The author of the phrase "The
child contracted a partiality for his toys" had no need to fear any
authors she might meet at dinner. Against Charlotte Bronte's sorrows her
worse manner of English never stands for a moment. Those vain phrases
fall from before her face and her bared heart. To the heart, to the
heart she took the shafts of her griefs. She tells them therefore as she
suffered them, vitally and mortally. "A great change approached.
Affliction came in that shape which to anticipate is dread; to look back
on, grief. My sister Emily first declined. Never in all her life had
she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger
now. She made haste to leave us." "I remembered where the three were
laid--in what narrow, dark dwellings." "Do you know this place? No, you
never saw it; but you recognize the nature of these trees, this
foliage--the cypress, the willow, the yew. Stone crosses like these are
not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim garlands of everlasting flowers.
Here is the place." "Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow,
and sees a new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at
once that the insufferable moment draws nigh." In the same passage comes
another single word of genius, "the sound that so wastes our strength."
And, fine as "wastes," is the "wronged" of another sentence--"some
wronged and fettered wild beast or bird.
Pages:
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72