"
Finally, of Emily Bronte's face the world holds only an obviously
unskilled reflection, and of her aspect no record worth having. Wild
fugitive, she vanished, she escaped, she broke away, exiled by the
neglect of her contemporaries, banished by their disrespect outlawed by
their contempt, dismissed by their indifference. And such an one was she
as might rather have pronounced upon these the sentence passed by
Coriolanus under sentence of expulsion; she might have driven the world
from before her face and cast it out from her presence as he condemned
his Romans: "_I_ banish you."
CHARMIAN
"She is not Cleopatra, but she is at least Charmian," wrote Keats,
conscious that his damsel was not in the vanward of the pageant of
ladies. One may divine that he counted the ways wherein she was not
Cleopatra, the touches whereby she fell short of and differed from, nay,
in which she mimicked, the Queen.
In like manner many of us have for some years past boasted of our
appreciation of the inferior beauty, the substitute, the waiting
gentlewoman of corrupt or corruptible heart; Keats confessed, but did not
boast. It is a vaunt now, an emulation, who shall discover her beauty,
who shall discern her.
She is most conspicuous in the atmosphere in smoke "effects," in the
"lurid," the "mystery"; such are the perfervid words. But let us take
the natural and authentic light as our symbol of Cleopatra, her sprightly
port, her infinite jest, her bluest vein, her variety, her laugh.
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