nse of true art. There is
ample room in Art for these subjective idealisations of even the
narrowest world. Shelley's lyrics are intensely self-centred, but no
one can find in them either realism or egoism. The field in prose is
far more limited, and the risk of becoming tedious and morbid is
greater. But a true artist can now and then in prose produce most
precious portraits of self and glowing autobiographic fantasies of a
noble kind.

And Charlotte Bronte was a true artist. She was also more than this; a
brave, sincere, high-minded woman, with a soul, as the great moralist
saw, "of impetuous honesty." She was not seduced, or even moved, by
her sudden fame. She put aside the prospect of success, money, and
social distinction as things which revolted her. She was quite right.
With all her genius it was strictly and narrowly limited; she was
ignorant of the world to a degree immeasurably below that of any other
known writer of fiction; her world was incredibly scanty and barren.
She had to spin everything out of her own brain in that cold, still,
gruesome Haworth parsonage. It was impossible for any genius to paint
a world of which it was as ignorant as a child. Hence, in eight years
she only completed four tales for publication. And she did right.
With her strict limits both of brain and of experience she could not go
further. Perhaps, as it was, she did more than was needed. _Shirley_
and _Villette_, with all their fine scenes, are interesting now mainly
because Charlotte Bronte wrote them, and because they throw light upon
her brain and nature. _The Professor_ is entirely so, and has hardly
any other quality. We need not groan that we have no more than we have
from her pen. _Jane Eyre_ would suffice for many reputations and alone
will live.

In considering the gifted Bronte family, it is really Charlotte alone
who finally concerns us. Emily Bronte was a wild, original, and
striking creature, but her one book is a kind of prose _Kubla Khan_--a
nightmare of the superheated imagination. Anne Bronte always seems but
a pale reflection of the family. In any other family she might be
interesting--just as "Barrel Mirabeau" was the good boy and fool of the
Mirabeau family, though in another family he would have been the genius
and the profligate. And so, the poems of the whole three are
interesting as psychologic studies, but have hardly a single stanza
that can be called poetry at all. It is significan