and then his half-implied esteem for Nelly Dean.”  But that Heathcliff is wholly inhuman—­“a ghoul, an afreet”—­I cannot really see.  Emily’s psychology here is perforce half on the unearthly plane; it is above our criticism, lending itself to no ordinary tests.  But for all his unearthliness, Heathcliff is poignantly human, from his childhood when he implored Nelly Dean to make him “decent”, for he is “going to be good”, to his last hour of piteous dependence on her.  You are not allowed for a moment to forget, that, horrible and vindictive as he is, the child Heathcliff is yet a child.  Take the scene where the boy first conceives his vengeance.

“On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely: 

“’I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back.  I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last.  I hope he will not die before I do!’

“‘For shame, Heathcliff!’ said I.  ’It is for God to punish wicked people.  We should learn to forgive.’

“‘No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,’ he returned.  ’I only wish I knew the best way!  Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out:  while I’m thinking of that I don’t feel pain.’”

It is very like Heathcliff.  It is also pathetically like a child.

In Hareton Earnshaw Emily Bronte is fairly on the earth all the time, and nothing could be finer than her handling of this half-brutalized, and wholly undeveloped thing, her showing of the slow dawn of his feelings and intelligence.  Her psychology is never psychologic.  The creature reveals himself at each moment of his unfolding for what he is.  It was difficult; for in his degradation he had a certain likeness in unlikeness to the degraded Heathcliff.  It was Heathcliff’s indomitable will that raised him.  Hareton cannot rise without a woman’s hand to help him.  The younger Catherine again was difficult, because of her likeness to her mother.  Her temper, her vanity, her headstrong trickiness are Catherine Earnshaw.  But Catherine Linton is a healthy animal, incapable of superhuman passion, capable only (when properly chastened by adversity) of quite ordinary pity and devotion.  She inspires bewilderment, but terror and fascination never; and never the glamour, the magic evoked by the very name of Catherine Earnshaw.  Her escapades and fantasies, recalling Catherine Earnshaw, are all on an attenuated scale.

Yet Catherine Earnshaw seems now and then a less solid figure.  That is because her strength does not lie in solidity at all.  She is a thing of flame and rushing wind.  One half of her is akin to the storms of Wuthering Heights, the other belongs to her unseen abiding-place.  Both sides of her are immortal.