Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/18

 women, whose names make up with Mrs. Browning's the perfect trinity for England of highest female fame, is one which even the prodigal Genius or God who presided at her birth could not or would not accord to the passionate and lyric-minded poetess. It is possibly the very rarest of all powers or faculties of imagination applied to actual life and individual character; I can trace it in no living English authoress one half so strongly or so clearly marked as in the work of the illustrious and honoured lady—honoured scarcely more by admiration from some quarters than by obloquy from others—to whom we owe the over-true story of 'Joshua Davidson,' and the worthiest tribute ever yet paid to the memory of Walter Savage Landor. But in