episode; and Mr. Brocklehurst, the Lowood plenipotentiary, the temporal and spiritual despot of defenceless orphanhood, whom we are as reluctant to believe, as many are confident in asserting, to be an actual personage, veiled with a pseudonym, in deference either to charity or the law of libel. The other clergyman, St. John Rivers, is in no sense one of our fancy portraits; respect him we must, but we could hardly "sit under" him without a sense of suffocation, or meet him in his parish rounds without thinking of the austere man, who reaps where he has not sowed, and gathers where he has not strawed. His sisters make amends; they have not only la lumière, but la chaleur of sunshine—of which no ray can be spared in that dreary moorland home.
As a tale of woman's endurance, illustrating the triumph of righteous will and penetrating intellect over passion and the sophistries of passion, the merit of "Jane Eyre" is pre-eminent. The book is spirit and it is life. It demands spirit and life in the reader; its power almost creates them in the prosiest of readers—in a dry-as-dust anatomy of a man, beneath the literal and fleshless ribs of death. Deep calleth unto deep; heart unto heart thrills its electric message. You feel yourself en rapport with a mind that has somewhat to disclose, and will disclose it in earnest, sincere, direct language. And for once the critics, too, might be earnest and sincere, when they proclaimed "Jane Eyre" the most extraordinary production that had issued from the press for years—when they set up their stereotyped formula, prophesying its destiny as the book of the season—and when they defined it as a work to make the pulses gallop, and the heart beat, and the eyes fill with tears.
Great was the expectation of the public from Currer Bell. The appearance of "Shirley" was an event. Sir Walter Scott[1]—a well-qualified observer—has remarked how often it happens, that a writer's previous reputation proves the greatest enemy which has to be encountered in a second attempt upon popular favour: exaggerated expectations are excited and circulated, and criticism, which had been seduced into former approbation by the pleasure of surprise, now stands awakened and alert to pounce upon every failing. The full-blown rose of literary triumph has thus its attendant thorn—sometimes its canker-worm too. Comparatively, "Shirley" was not a great success; positively, it was a book of distinguished vigour, originality, and eloquence.
Ir is rich in portraiture. .Some of the figures seem to stand out from their frames, instinct with life and motion, like the elder Vernon, in "Rob Roy." Shirley Keeldar herself, her soul bent on admiring the great, reverencing the good, being joyous with the genial; her countenance, when quiescent, wearing a mixture of wistfulness and carelessness—when animated, blending the wistfulness with a genial gaiety, seasoning the mirth with an unique flavour of sentiment; ever ready to satirise her own or any other person's enthusiasm; indolent in many things, reckless, and unconscious that her dreams are rare, her feelings peculiar—one who knows not, nor ever will know, the full value of that spring whose bright, fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green. "However kindly the hand," says the arbiter of her heart and fate, if it is feeble, it cannot bend Shirley; and she must be bent: it cannot curb her, and she
