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acquaintance with the classics to an extent very rare among men so multifariously occupied as he was. In one ambition only he altogether failed; but unfortunately that ambition was his most burning and unquenchable one. There was something almost pitiable about the way in which he went on publishing poem after poem without ever attaining such success as would place him high even in the second rank of writers of verse. Nature, bountiful to him in many respects, had denied him the poetical faculty; even his highest performances of this kind would have been better had they been written in prose. His son, the present Lord Lytton (born 1831), better known as a writer under his pseudonym of "Owen Meredith," has been more fortunate in his poetical attempts. All his poems, if occasionally marred by faults of diction and sentiment, have about them that indescribable something which distinguishes the work of a genuine poet from that of the mere verse-writer. Few novels have made a greater sensation at their first appearance than "Jane Eyre," published in 1847. All competent critics, however much they might differ about certain. features in the work, were agreed in acknowledging its original power and its thrilling interest, and conjectures were rife as to who could be the unknown "Currer Bell" whose name appeared on its title-page. Most of these conjectures were very wide of the mark. "Currer Bell" was the name adopted by Charlotte Brontë, a poor girl, brought up in a homely parsonage amid the bleak wilds of Yorkshire, without any literary friends to aid her in her struggle for fame. There are few more interesting and pathetic stories than that of her and her gifted sisters Emily and Anne. Charlotte, the eldest of the three, was born at Thornton, in Bradford parish, in 1816. Four years later her father, who was a clergyman, removed to Haworth, and there she was brought up and wrote her wonderful novels. Her life was a sad one enough, chequered by poverty, by poor health, by family trials, and by the yearnings of an ambition which was late in finding any fit field for its exercise. All the family were remarkably gifted, and many were the manuscripts which proceeded from their pens,

lence, have come from his pen. He is as much at home in giving dramatic utterance to the reflections of the "Northern Farmer" as in picturing the feelings of St. Simeon Stylites. Among the least successful of his works must be placed his dramas, full as they are of passages of noble poetic eloquence. Why the writer who has shown such admirable dramatic skill in the monologues put in the mouth of Ulysses, the Northern Farmer, and others, should have comparatively failed when he came to write a complete play, is a question which must have puzzled many readers. The answer to it may perhaps be found in the following extract from Mr. W. C. Roscoe, who has written one of the best of the many estimates of the Laureate's genius. "He is," says Mr. Roscoe, "at once the most creative and the least dramatic of poets; the nearest to Shakespeare, and the furthest from him. He has in the highest degree the fundamental poetic impulse. He fuses all things, and golden shapes spring from his mould, with only the material in common with his ore; rather, ideas are sown in his brain, and spring up in concrete organic forms. The passion to reproduce in concrete wholes constitutes, indeed, that fundamental poetic impulse which we have ascribed to him. He may be didactic, philosophical, oratorical, sentimental, but all these things he encloses in a golden ball of poesy. He may have, and often has, an ultimate moral object. This is by no means inconsistent with the highest effort of artistic production, as has been sometimes too easily assumed. It is true, you cannot comply with the conditions of art, you cannot have the feelings of the artist, if you drive directly by the medium of verse at a moral result or an intellectual conclusion; but you may have these for your ultimate object, and you may embody them in true poetical forms. . . . To say that Tennyson's genius is not dramatic, is certainly to contradict some of his critics. Something depends on what is meant by the term. He certainly has the power of penetrating the mood of another mind; but it will generally be found that this is another mind in a special situation; and this is a very different thing from exhibiting character through the medium of situations and the self-expression

Charlotte Brontë's Writings.

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"Mary Barton," a story of factory life, "Ruth," and "Crauford."

