' Canon Kingsley wrote a
charming letter to Mrs. Gaskell, published in his _Life_, and more than
once reprinted since.
'Let me renew our long interrupted acquaintance,' he writes from St.
Leonards, under date May 14th, 1857, 'by complimenting you on poor
Miss Bronte's _Life_. You have had a delicate and a great work to
do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure that the book will do
good. It will shame literary people into some stronger belief that a
simple, virtuous, practical home life is consistent with high
imaginative genius; and it will shame, too, the prudery of a not over
cleanly though carefully white-washed age, into believing that purity
is now (as in all ages till now) quite compatible with the knowledge
of evil. I confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself.
_Jane Eyre_ I hardly looked into, very seldom reading a work of
fiction--yours, indeed, and Thackeray's, are the only ones I care to
open. _Shirley_ disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the
writer and her books with a notion that she was a person who liked
coarseness. How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I never
put a word of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my
misjudgments of one who is a whole heaven above me.
'Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a valiant
woman made perfect by suffering.
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