To say this is by no means to detract from their rare value. The romances of adventure, of incident, of intrigue, of character, of society, or of humour, depend on a great variety of observation and a multiplicity of contrasts. There is not much of Walter Scott, as a man, in _Ivanhoe_ or of Alexander Dumas in the _Trois Mousquetaires_; and Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Bulwer, Miss Edgeworth, Stevenson, and Meredith--even Miss Austen and George Eliot--seek to paint men and women whom they conceive and whom we may see and know, and not themselves and their own home circle. But Charlotte Bronte told us her own life, her own feelings, sufferings, pride, joy, and ambition. She bared for us her own inner soul, and all that it had known and desired, and this she did with a noble, pure, simple, but intense truth. There was neither egoism, nor monotony, nor commonplace in it. It was all coloured with native imagination and a sense of true art. There is ample room in Art for these subjective idealisations of even the narrowest world. Shelley's lyrics are intensely self-centred, but no one can find in them either realism or egoism. The field in prose is far more limited, and the risk of becoming tedious and morbid is greater. But a true artist can now and then in prose produce most precious portraits of self and glowing autobiographic fantasies of a noble kind. And Charlotte Bronte was a true artist. She was also more than this; a brave, sincere, high-minded woman, with a soul, as the great moralist saw, "of impetuous honesty." She was not seduced, or even moved, by her sudden fame. She put aside the prospect of success, money, and social distinction as things which revolted her. She was quite right. With all her genius it was strictly and narrowly limited; she was ignorant of the world to a degree immeasurably below that of any other known writer of fiction; her world was incredibly scanty and barren. She had to spin everything out of her own brain in that cold, still, gruesome Haworth parsonage. It was impossible for any genius to paint a world of which it was as ignorant as a child. Hence, in eight years she only completed four tales for publication. And she did right. With her strict limits both of brain and of experience she could not go further. Perhaps, as it was, she did more than was needed. _Shirley_ and _Villette_, with all their fine scenes, are interesting now mainly because Charlotte Bronte wrote them, and because they throw light upon her brain and nature. _The Professor_ is entirely so, and has hardly any other quality. We need not groan that we have no more than we have from her pen. _Jane Eyre_ would suffice for many reputations and alone will live.