itself so monstrous a fable that it ought to be
excluded from a book of fairy tales. The characters do not do what they
ought to do, nor what they would do, nor, it might be said, such is the
insanity of the atmosphere, not even what they intend to do. The conduct
of Rochester is so primevally and superhumanly caddish that Bret Harte
in his admirable travesty scarcely exaggerated it. 'Then, resuming his
usual manner, he threw his boots at my head and withdrew,' does perhaps
reach to something resembling caricature. The scene in which Rochester
dresses up as an old gipsy has something in it which is really not to be
found in any other branch of art, except in the end of the pantomime,
where the Emperor turns into a pantaloon. Yet, despite this vast
nightmare of illusion and morbidity and ignorance of the world, 'Jane
Eyre' is perhaps the truest book that was ever written. Its essential
truth to life sometimes makes one catch one's breath. For it is not true
to manners, which are constantly false, or to facts, which are almost
always false; it is true to the only existing thing which is true,
emotion, the irreducible minimum, the indestructible germ. It would not
matter a single straw if a Bronte story were a hundred times more
moonstruck and improbable than 'Jane Eyre,' or a hundred times more
moonstruck and improbable than 'Wuthering Heights.' It would not matter
if George Read stood on his head, and Mrs Read rode on a dragon, if
Fairfax Rochester had four eyes and St John Rivers three legs, the story
would still remain the truest story in the world. The typical Bronte
character is, indeed, a kind of monster. Everything in him except the
essential is dislocated. His hands are on his legs and his feet on his
arms, his nose is above his eyes, but his heart is in the right place.

The great and abiding truth for which the Bronte cycle of fiction stands
is a certain most important truth about the enduring spirit of youth,
the truth of the near kinship between terror and joy. The Bronte
heroine, dingily dressed, badly educated, hampered by a humiliating
inexperience, a kind of ugly innocence, is yet, by the very fact of her
solitude and her gaucherie, full of the greatest delight that is
possible to a human being, the delight of expectation, the delight of an
ardent and flamboyant ignorance. She serves to show how futile it is of
humanity to suppose that pleasure can be attained chiefly by putting on
evening dress every eveni