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FEMALE NOVELISTS.
No. III.—"Currer Bell."
Of the many among whom "Jane Eyre" made a sensation, not a few professed themselves a little shocked. The author was so wayward, so free-spoken, so unconventional. The book was to be read gingerly, with caution, with suspicion; it was evidently by some one not used, or willing, to run in harness of the old style—some one not cumbered with much serving to the prejudices, primnesses, and proprieties of genteel fiction as by law established —some one not over punctilious touting her p's and q's, not sedulously trained to mind her stops. The Sympson daughters, in "Shirley," are described as having penetrated the mystery of the abomination of desolation: and what was it? They had discovered that unutterable thing in the characteristic others call Originality. The signs of this evil they were quick to recognise wherever developed—in look, word, or deed; whether they read it in the fresh, vigorous style of a book, or listened to it in unhackneyed, pure, expressive language and then they shuddered and recoiled at what, being unintelligible, must be bad. Many are the Misses Sympson of our reading world. And while they felt the power of this new aspirant, they were half-disposed to taboo her on the score of this same βδελυγμα της ερημωσεως, Originality. "Let it be denounced and chained up." When Shirley Keeldar sang to the Misses Sympson, and gave dramatic expression to the ballad, and breathed feeling into the softness, and poured force around the passion—what could they do but look on her as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. "What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality—so unlike a school-girl? Decidedly not: it was strange; it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper." Even so thought correct and exemplary officials of the spinster guild, when canvassing the peculiarities of Currer Bell. She was not one-sided enough for them: how to take her measure they knew not; how to define her was a problem undreamt of in their philosophy. With the toga virilis she had put on a "ditto-to-match" demeanour, quite puzzling to folks
Content to dwell in decencies for ever.
Especially was this antipathy in force at a time when she was the accredited author of that wild, wilful, and some think, wicked book, "Wuthering Heights"—written in a tone of such reckless defiance of ordinary canons of art. Now that she has expressly disclaimed the authorship of that nondescript tale, it may be easy for us to express our ex post facto opinion that there is no such evidence of identity in the origin of the two works ("Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights") as to justify the peremptory affirmative decision at which many arrived. Mr. Rochester is grim enough; but Heathcliff is positively unique in grimness—too big, black, foul a blot, to have ever dropped from Currer Bell's pen. The texture of his story is so abnormal, its warp so monstrous, its woof so grotesque, that it is almost a relief to know that Currer Bell did not, as we surmised she could not, perpetrate such a lusus naturæ. At the same time, there was sufficient resemblance in a certain general mode of ex-
