BRONTE, Charlotte, Mrs. Gaskell's Life of. The best biography of Charlotte Bronte is that by Mrs. Gaskell (Elizabeth Cleghorn Ste venson). It maintains its high place in English literature by virtue of many qualities. It is not often that a biography is written by one so thoroughly able to understand and sympathize with the subject. If for no other reason, Mrs. Gaskell's volume would be worthy of careful consideration because of the fact that it is the work of one gifted woman novelist nar rating and interpreting the life of another. In addition to this happy circumstance, Mrs. Gaskell brought to her labor an actual gift for biography, with which she combined the careful investigation and accuracy of a his torian. To supplement her personal knowledge of the subject, she spared no pains to obtain all possible information. The result is that no subsequent biography of Miss Bronte has superseded that by Mrs. Gaskell. The one error charged against the author was what has been termed her "singularly reckless treatment of living people.* She found it necessary, in consequence of threatened suits for libel, to cancel a number of passages. We may agree that now and then she may not have maintained a strictly judicial attitude, and that some of her inferences in regard to otherpeople may not have been correct or wise. °The great thing
for as May Sinclair reminds us, is that she was right about Charlotte Brontė. She was right with a rightness which no biographer and no critic of the Brontes has ever so se curely attained. When all the old rubbish has been sifted. . . we shall come back to Mrs. Gaskell's 'Life) with the certainty that we shall find there the truth about Charlotte Bronte, all that was most profoundly and essen tially she. Others have opined, inferred, con iectured. Mrs. Gaskell knew.* Even apart from its accuracy, the like that of Nelson by Southey, would probably maintain a place in literature by reason of its skilful manner and charming style. Mrs. Gaskell's pen is as sure in this work as it is in From the excellent portrayal of the conditions surround ing the Yorkshire village of Haworth as a pre requisite for a clear understanding of such a life as that of Charlotte's, to the chastened and reserved description of Miss Bronte's death, there is no false note in the narrative. The work is a masterpiece. Consult May Sinclair's penetrating introduction to the (Life) in 'Everyman's Library.)