Anne Bronte is known by her share in the book of “Poems” and by two novels, “Agnes Gray” and “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” both of which are disappointing.  The former is based on the author’s experiences as a governess, and is written in the usual placid style of romances of the time.  “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” found its suggestion in the wretched career of Branwell Bronte, and presents a sad and depressing picture of a life of degradation.  The book was not a success, and would no doubt have sunk long ago into oblivion but for its association with the novels of Emily and Charlotte.

In studying the work of Charlotte Bronte, the gifted older sister of the group, one of the first of the qualities that impress the reader is her actual creative power.  To one of her imaginative power, the simplest life was sufficient, the smallest details a fund of material.  Mr. Swinburne has called attention to the fact that Charlotte Bronte’s characters are individual creations, not types constructed out of elements gathered from a wide observation of human nature, and that they are real creations; that they compel our interest and command our assent because they are true, inevitably true.  Perhaps no better example of this individualism could be cited than Rochester.  The character is unique.  It is not a type, nor has it even a prototype, like so many of Charlotte Bronte’s characters.  Gossip insisted at one time that the author intended to picture Thackeray in Rochester, but this is groundless.  Rochester is an original creation.  The character of Jane Eyre, too, while reflecting something of the author’s nature, was distinctly individual; and it is interesting to note here that with Jane Eyre came a new heroine into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of firm positive character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a homely heroine.

“Why is it,” Charlotte had once said, “that heroines must always be beautiful?” The hero of romance was always noble and handsome, the heroine lovely and often insipid, and the scenes set in an atmosphere of exaggerated idealism.  Against this idealism Charlotte Bronte revolted.  Her effort was always toward realism.

In her realism she reveals a second characteristic scarcely less marked than her creative powers,—­an extraordinary faculty of observation.  She saw the essence, the spirit of things, and the simplest details of life revealed to her the secrets of human nature.  What she had herself seen and felt—­the plain rugged types of Yorkshire character, the wild scenery of the moorlands—­she reflected with living truth.  She got the real fact out of every bit of material in humanity and nature that her simple life afforded her.  And where her experience could not afford her the necessary material, she drew upon some mysterious resources in her nature, which were apparently not less reliable than actual experience.  On being asked once how she could describe so accurately