th regard to the authorship of "Jane Eyre" they will be found at once
curious and interesting from the plain and earnest sincerity of the
writer. She subsequently enters on an analysis and discussion of
"Wuthering Heights" as a work of art;--in the closing paragraph of her
preface to that novel, insinuating an argument, if not a defence, the
urgency of which is not sufficiently admitted by the bulk of the world
of readers. Speaking of the fiendlike hero of her sister's work, she
says:--

"Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like
Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this
I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns
something of which he is not always master--something that
at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay
down rules and devise principles, and to rules and
principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and
then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a
time when it will no longer consent 'to harrow the valleys,
or be bound with a band in the furrow'--when it 'laughs at
the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the
driver'--when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of
sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and
you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a
Mermaid or a Madonna, as fate or inspiration directs. Be the
work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little
choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--the nominal
artist--your share in it has been to work passively under
dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that
would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor
changed at your caprice."

It might have been added, that to those whose experience of men and
manners is neither extensive nor various, the construction of a
self-consistent monster is easier than the delineation of an imperfect
or inconsistent reality--with all its fallings-short, its fitful
aspirations, its mixed enterprises, and its interrupted dreams. But we
must refrain from further speculation and illustration:--enough having
been given to justify our characterizing this volume, with its preface,
as a more than usually interesting contribution to the history of female
authorship in England.

Pertinently of these biographies, the _Athenaeum_ remarks that "some of
the most daring and original