Page:The life of Charlotte Brontë (IA lifeofcharlotteb02gaskrich).pdf/210

 gone through with impunity, and with unaltered spirits; associations too tender, regrets too bitter, sprang out of it. Meantime, the Cornhill books now, as heretofore, are my best medicine,—affording a solace which could not be yielded by the very same books procured from a common library.

"Already I have read the greatest part of the 'Roman;' passages in it possess a kindling virtue such as true poetry alone can boast; there are images of genuine grandeur; there are lines that at once stamp themselves on the memory. Can it be true that a new planet has risen on the heaven, whence all stars seemed fast fading? I believe it is; for this Sydney or Dobell speaks with a voice of his own, unborrowed, unmimicked. You hear Tennyson, indeed, sometimes, and Byron sometimes, in some passages of the 'Roman;' but then again you have a new note,—nowhere clearer than in a certain brief lyric, sang in a meeting of minstrels, a sort of dirge over a dead brother;—that not only charmed the ear and brain, it soothed the heart."

The following extract will be read with interest as conveying her thoughts after the perusal of Dr. Arnold's Life:—

1em

"I have just finished reading the 'Life of Dr. Arnold;' but now when I wish, according to your request, to express what I think of it, I do not find the task very easy; proper terms seem wanting. This is