Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/70

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windy moonlit vigil, where the words have in them the very breath and magic and riotous radiance, the utter rapture and passion and splendour of the high sonorous night. No other woman that I know of, not George Sand herself, could have written a prose sentence of such exalted and perfect poetry as this:—'The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale; as glad as if she gave herself to its fierce caress with love.' Nothing can beat that; no one can match it: it is the first and last absolute and sufficient and triumphant word ever to be said on the subject. It paints wind like David Cox, and light like Turner. To find anything like it in verse we must go to the highest springs of all; to Pindar or to Shelley or to Hugo. And these, in the famous phrase of Brummell's valet—these are her failures.