Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/105

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Charlotte Brontë's works it was seemingly somewhat easier than perhaps it should have been at the time of their appearance to detect the living and not always other than unoffending antitypes. If the immortal three curates of 'Shirley' did indeed admit their respective likenesses, and accept for each other and themselves the names by which they were rebaptized in such bitter waters of ridicule—a font filled rather from the springs of Marah than the stream of Jordan, which served Chateaubriand's purpose so much better than the upshot of the ceremony would seem to have served his prince—it must in common justice be owned that the admirable candour and good humour of her models should have touched their satirist with a sense of something keener than compunction; for