With the letters I find a little MS., which is also of
pathetic interest. It is entitled 'The Advantages of Poverty in
Religious Concerns,' and it is endorsed in the handwriting of Mr. Bronte,
written, doubtless, many years afterwards:--
'_The above was written by my dear wife_, _and is for insertion in
one of the periodical publications_. _Keep it as a memorial of
her_.'
There is no reason to suppose that the MS. was ever published; there is
no reason why any editor should have wished to publish it. It abounds in
the obvious. At the same time, one notes that from both father and
mother alike Charlotte Bronte and her sisters inherited some measure of
the literary faculty. It is nothing to say that not one line of the
father's or mother's would have been preserved had it not been for their
gifted children. It is sufficient that the zest for writing was there,
and that the intense passion for handling a pen, which seems to have been
singularly strong in Charlotte Bronte, must have come to a great extent
from a similar passion alike in father and mother. Mr. Bronte, indeed,
may be counted a prolific author. He published, in all, four books,
three pamphlets, and two sermons. Of his books, two were in verse and
two in prose. _Cottage Poems_ was published in 1811; _The Rural
Minstrel_ in 1812, the year of his marriage; _The Cottage in the Wood_ in
1815; and _The Maid of Killarney_ in 1818.
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