A
new edition of Emily's poems, will, by virtue of these verses, have a
singular interest for her admirers. With all her gifts as a poet,
however, it is by _Wuthering Heights_ that Emily Bronte is best known to
the world; and the weirdness and force of that book suggest an inquiry
concerning the influences which produced it. Dr. Wright, in his
entertaining book, _The Brontes in Ireland_, recounts the story of
Patrick Bronte's origin, and insists that it was in listening to her
father's anecdotes of his own Irish experiences that Emily obtained the
weird material of _Wuthering Heights_. It is not, of course, enough to
point out that Dr. Wright's story of the Irish Brontes is full of
contradictions. A number of tales picked up at random from an illiterate
peasantry might very well abound in inconsistencies, and yet contain some
measure of truth. But nothing in Dr. Wright's narrative is confirmed,
save only the fact that Patrick Bronte continued throughout his life in
some slight measure of correspondence with his brothers and sisters--a
fact rendered sufficiently evident by a perusal of his will. Dr. Wright
tells of many visits to Ireland in order to trace the Bronte traditions
to their source; and yet he had not--in his first edition--marked the
elementary fact that the registry of births in County Down records the
existence of innumerable Bruntys and of not a single Bronte.
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