I know your time is too fully
occupied and too valuable to be often at the service of any one
individual.
'You are not far wrong in your judgment respecting _Wuthering
Heights_ and _Agnes Grey_. Ellis has a strong, original mind, full
of strange though sombre power. When he writes poetry that power
speaks in language at once condensed, elaborated, and refined, but in
prose it breaks forth in scenes which shock more than they attract.
Ellis will improve, however, because he knows his defects. _Agnes
Grey_ is the mirror of the mind of the writer. The orthography and
punctuation of the books are mortifying to a degree: almost all the
errors that were corrected in the proof-sheets appear intact in what
should have been the fair copies. If Mr. Newby always does business
in this way, few authors would like to have him for their publisher a
second time.--Believe me, dear sir, yours respectfully,
'C. BELL.'
When _Jane Eyre_ was performed at a London theatre--and it has been more
than once adapted for the stage, and performed many hundreds of times in
England and America--Charlotte Bronte wrote to her friend Mr. Williams as
follows:--
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
'_February_ 5_th_, 1848.
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