Messrs. Aylott. Each of them had written a prose tale, hoping
that the three might be published together. "Wuthering Heights"
and "Agnes Grey" are before the world. The third--Charlotte's
contribution--is yet in manuscript, but will be published shortly
after the appearance of this memoir. The plot in itself is of no
great interest; but it is a poor kind of interest that depends
upon startling incidents rather than upon dramatic development of
character; and Charlotte Bronte never excelled one or two
sketches of portraits which she had given in "The Professor",
nor, in grace of womanhood, ever surpassed one of the female
characters there described. By the time she wrote this tale, her
taste and judgment had revolted against the exaggerated idealisms
of her early girlhood, and she went to the extreme of reality,
closely depicting characters as they had shown themselves to her
in actual life: if there they were strong even to coarseness,--as
was the case with some that she had met with in flesh and blood
existence,--she "wrote them down an ass;" if the scenery of such
life as she saw was for the most part wild and grotesque, instead
of pleasant or picturesque, she described it line for line. The
grace of the one or two scenes and characters, which are drawn
rather from her own imagination than from absolute fact stand out
in exquisite relief from the deep shadows and wayward lines of
others, which call to mind some of the portraits of Rembrandt.

The three tales had tried their fate in vain together, at length
they were sent forth separately, and for many months with still-
continued ill success. I have mentioned this here, because, among
the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to
Manchester, Charlotte told me that her tale came back upon her
hands, curtly rejected by some publisher, on the very day when