SD1454. Charlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 304 (in part).

[Haworth]

25 October 1850

My dear Sir

The box of books came last night and—as usual—I have only gratefully to admire the selection made: Jeffreys Essays, Dr. Arnold’s Life, The Roman, Alton Locke—these were all wished-for and welcome. …

Already I have read the greatest part of the “Roman” … You hear Tennyson indeed sometimes—and Byron sometimes in some passages of the “Roman”—but then again you hear a new note—nowhere clearer than in a certain brief lyric—sung in a meeting of minstrels—a sort of dirge over a dead brother—that not only charmed the ear and brain—it smote the heart. Not all the tinkling cymbals—not all the word-twisters—not all the Brownings and Barrett Brownings and Lytton Bulwers in the world can do as much. …

Publication: The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Margaret Smith (Oxford, 1995–2004), 2, 488–491.

Manuscript: Huntington Library.

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