Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/31

Rh is, I suppose, at length published, at least Mr. Newby has sent the authors their six copies. I wonder how it will be received. I should say it merits the epithets of vigorous and original much more decidedly than Jane Eyre did. Agnes Grey should please such critics as Mr. Lewes, for it is true and "unexaggerated" enough. The books are not well got up; they abound in errors of the press.'

She writes on 21st December to W. S. Williams: 'You are not far wrong in your judgment respecting Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, Ellis has a strong original mind full of strange though sombre power. When he writes poetry that power speaks in language at once condensed, elaborated, and refined, but in prose it breaks forth in scenes which shock more than they attract. Ellis will improve, however, because he knows his defects. Agnes Grey is the mirror of the mind of the writer. The orthography and punctuation of the books are mortifying to a degree. Almost all the errors that are corrected in the proof sheets appear intact in what should have been fair copies.' I have before me Emily Brontë's own copy of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. Never in all literature was any coupling so