It may be noted, as characteristic of all Mr. Brontë's children, that, united with sterling gifts of intellectual power and literary acumen, there was always some mistrust as to the merit of their _own_ productions, especially of poetical ones. They seem to have felt themselves like travellers wandering in mist, or struggling through a thicket, or toiling on devious paths with no reliable information at hand, until they arrived at a point where progress looked impossible, until they had obtained a guide in whom they had confidence. It appeared, indeed, to the Brontës that, without an opinion on their work, time might be altogether wasted on what was unprofitable. Charlotte, therefore, in the December of 1836, determined to submit some of her poems to the judgment of Southey; and it would seem that she also consulted Hartley Coleridge. Before, however, Southey had answered his sister's letter, Branwell ventured, in a similar spirit, to address Wordsworth, for whose writings he had a great admiration. The following is his letter; and, although it has been previously published, it must not be omitted here.[26] [26] Gaskell's 'Life of Charlotte Brontë,' chap. viii. 'Haworth, near Bradford, 'Yorkshire, January 19th, 1837. 'SIR, 'I most earnestly entreat you to read and pass your judgment upon what I have sent you, because from the day of my birth, to this the nineteenth year of my life, I have lived among secluded hills, where I could neither know what I was, or what I could do. I read for the same reason that I ate or drank--because it was a real craving of nature. I wrote on the same principle as I spoke--out of the impulse and feelings of the mind; nor could I help it, for what came, came out, and there was the end of it. For as to self-conceit, that could not receive food from flattery, since to this hour not half-a-dozen people in the world know that I have ever penned a line. 'But a change has taken place now, sir; and I am arrived at an age wherein I must do something for myself: the powers I possess must be exercised to a definite end, and as I don't know them myself I must ask of others what they are worth. Yet there is not one here to tell me; and still, if they are worthless, time will henceforth be too precious to be wasted on them. 'Do pardon me, sir, that I have ventured to come before one whose works I have most loved in our literature, and who most has been with me a divinity of the mind, laying before him one of my writings, and asking of him a judgment of its contents. I must come before some one from whose sentence there is no appeal; and such a one is he who has developed the theory of poetry as well as its practice, and both in such a way as to claim a place in the memory of a thousand years to come.