SOURCE: Knapp, Bettina L. “Patrick Branwell Brontë: Eternal Adolescent.” In The Brontës: Branwell, Anne, Emily, Charlotte, pp. 57-72. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1991.

In the following excerpt, Knapp characterizes Brontë as a young man forever mourning the loss of his childhood, unable to achieve any measure of self-discipline, maturity, or strength of character and hiding himself in a fantasy world rather than facing reality.

There was a light—but it is gone. There was a Hope—but all is o'er, And friendless, sightless, left alone, I go where thou hast gone before, And yet I shall not see thee more. Ha! say not that the dying man Can only think of present pain, Oh no! Oh no! it is not so, For where, Maria, where art thou!(1) 

Branwell, like Romantics such as Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge, cultivated his imagination and emotions rather than his reason, thereby yielding...