Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose of a manuscript of this kind, he can never know what stores of romance and sensibility lie hidden in breasts he would not have suspected of casketing such treasures.

In the sequel, however, I find that publishers in general scarcely approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative and poetical-something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated, unworldly. As Adam’s son he should share Adam’s doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment. I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I had seen real living men work theirs-that he should never get a shilling he had not earned-that no sudden turns should lift him in a moment to wealth and high station that whatever small competency he might gain, should be won by the sweat of his brow that, before he could find so much as an arbour to sit down in, he should master at least half the ascent of “the Hill of Difficulty ” that he should not even marry a beautiful girl or a lady of rank. At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the subject of incident, &c., such as would be generally approved in theory, but the result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an author more surprise than pleasure. I had not indeed published anything before I commenced “The Professor,” but in many a crude effort, destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamented and redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely. A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of some years. This little book was written before either “Jane Eyre” or “Shirley,” and yet no indulgence can be solicited for it on the plea of a first attempt.

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The Professor by Charlotte Brontë