Page:Life and Works of the Sisters Bronte - Volume I.djvu/23

 Simply, one might say, Charlotte Bronte herself. Litera- ture, says Joubert, has been called the expression of society ; and so no doubt it is, looked at as a whole. In the single writer, however, it appears rather as the expression of stud- ies, or temper, or personality. 'And this last is the best. There are books so fine that literature in them is but the expression of those that write them.' In other words, there are books where the writer seems to be everything, the mate- rial employed, the environment, almost nothing. The main secret of the charm that clings to Charlotte Bronte's books is, and will always be, the contact which they give us with her own fresh, indomitable, surprising personality surpris- ing, above all. In spite of its conventionalities of scheme, 'Jane Eyre' has, in detail, in conversation, in the painting of character, that perpetual magic of the unexpected which overrides a thousand faults, and keeps the mood of the reader happy and alert. The expedients of the plot may irri- tate or chill the artistic sense ; the voice of the story-teller, in its inflections of passion, or feeling or reverie, charms and holds the ear, almost from first to last. The general plan maybe commonplace, the ideas even of no great profundity; but the book is original. How often in the early scenes of childhood or school-life does one instinctively expect the conventional solution, the conventional softening, the con- ventional prettiness or quaintness, that so many other story- tellers, of undoubted talent, could not have resisted ! And it never comes. Hammer-like, the blows of a passionate realism descend. Jane Eyre, the little helpless child, is never comforted ; Mrs. Reid, the cruel aunt, is never sorry for her cruelties ; Bessie, the kind nurse, is not very kind, she does not break the impression, she satisfies no instinct of poetic compensation, she only just makes the story credi- ble, the reader's assent possible. So, at Lowood, Helen Burns is not a suffering angel ; there is nothing consciously pretty or touching in the wonderful picture of her ; reality, with its discords, its infinite novelties, lends word and magic to the passion of Charlotte's memory of her dead sister ; all is varied, living, poignant, full of the inexhaustible savour of