her vision of the lamp-lit window, and the secret, unearthly consummation.

There is no doubt about it.  And there is no doubt about the Paganism either.  It seems at times the most apparent thing about Emily Bronte.

The truth is that she revealed her innermost and unapparent nature only in her poems.  That was probably why she was so annoyed when Charlotte discovered them.

* * * * *

Until less than ten years ago it was commonly supposed that Charlotte had discovered all there were.  Then sixty-seven hitherto unpublished poems appeared in America.  And the world went on unaware of what had happened.

And now Mr. Clement Shorter, in his indefatigable researches, has unearthed seventy-one more, and published them with the sixty-seven and with Charlotte’s thirty-nine.[A]

[Footnote A:  Complete Works of Emily Bronte. Vol.  I.—­Poetry. (Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, 1910.)]

And the world continues more or less unaware.

I do not know how many new poets Vigo Street can turn out in a week.  But I do know that somehow the world is made sufficiently aware of some of them.  But this event, in which Vigo Street has had no hand, the publication, after more than sixty years, of the Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, has not, so far as I know, provoked any furious tumult of acclaim.

And yet there could hardly well have been an event of more importance in its way.  If the best poems in Mr. Shorter’s collection cannot stand beside the best in Charlotte’s editions of 1846 and 1850, many of them reveal an aspect of Emily Bronte’s genius hitherto unknown and undreamed of; one or two even reveal a little more of the soul of Emily Bronte than has yet been known.

There are no doubt many reasons for the world’s indifference.  The few people in it who read poetry at all do not read Emily Bronte much; it is as much as they can do to keep pace with the perpetual, swift procession of young poets out of Vigo Street.  There is a certain austerity about Emily Bronte, a superb refusal of all extravagance, pomp, and decoration, which makes her verses look naked to eyes accustomed to young lyrics loaded with “jewels five-words long”.  About Emily Bronte there is no emerald and beryl and chrysoprase; there are no vine-leaves in her hair, and on her white Oread’s feet there is no stain of purple vintage.  She knows nothing of the Dionysiac rapture and the sensuous side of mysticism.  She can give nothing to the young soul that thirsts and hungers for these things.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the world should be callous to Emily Bronte.  What you are not prepared for is the appearance of indifference in her editors.  They are pledged by their office to a peculiar devotion.  And the circumstances of Emily Bronte’s case made it imperative that whoever undertook this belated introduction should show rather more than a perfunctory enthusiasm.