The aspect of Charlotte Brontë which I have tried to indicate to you
to-day, and which I have sketched thus hastily and slightly against the
background of her almost voiceless residence in Dewsbury, is far from
being a complete or unique one. I offer it to you only as a single facet
of her wonderful temperament, of the rich spectacle of her talent. I
have ventured to propose it, because, in the multiplication of honours
and attentions, the tendency to deify the human, to remove those
phenomena of irregularity which are the evidence of mortal strength,
grows irresistible, and we find ourselves, unconsciously, substituting a
waxen bust, with azure eyes and golden hair, for the homely features
which (if we could but admit it) so infinitely better match the honest
stories. Let us not busy ourselves to make excuse for our austere little
genius of the moors. Let us be content to take her exactly as she was,
with her rebellion and her narrowness, her angers and her urgencies,
perceiving that she had to be this sorrowful offspring of a poisoned
world in order to clear the wells of feeling for others, and to win from
emancipated generations of free souls the gratitude which is due to a
precursor.

[Footnote 7: Address delivered before the Brontë Society in the Town
Hall of Dewsbury, March 28th, 1903.]




THE NOVELS OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI


It is not easy for a man whose sovereign ambition is seen to be leading
him with great success in a particular direction to obtain due credit