"For me the universe is dumb,
Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind;
Life I must bound, existence sum
In the strait limits of one mind;
"That mind my own. Oh! narrow cell;
Dark—imageless—a living tomb!"
[72] Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle.
[73] Mentor's advice to Telemachus when tempted and miserable on the island of Calypso is that given by the spirit of Jane Eyre's mother—"Flee temptation!" "Virtue," argues Mentor, "now calls you back to your country ... and forbids you to give up your heart to an unworthy passion.... Fly, fly, ... for love is conquered only by flight ... in retreat without deliberation, and ... looking back." "Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor" (Shirley, Chapter XXVII.). Evidently M. Sue knew Charlotte Brontë had read this book at Brussels, for he makes play upon it in "Lagrange's Manuscript," wherein "Télémaque" is substituted for "Rasselas" in the equivalent scene in Jane Eyre.
[74] See chapter on the Yorkshire element in Charlotte Brontë's heroes.
[75] "Religion called——Angels beckoned!—--"
[76] See my reference to Catherine of Wuthering Heights and Caroline of Shirley, and their crying aloud when ill and delirious for "a way" to the absent lover, pp. 147-8.
[77] See the reproach of the dying Catherine to Heathcliffe I quote in the next chapter. See also Crimsworth's words in the beginning of Chapter XIX. of The Professor.
[78] See close of Chapter XXIV. of Jane Eyre.
[79] See my footnote on "the trodden way" on p. 136.