that owed
so little to influence as theirs.

I know that in Charlotte's case there is said to have been an Influence.
An Influence without which she would have remained for ever in
obscurity, with _Villette_, with _Shirley_, with _Jane Eyre_, with _The
Professor_, unborn, unconceived.

Need I say that the Influence is--M. Heger?

"The sojourn in Brussels," says Mr. Clement Shorter, "made Miss Bronte
an author," and he is only following Sir Wemyss Reid, who was the first
to establish Brussels as the turning-point. Mr. Shorter does not believe
in M. Heger as the inspirer of passion, but he does believe in him as
the inspirer of genius. He thinks it exceedingly probable that had not
circumstances led Charlotte Bronte to spend some time at Brussels not
only would "the world never have heard of her", but it would never have
heard of her sisters. He is quite certain about Charlotte anyhow; she
could not have "arrived" had she not met M. Heger. "She went," he says,
"to Brussels full of the crude ambitions, the semi-literary impulses
that are so common on the fringe of the writing world. She left Brussels
a woman of genuine cultivation, of educated tastes, armed with just the
equipment that was to enable her to write the books of which two
generations of her countrymen have been justly proud."

This is saying that Charlotte Bronte had no means of expression before
she wrote _devoirs_ under M. Heger. True, her genius did not find itself
until after she left Brussels, that is to say, not until she was nearly
thirty. I have not read any of her works as Lord Charles Albert Florian
Wellesley, and I do not imagine they were works of genius. But that only
means that Charlotte Bronte's genius took time. She was one of those
novelists who do not write novels before they are nearly thirty. But she
could write. Certain fragments of her very earliest work show that from
the first she had not only the means, but very considerable mastery of
expression. What is more, they reveal in germ the qualities that marked
her style in its maturity. Her styles rather, for she had several. There
is her absolutely simple style, in which she is perfect; her didactic
style, her fantastic style, which are mere temporary aberrations; and
her inspired style, in which at her worst she is merely flamboyant and
redundant, and at her best no less than perfect. You will find a faint,
embryonic foreshadowing of her perfections in the fragments given by
Mrs. Ga