d. He could certainly
draw with more idea of perspective than his sisters, and one or two
portraits by him are not wanting in merit. But there is no evidence of
any special writing faculty, and the words 'genius' and 'brilliant' which
have been freely applied to him are entirely misplaced. Branwell was
thirty-one years of age when he died, and it was only during the last
year or two of his life that opium and alcohol had made him
intellectually hopeless. Yet, unless we accept the preposterous
statement that he wrote _Wuthering Heights_, he would seem to have
composed nothing which gives him the slightest claim to the most
inconsiderable niche in the temple of literature.

Branwell appears to have worked side by side with his sisters in the
early years, and innumerable volumes of the 'little writing' bearing his
signature have come into my hands. Verdopolis, the imaginary city of his
sisters' early stories, plays a considerable part in Branwell's. _Real
Life in Verdopolis_ bears date 1833. _The Battle of Washington_ is
evidently a still more childish effusion. _Caractacus_ is dated 1830,
and the poems and tiny romances continue steadily on through the years
until they finally stop short in 1837--when Branwell is twenty years
old--with a story entitled _Percy_. By the light of subsequent events it
is interesting to note that a manuscript of 1830 bears the title of _The
Liar Detected_.

It would be unfair to take these crude productions of Branwell Bronte's
boyhood as implying that he had no possibilities in him of anything
better, but judging from the fact that his letters, as a man of eight and
twenty, are as undistinguished as his sister's are noteworthy at a like
age, we might well dismiss Branwell Bronte once and for all, were not
some epitome of his life indispensable in an account of the Bronte
circle.

Branwell was born at Thornton in 1817. When the family removed to
Haworth he studied at the Grammar School, although, doubtless, he owed
most of his earlier tuition to his father. When school days were over it
was decided that he should be an artist. To a certain William Robinson,
of Leeds, he was indebted for his first lessons. Mrs. Gaskell describes
a life-size drawing of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne which Branwell painted
about this period. The huge canvas stood for many years at the top of
the staircase at the parsonage. {123} In 1835 Branwell went up to London
with a view to becoming a pupil at t