Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/99

 other hand we can barely imagine that austere and fiery poetess, a creature so admirably and terribly compounded of tragic genius and Stoic heroism, a jester of pleasantry so bitter and so grim in those brief bleak flashes of northern humour that lighten across the byways of her book from the rigid old lips of the Calvinist farm-servant—we can barely, I say, conceive of her as exchanging such rapid passes of light bright fence in a laughing war of words with the reverend and gallant old Cossack Helstone as sharpen and quicken the dialogue and action of the most gracious and joyous interlude in 'Shirley.' Yet surely Charlotte should have known as well as she loved her sister; and therefore we may more reasonably and more confidently infer that but for the