be an immature work of
Charlotte's. Even after her death, her eulogist, Sydney Dobell, was so
far from recognizing her, that he seems to have had a lingering doubt as
to Ellis Bell's identity until Charlotte convinced him of his error.

And only the other day a bold attempt was made to tear from Emily Bronte
the glory that she has won at last from time. The very latest theory,[A]
offered to the world as a marvellous discovery, the fruit of passionate
enthusiasm and research, is the old, old theory that Charlotte, and not
Emily, wrote _Wuthering Heights_. And Sydney Dobell, with his little
error, is made to serve as a witness. In order to make out a case for
Charlotte, the enthusiast and researcher is obliged to disparage every
other work of Emily's. He leans rashly enough on the assumption that her
"Gondal Chronicles" were, in their puerility, beneath contempt, still
more rashly on his own opinion that she was no poet.

[Footnote A: _The Key to the Bronte Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby. See
Appendix I.]

If this were the only line he took, this amusing theorist might be left
alone. The publication of the _Complete Poems_ settles him. The value,
the really priceless value, of his undertaking is in the long array of
parallel passages from the prose of Charlotte and of Emily with which he
endeavours to support it. For, so far from supporting it, these columns
are the most convincing, the most direct and palpable refutation of his
theory. If any uncritical reader should desire to see for himself
wherein Charlotte and Emily Bronte differed; in what manner, with what
incompatible qualities and to what an immeasurable degree the younger
sister was pre-eminent, he cannot do better than study those parallel
passages. If ever there was a voice, a quality, an air absolutely apart
and distinct, not to be approached by, or confounded with any other, it
is Emily Bronte's.

It was the glare of Charlotte's fame that caused in her lifetime that
blindness and confusion. And Emily, between pride and a superb
indifference, suffered it. She withdrew, with what seemed an obstinate
perversity, into her own magnificent obscurity. She never raised a hand
to help herself. She left no record, not a note or a word to prove her
authorship of _Wuthering Heights_. Until the appearance in 1910 of her
_Complete Poems_ the world had no proof of it but Charlotte's statement.
It was considered enough, in Charlotte's lifetime. The world accepted
her dis