the kindness also to answer the following queries, if you can.  How far is it from Leeds to Sheffield?  Can you give me a notion of the cost?  Of course, when I come, you will let me enjoy your own company in peace, and not drag me out a-visiting.  I have no desire at all to see your curate.  I think he must be like all the other curates I have seen; and they seem to me a self-seeking, vain, empty race.  At this blessed moment, we have no less than three of them in Haworth parish—­and there is not one to mend another.  The other day, they all three, accompanied by Mr. S., dropped, or rather rushed, in unexpectedly to tea.  It was Monday (baking-day), and I was hot and tired; still, if they had behaved quietly and decently, I would have served them out their tea in peace; but they began glorifying themselves, and abusing Dissenters in such a manner, that my temper lost its balance, and I pronounced a few sentences sharply and rapidly, which struck them all dumb.  Papa was greatly horrified also, but I don’t regret it.

To GEORGE HENRY LEWES

Herself and Miss Austen

12 Jan. 1848.

Dear Sir,

I thank you then sincerely for your generous review; and it is with the sense of double content I express my gratitude, because I am now sure the tribute is not superfluous or obtrusive.  You were not severe on Jane Eyre; you were very lenient.  I am glad you told me my faults plainly in private, for in your public notice you touch on them so lightly, I should perhaps have passed them over, thus indicated, with too little reflection.

I mean to observe your warning about being careful how I undertake new works; my stock of materials is not abundant, but very slender; and besides, neither my experience, my acquirements, nor my powers, are sufficiently varied to justify my ever becoming a frequent writer.  I tell you this, because your article in Fraser left in me an uneasy impression that you were disposed to think better of the author of Jane Eyre than that individual deserved; and I would rather you had a correct than a flattering opinion of me, even though I should never see you.

If I ever do write another book, I think I will have nothing of what you call ‘melodrama’; I think so, but I am not sure.  I think, too, I will endeavour to follow the counsel which shines out of Miss Austen’s ‘mild eyes’, ‘to finish more and be more subdued’; but neither am I sure of that.  When authors write best, or at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them, which becomes their master—­which will have its own way—­putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain words, and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or measured in their nature; new-moulding characters, giving unthought-of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully-elaborated old ideas, and suddenly creating and adopting new ones.