I remember, as a young man, being greatly struck by the independence of character exhibited by Miss Bronte in a certain confession she made in respect to Miss Austen’s novels.  It was at a period when everybody professed to adore them, and especially the great-guns of literature.  Walter Scott thought more highly of the genius of the author of ‘Mansfield Park’ even than of that of his favourite, Miss Edgeworth.  Macaulay speaks of her as though she were the Eclipse of novelists—­’first, and the rest nowhere’—­though his opinion, it is true, lost something of its force from the contempt he expressed for ‘the rest,’ among whom were some much better ones.  Dr. Whewell, a very different type of mind, had ‘Mansfield Park,’ I believe, read to him on his death-bed.  And, indeed, up to the present date, some highly-cultured persons of my acquaintance take the same view.  They may be very possibly right, but that is no reason why the people who have never read Miss Austen’s novels—­and very few have—­should ape the fashion.  Now, the authoress of ‘Jane Eyre’ did not derive much pleasure from the perusal of the works of the other Jane.  ’I know it’s very wrong,’ she modestly said, ’but the fact is I can’t read them.  They have not got story enough in them to engage my attention.  I don’t want my blood curdled, but I like it stirred.  Miss Austen strikes me as milk-and-watery, and, to say truth, as dull.’

This opinion she has, in effect, repeated in her published writings, but I had only heard her verbal expression of it; and I admired her courage.  If she had been a man, struggling, as she then was, for a position in literature, she would not have dared to say half as much.  For, what is very curious, the advocates of the classic authors—­those I mean whom antiquity has more or less hallowed—­instead of pitying those unhappy wights who confess their want of appreciation of them, fly at them with bludgeons, and dance upon their prostrate bodies with clogs.

    ’For who would rush on a benighted man,
    And give him two black eyes for being blind?’

inquires the poet.  I answer, ‘lots of people,’ and especially those who worship the pagan divinities of literature.  The same thing happens—­but their fury is more excusable, because they have less natural intelligence—­with the lovers of music.  Instead of being sorry for the poor folks who have ‘no ear,’ and whom ‘a little music in the evening’ bores to extremity, they overwhelm them with reproaches for what is in fact a natural infirmity.  ‘You Goth! you Vandal!’ they exclaim, ’how contemptible is the creature who has no music in his soul!’ Which is really very rude.  Even persons who are not musical have their feelings.  ’Hath not a Jew ears?’—­that is to say, though they have ‘no ear,’ they understand what is abusive language and resent it.