e could hardly well have been an event of more importance in
its way. If the best poems in Mr. Shorter's collection cannot stand
beside the best in Charlotte's editions of 1846 and 1850, many of them
reveal an aspect of Emily Bronte's genius hitherto unknown and undreamed
of; one or two even reveal a little more of the soul of Emily Bronte
than has yet been known.

There are no doubt many reasons for the world's indifference. The few
people in it who read poetry at all do not read Emily Bronte much; it is
as much as they can do to keep pace with the perpetual, swift procession
of young poets out of Vigo Street. There is a certain austerity about
Emily Bronte, a superb refusal of all extravagance, pomp, and
decoration, which makes her verses look naked to eyes accustomed to
young lyrics loaded with "jewels five-words long". About Emily Bronte
there is no emerald and beryl and chrysoprase; there are no vine-leaves
in her hair, and on her white Oread's feet there is no stain of purple
vintage. She knows nothing of the Dionysiac rapture and the sensuous
side of mysticism. She can give nothing to the young soul that thirsts
and hungers for these things.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the world should be callous to
Emily Bronte. What you are not prepared for is the appearance of
indifference in her editors. They are pledged by their office to a
peculiar devotion. And the circumstances of Emily Bronte's case made it
imperative that whoever undertook this belated introduction should show
rather more than a perfunctory enthusiasm. Her alien and lonely state
should have moved Mr. Clement Shorter to a passionate chivalry. It has
not even moved him to revise his proofs with perfect piety. Perfect
piety would have saved him from the oversight, innocent but deplorable,
of attributing to Emily Bronte four poems which Emily Bronte could not
possibly have written, which were in fact written by Anne:
"Despondency", "In Memory of a Happy Day in February", "A Prayer", and
"Confidence."[A] No doubt Mr. Shorter found them in Emily's handwriting;
but how could he, how _could_ he mistake Anne's voice for Emily's?

[Footnote A: Published among Charlotte Bronte's posthumous "Selections"
in 1850.]

My God (oh let me call Thee mine,
Weak, wretched sinner though I be),
My trembling soul would fain be Thine;
My feeble faith still clings to Thee.

It is Anne's voice at her feeblest and most depressed.

It is, perhaps, a li