As to the name of the heroine, I can hardly express what subtlety of thought made me decide upon giving her a cold name; but at first I called her 'Lucy Snowe' (spelt with an 'e'), which 'Snowe' I afterwards changed to 'Frost.' Subsequently I rather regretted the change, and wished it 'Snowe' again. If not too late, I should like the alteration to be made now throughout the MS. A _cold_ name she must have; partly, perhaps on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle--partly on that of the 'fitness of things,' for she has about her an external coldness. Thus we understand Charlotte Brontë was anxious that her autobiographical-self in _Villette_ should be called Snowe. While, in mentioning the matter to her publishers, she endeavoured to show a superficial and commonplace reason for her singular choice, the truth underlies her words wherein she says she "can hardly express what subtlety of thought" made her decide upon "a cold name." The subtlety of thought that dictated the choice of the "cold name" Snowe had, we shall see, a connection with the old Scottish ballad, "Puir Mary Lee," which evidence shows was responsible at the dark season to which I have referred for Charlotte Brontë's choice of the title of _Wuthering Heights_--for her identifying her own bitterness with that of "Puir Mary Lee." It is in _Shirley_, Chapter VII., that Charlotte Brontë writes:-- Nature ... is an excellent friend, sealing the lips, interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation; a dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because half-bitter. [As Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Brontë writes in _Villette_ in perfect sympathy with this: "If I feel, may I never express? I groaned under her (Reason's) bitter sternness ... she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right."] Who has read the ballad of 'Puir Mary Lee'?--that old Scotch ballad, written I know not in what generation nor by what hand. Mary had been ill-used--probably in being made to believe that truth which is falsehood; she is not complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snow-storm, and you hear her thoughts ... those of a deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook of home, to the white-shrouded and icy hills: crouched under the 'cauld drift,' she recalls every image of horror, ... she hates these, but 'waur' she hates 'Robin-a-Ree!'