Mr. Leyland has
no literary perception, and in his eagerness to show that Branwell was a
genius, prints numerous letters and poems which sufficiently demonstrate
that he was not.
Charlotte never hesitated in the earlier years to praise her brother as
the genius of the family. We all know how eagerly the girls in any home
circle are ready to acknowledge and accept as signs of original power the
most impudent witticisms of a fairly clever brother. The Bronte
household was not exceptionally constituted in this respect. It is
evident that the boy grew up with talent of a kind. He could certainly
draw with more idea of perspective than his sisters, and one or two
portraits by him are not wanting in merit. But there is no evidence of
any special writing faculty, and the words 'genius' and 'brilliant' which
have been freely applied to him are entirely misplaced. Branwell was
thirty-one years of age when he died, and it was only during the last
year or two of his life that opium and alcohol had made him
intellectually hopeless. Yet, unless we accept the preposterous
statement that he wrote _Wuthering Heights_, he would seem to have
composed nothing which gives him the slightest claim to the most
inconsiderable niche in the temple of literature.
Branwell appears to have worked side by side with his sisters in the
early years, and innumerable volumes of the 'little writing' bearing his
signature have come into my hands.
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