It is Heathcliff’s susceptibility to this immaterial passion, the fury with which he at once sustains and is consumed by it, that makes him splendid.

Peace under green grass could never be the end of Heathcliff or of such a tragedy as Wuthering Heights.  Its real end is the tale told by the shepherd whom Lockwood meets on the moor.

“’I was going to the Grange one evening—­a dark evening, threatening thunder—­and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided.

“‘What is the matter, my little man?’ I asked.

“‘There’s Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t’ Nab,’ he blubbered, ‘un’ I darnut pass ’em.’”

It is there, the end, in one line, charged with the vibration of the supernatural.  One line that carries the suggestion of I know not what ghostly and immaterial passion and its unearthly satisfaction.

* * * * *

And this book stands alone, absolutely self-begotten and self-born.  It belongs to no school; it follows no tendency.  You cannot put it into any category.  It is not “Realism”, it is not “Romance”, any more than Jane Eyre:  and if any other master’s method, De Maupassant’s or Turgeniev’s, is to be the test, it will not stand it.  There is nothing in it you can seize and name.  You will not find in it support for any creed or theory.  The redemption of Catherine Linton and Hareton is thrown in by the way in sheer opulence of imagination.  It is not insisted on.  Redemption is not the keynote of Wuthering Heights.  The moral problem never entered into Emily Bronte’s head.  You may call her what you will—­Pagan, pantheist, transcendentalist mystic and worshipper of earth, she slips from all your formulas.  She reveals a point of view above good and evil.  Hers is an attitude of tolerance that is only not tenderness because her acceptance of life and of all that lives is unqualified and unstinting.  It is too lucid and too high for pity.

Heathcliff and Catherine exist.  They justify their existence by their passion.  But if you ask what is to be said for such a creature as Linton Heathcliff, you will be told that he does not justify his existence; his existence justifies him.

  Do I despise the timid deer,
  Because his limbs are fleet with fear? 
  Or, would I mock the wolf’s death-howl,
  Because his form is gaunt and foul? 
  Or, hear with joy the lev’ret’s cry,
  Because it cannot bravely die? 
  No!  Then above his memory
  Let Pity’s heart as tender be.

After all it is pity; it is tenderness.