when confined to the narrow circle of ex-
istence on the mountains and moors. We southrons
little dream of the Berserker ferocity which broods
sulky, dissatisfied, and tyrannical, in the moorlands
or secluded glens of the north. But the local tradi-
tions are full of the tragedies and miseries such cha-
racters create. Just as the Scottish ballads were,
before education had given the Scotchman resources
and occupations which the less cultivated English-
man, when doomed to this, for him, unhealthy and
monotonous seclusion, rusts and cankers tbr want of.
Brought up herself in a lonely parsonage amid the
moors of Yorkshire, the authoress of " Wutheriug
Heights" was familiar both with the character of the
people around her, and with the legends in which
the misdeeds of those provincial Pelopidce are pre-
served. But to know the people was one thing,
and to paint them another. Many possess tho
former qualification. But it was an act of real cou-
rage, worthy of a Schiller or a Burns, to undertake
to paint this human savagery in all its hirsute rug-
gedness, selfishness, and strength. That such a
conception should have entered the mind of a young
and inexperienced girl, and have been realised too, in
6 the first book she ever wrote, implies an originality of
mind and force of character which naturally enough
work out prematurely the too delicate tenement in
which they were enshrined. And then the gusto,
and when necessary the grandeur, with which those
human wild beasts are sketched. The painstaking
verisimilitude of Landseer, combined with the spirit,
overflowing life, and exulting energy of Itubens.
And this in a first attempt ! Such genius had no
alternative but to perish. It never could have
realised its nobler conceptions, or acted up to its own
ideal of intellectual integrity.
At the same time we are bound to say, that we
only speak to the initiated. If the reader has not a
touch of the Van Amburgh or Gordon Cumming in
him—a certain natural predilection for the study of
two-legged ferocity, and human nature in the rough
—he may as well leave " Wuthering Heights" alone.
• " Wuthering Heights!" what a characteristic and
expressive title it is—to bred mountaineers and
moormen! but harsh and meaningless to cockneys
r and men of the plains. Those who can really
r appreciate Godwin and Broekden Brown may try
, " Wuthering Heights." To others it will bo
" caviare."