that time; and so ended the year 1848.



CHAPTER III

An article on "Vanity Fair" and "Jane Eyre" had appeared in the
Quarterly Review of December, 1848. Some weeks after, Miss Bronte
wrote to her publishers, asking why it had not been sent to her;
and conjecturing that it was unfavourable, she repeated her
previous request, that whatever was done with the laudatory, all
critiques adverse to the novel might be forwarded to her without
fail. The Quarterly Review was accordingly sent. I am not aware
that Miss Bronte took any greater notice of the article than to
place a few sentences out of it in the mouth of a hard and vulgar
woman in "Shirley," where they are so much in character, that few
have recognised them as a quotation. The time when the article
was read was good for Miss Bronte; she was numbed to all petty
annoyances by the grand severity of Death. Otherwise she might
have felt more keenly than they deserved the criticisms which,
while striving to be severe, failed in logic, owing to the misuse
of prepositions; and have smarted under conjectures as to the
authorship of "Jane Eyre," which, intended to be acute, were
merely flippant. But flippancy takes a graver name when directed
against an author by an anonymous writer. We call it then
cowardly insolence.

Every one has a right to form his own conclusion respecting the
merits and demerits of a book. I complain not of the judgment
which the reviewer passes on "Jane Eyre." Opinions as to its