And yet it was in her life rather than her death that she was splendid.  There is something shocking and repellent in her last defiance.  It shrieks discord with the endurance and acceptance, braver than all revolt, finer than all resignation, that was the secret of her genius and of her life.

There is no need to reconcile this supreme detachment with the storm and agony that rages through Wuthering Heights, or with the passion for life and adoration of the earth that burns there, an imperishable flame; or with Catherine Earnshaw’s dream of heaven:  “heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy”.  Catherine Earnshaw’s dream has been cited innumerable times to prove that Emily Bronte was a splendid pagan.  I do not know what it does prove, if it is not the absolute and immeasurable greatness of her genius, that, dwelling as she undoubtedly did dwell, in the secret and invisible world, she could yet conceive and bring forth Catherine Earnshaw.

It is not possible to diminish the force or to take away one word of Mr. Swinburne’s magnificent eulogy.  There was in the “passionate great genius of Emily Bronte”, “a dark, unconscious instinct as of primitive nature-worship”.  That was where she was so poised and so complete; that she touches earth and heaven, and is at once intoxicated with the splendour of the passion of living, and holds her spirit in security and her heart in peace.  She plunged with Catherine Earnshaw into the thick of the tumult, and her detachment is not more wonderful than her immersion.

It is our own imperfect vision that is bewildered by the union in her of these antagonistic attitudes.  It is not only entirely possible and compatible, but, if your soul be comprehensive, it is inevitable that you should adore the forms of life, and yet be aware of their impermanence; that you should affirm with equal fervour their illusion and the radiance of the reality that manifests itself in them.  Emily Bronte was nothing if not comprehensive.  There was no distance, no abyss too vast, no antagonism, no contradiction too violent and appalling for her embracing soul.  Without a hint, so far as we know, from any philosophy, by a sheer flash of genius she pierced to the secret of the world and crystallized it in two lines: 

  The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
  Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

It is doubtful if she ever read a line of Blake; yet it is Blake that her poems perpetually recall, and it is Blake’s vision that she has reached there.  She too knew what it was

  To see a world in a grain of sand,
    And a Heaven in a wild flower,
  To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
    And Eternity in an hour.