pungent as ever. More pains she must have taken in working up the power and passion (for there are both in an eminent degree) of "The Banker's Wife; or, Court and City;" but those who chiefly appreciate her, pronounce it comparatively heavy reading. Scenes there are, however, of genuine comedy and humorous relief, such as scarcely any one else could have put on paper. There was some ground for a critic at this period (1843–4) affirming that, "within the last eight or nine years Mrs. Gore had distanced nearly all her contemporaries by a rapid succession of some of the most brilliant novels in our language."[1] Nor, excepting a brief interval, did she abate in literary energy. Emulation, if nothing else, must have sustained a spirit like hers: was not Mrs. Trollope still publishing her thousands, and Mr. James his ten thousands? Besides the consecrated form of these volumes, there were the magazines into which to pour the exuberance of her invention. In this shape she gave us "Blanks and Prizes," "Temptation and Atonement," "Abednego, the Money-Lender]]," "Surfaceism; or, the World and its Wife;" and innumerable stories, such as the "Burgher of St. Gall," the "Scrap-stall of Paris," the "Leper-House of Janval" the ""Royalists of Peru," and other historiettes collected
From a' the airts the wind can blaw,
or a quick fancy cull flowers and fruitage. Recurring to the post-octavo triplets, we have yet to record the names of "Peers and Parvenus," in which she appears to strain a chord already enfeebled by undue tension; and "Sketches of English Character," illuminated by a running fire of witticisms, manufactured by the same accomplished patentee as "Cecil," and fizzing and crackling in every conceivable direction; and then the "Debutante; or, the London Season," another congenial subject for such a lecturer. These three last works all belong to one year, 1846. Her next, "Castles in the Air," betrayed increasing symptoms of over-work, and did little to strengthen, nothing to spread, her reputation. But it would take many a weightier load than such air-castles to sink the reputation she had secured; a score of such mediocrities would not much depreciate the insurance policy she had long since effected in the temple of Fame. In this glancing notice we have omitted several of her ablest, as well as her least-noticeable fictions; nor have we, as dealing simply with a female novelist, alluded to her productions in other walks of literature. If it happened that our printer's—("bad word," as Young Tom Hall's biographer would put it, and as Ellis Bell would not[2]) were clamorous
- ↑ A New Spirit of the Age.
- ↑ Every reader of "Wuthering Heights" must have "made great eyes,” as a German would say, at the frequency and matter-of-course nonchalance with which oaths are there spelt out, letter by letter, in the most solid style of cursing and swearing. Never was dish to set before a—trooper, more highly spiced and hotly peppered, in the manner which troopers proverbially relish. And Currer Bell espouses the cause of all this "cussin’ and swearln'." In her preface to the above work, she says that undoubtedly a large class of readers will "suffer greatly" from Ellis Bell's habit of substituting the naughty word in extenso for the customary blank line. And adds; I may as well say at once, that for this circumstance it is out of my power to apologise; deeming it myself, a rational plan to write words at full length. The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persona are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does—what feeling it spares—what horror it conceals." This is highly characteristic of the frank and free-hearted writer, whatever we may think of her
