Brontë_, I found a mass of material (its existence I, at any rate, had
not suspected) that could not be dealt with in the limits of the
original essay.

The book is, and can only be, the slightest of all slight appreciations.
None the less it has been hard and terrible for me to write it. Not only
had I said nearly all that I had to say already, but I was depressed at
the very start by that conviction of the absurdity of trying to say
anything at all, after all that has been said, about Anne, or Emily, or
Charlotte Brontë.

Anne's case, perhaps, was not so difficult. For obvious reasons, Anne
Brontë will always be comparatively virgin soil. But it was impossible
to write of Charlotte after Mrs. Gaskell; impossible to say more of
Emily than Madame Duclaux has said; impossible to add one single little
fact to the vast material, so patiently amassed, so admirably arranged
by Mr. Clement Shorter. And when it came to appreciation there were Mr.
Theodore Watts-Dunton, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Mr. Birrell, and
Mrs. Humphry Ward, lying along the ground. When it came to eulogy, after
Mr. Swinburne's _Note on Charlotte Brontë_, neither Charlotte nor Emily
have any need of praise.

And on Emily Brontë, M. Maeterlinck has spoken the one essential, the
one perfect and final and sufficient word. I have "lifted" it
unblushingly; for no other word comes near to rendering the unique, the
haunting, the indestructible impression that she makes.

So, because all the best things about the Brontës have been said
already, I have had to fall back on the humble day-labour of clearing
away some of the rubbish that has gathered round them.