Charlotte Brontë had high nctions of her calling. In signal contrast to the many lady-novelists, who nowadays pour forth novel after novel with such unceasing rapidity that the panting critic toils after them in vain, she published nothing till it was as good as she could make it, and never wrote except when she felt that she was really in the vein for doing so. Like all who labour conscientiously, she has had her reward. Her works have not, like many other fictions, been sought eagerly at circulating libraries for a season or two and then forgotten; on the other hand, they have taken a secure place in the list of English classics. Her style is intense, vivid, and glowing; and in the descriptions of certain aspects of nature — for example, of a stormy, cloudy sky-it would be hard to mention a writer who is her superior. There are no dull places in her narratives. Everywhere we find that vigour and animation which are a sure sign of a writer having fully matured his conceptions. Harriet Martineau complained that in her novels she always wrote as if love was woman's chief, almost woman's only, interest in life. There is a good deal of force in this remark, but no writer had ever a more pure and highsouled idea of what passionate love really is than Charlotte Brontë had. Her want of knowledge of the usages of society, and her limited experience of life and manners, led her into some mistakes, but they are so comparatively insignificant as in no way to detract from the nobleness of her work. We entirely agree with Mr. W. C. Roscoe1 in utterly repudiating the cry of "coarseness" with which "Jane Eyre," in particular, was assailed. "Coarse materials, indeed," he says, "she too much deals with, and her own style has something rude and uncompromising in it not always in accordance with customary ideas of what is becoming in a female writer; but it would be scarcely possible to name a writer who, in handling such difficult subject-matter, carries the reader so safely through by the

1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 351.

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graceful dramatic poem of "Pippa Passes." In 1846 he was married to Miss Elizabeth Barrett, on the whole perhaps the greatest poetess England has produced. Our history now requires us to retrace our steps a little. Mrs. Barrett Browning (to give her at once the name by which she is best known to literature) was born in 1809, at Hope End, near Ledbury. Like Mr. Browning, she very early gave evidence of her taste for poetical composition. "I wrote verses," she says, “as I daresay many have done who never wrote any poems, very early: at eight years old and earlier. But what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will and remained with me; and from that day to this poetry has been a distinct object with me—an object to read, think, and live for. And I could make you laugh, although you could not make the public laugh, by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on obsolete muses from childish lips." Her first publication was an Essay on Mind," "a didactic poem," she writes, "written when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented of as worthy of all repentance." Several years after its publication were spent in the assiduous study of Greek literature, of which one result was a translation of the "Prometheus" of Eschylus. Other writings followed, and in 1850 her collected works, together with several new poems, were published. "Casa Guidi Windows," a poem commemorating the struggle of the Tuscans for liberty in 1849, appeared in 1851. "Aurora Leigh," a novel in verse, full of power, but occasionally exaggerated and spasmodic, was published in 1856. Mrs. Browning died at Florence in 1861. Apparently poured off hastily, without any attempt at correction or curtailment, her poems contain many flaws-faults of language, and faults of thought, but they also show genuine lyric impetuosity, true pathos, and unfailing freshness and force. Her so-called "Sonnets from the Portuguese," commemorating the progress of her wooing, are among the most enchanting love poems in the language.

Mr. Browning is a very voluminous poet. His writings since the publication of those mentioned above have been

by one who knew her well: "Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with the bent of her soul. The deeply lined face, the too marked and massive features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was the more impressive, because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the outward harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal-all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence of a wise benignant soul. But it was the voice which best.revealed her, a voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her uttered words with the mystery of a world of feeling that must remain untold. . . . And then, again, when, in moments of more intimate converse, some current of emotion would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was one not to be forgotten."

Like Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot was a most painstaking and conscientious writer. No ill-considered or slipshod sentence ever fell from her pen. Her rich culture and large knowledge of life in all its manifestations, give a Áreadth and accuracy to her delineations of character which are lacking in the products of Charlotte Brontë's more fiery and impetuous. genius. Her sympathy with all classes of society was wide, and proceeded from the general source of all such sympathythorough insight into their several modes of thought and life. Herself an unbeliever, she could do full justice to those of intense religious convictions, analysing and describing them in a way which showed that she thoroughly understood them. Her humour cannot be said to be of equal excellence and spontaneity to that of Dickens or Thackeray, but it is excellent of its kind, quiet and unobtrusive, and full of that kindly yet

1 Mr. F. W. H. Myers in the Century Magazine for November 1881.