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    344 NOTICES OF BOOKS.

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    ¦ ^* Reprin Sail Ts . . B Mrs Y Acton . ...

    Brussels quent works and , sketcMng to tlie real 1 her , g characters iving us her closel actual y from experiences the life . In in

    , " Agues Grey , " Anne tells us what she did and suffered as governess . Emily , on the contrary , invents . She does not write of the

    governess or Brussels episodes of her life ; these , as it seeins to us , left no impression on her . She does Dot write of the individual

    people and circumstances round her ; we would almost venture to that not one of her characters is a portrait . From her own

    imag say ination she evolves her plot and its actors ; and yet this unreal drama has in it an ideal truth in which the other half-autobiographic

    books fail . It is an embodiment of the spirit of that wild north country . The impressions received from childhood , through her

    whole life , ( save during her short absence from Haworth , —and then she was absent in body only ) find expression here . She does not

    , recount personal adventures , nor portray personal acquaintances , as her sisters do whileon the other handher inspiration is drawn

    from her immediate ; and , ordinary surroundings , , not , as with them , from circumstances to themselves exceptional and foreign . She

    paints , whether consciously or unconsciously , the picture of that Nature which had nurtured her . If this fiction be measured by the

    rules of art , it will of course be found disproportional and unsymmetrical ; it is an immature Titan , not a full-formed human figure ,

    and there is a difficulty in cutting a suit of criticism to fit it . Love and Hate are personified in the character of Heathcliffe ; both

    superhumanly intensified , so that he is not a loving and hating man , but a demoniac . To make the same person possessed by the two

    antagonistic demons was a grand idea , having a correlativeness in it deeply true . The human origin of these two demons ; the

    tyranny of the powerful over the powerless producing Hate , and the sympathy of like with like producing Love , is wrought out so

    naturally , as to make the strength of these passions seem scarcely supernatural . Heathcliff has his human side . "We find ourselves

    pitying him , not because he shows any tenderness or ruth , but because he is a mortal so carried away by a power pitiless and

    resistless . The effect of that opening part of the story , where he sobs at the little window" Come in ! come in ! Cattydo come . Oh

    , , do — once more . Gh ! my heart ' s darling ! hear me this time , Catherine , at least ! " never wholly leaves us through all the after

    brutalities . Catherine , ( the elder , ) too , with her strong love for Heathcliff , and her weak affection for her husband , is a character

    unique . In this love for Pleathcliff there is no shadow of impurity . Only those of impure mind could interpret it in this light . It is a

    natural affinity , a spiritual sympathy , which has nothing of the flesh in it . In her is repeated the good weakness of Edgar Linton and

    the bad strength of Pleathcliff ; and the latter , when he is present , has power to draw her to him , as a magnet draws steel . The

    younger Catherine ( as it has _Tbeen before observed ) is precisely

    what the child of Edgar Linton and his wife must have been ; and

    344 Notices Of Books.

    344 NOTICES OF BOOKS .

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1860, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011860/page/56/