Page:The Professor (1857 Volume 2).djvu/274



Wuthering Heights' is strangely original. It bears a resemblance to some of those irregular German tales in which the writers, giving the reins to their fancy, represent personages as swayed and impelled to evil by supernatural influences. But they give spiritual identity to evil impulses, while Ellis Bell more naturally shows them as the offspring of the unregenerated heart. He displays considerable power in his creations. They have all the angularity of misshapen growth, and form in this respect a striking contrast to those regular forms we are accustomed to meet with in English fiction. They exhibit nothing of the composite character. There is in them no trace of ideal models. They are so new, so wildly grotesque, so entirely without art, that they strike us as proceeding from a mind of limited experience, but of original energy, and of a singular and distinctive cast. We do not know whether the author writes with any purpose; but we can speak of one effect of his production. It strongly shows the brutalising influence of unchecked passion. His characters are a commentary on the truth that there is no tyranny in the world like that which thoughts of evil exercise in the daring and reckless breast. Another reflection springing from the narrative is—that temper is often spoiled in the years of childhood. 'The child is father to the man.' The pains and crosses of its youthful years are engrafted in its blood, and form a sullen and a violent disposition."—Britannia.

"We look upon 'Wuthering Heights' as the flight of an impatient fancy, fluttering in the very exultation of young wings; sometimes beating against its solitary bars, but turning rather to exhaust, in a circumscribed space, the energy and