explosion at the prominence of these agreeable viands in the
book.

The curious story of the struggles of the Brontë girls to get published
hardly concerns us, and Emily's work, _Wuthering Heights_,[24] is one of
those isolated books which, whatever their merit, are rather ornaments
than essential parts in novel history. But this is not the case with
_Jane Eyre_ (1847), _Shirley_ (1849), _Villette_ (1852), and _The
Professor_ (1857) (but written much earlier). These are all examples of
the determination to base novels on actual life and experience. Few
novelists have ever kept so close to their own part in these as
Charlotte Brontë did, though she accompanied, permeated, and to a
certain extent transformed her autobiography and observation by a
strong romantic and fantastic imaginative element. Deprive Thackeray and
Dickens of nearly all their humour and geniality, take a portion only of
the remaining genius of each in the ratio of about 2 _Th_. to 1 _D_.,
add a certain dash of the old terror-novel and the German fantastic
tale, moisten with feminine spirit and water, and mix thoroughly: and
you have something very like Charlotte Brontë. But it is necessary to
add further, and it is her great glory, the perfume and atmosphere of
the Yorkshire moors, which she had in not quite such perfection as her
sister Emily, but in combination with more general novel-gift. Her
actual course of writing was short, and it could probably in no case
have been long; she wanted wider and, perhaps, happier experience, more
literature, more man-and-woman-of-the-worldliness, perhaps a sweeter and
more genial temper. But the English novel would have been incomplete
without her and her sister; they are, as wholes, unlike anybody else,
and if they are not exactly great they have the quality of greatness.
Above all, they kept novel and romance together--a deed which is great
without any qualification or drawback.