Jane Eyre, Preface
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The authors preface to the second edition a preface to the first edition of Jane Eyre. Being unnecessary, I gave none. This second edition demands a few words of both acknowledgement and miscellaneous remark. My thanks are due in three quarters to the public for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plane tail with few pretensions to the press. For the Fairfield, it's honest suffrage has opened to an obscure aspirant to my publishers, for the aid there tacked their energy. Their practical sense and frank liberality have afforded an unknown and unrecognised ended author. The press and the public are but vague personifications for me, and I must thank them in vague terms. But my publishers are definite. So are certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only large hearted and high minded men know how to encourage a struggling stranger to them. I e. To my publishers and the select reviewers, I say cordially, gentlemen, I thank you from my heart, having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me. I turned to another class, a small one, so far as I know, but not therefore to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as Jane Eyre, in Whose Eyes whatever is unusual, is wrong. Whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry, that parent of crime, an insult to piety, that regent of God on Earth, I would suggest to such Doubters certain obvious distinctions, I would remind them of certain simple truths. Conventionality is not morality. Self righteousness is not religion to attack. The first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the heresy is not to lift anim pious hand to the crown of thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed. They are as distinct as his vice from virtue. Men too often confound them. They should not be confounded. Appearance should not be mistaken for truth. Narrow human doctrines that only tend to a late and magnify a few should not be substituted for the world redeeming creed of Christ. There is, I repeat, it a difference, and it is a good and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them. The world may not like to see these ideas December word for it has been accustomed to blend them, finding it convenient to make external show pass for Sterling Worth to let whitewashed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose, to raise the gilding and show base metal under it. To penetrate the CEP occur and revealed charnel relics. But hate as it will, it is indebted to him. Ahab did not like my Keya because he never prophesied good concerning him, but evil. Probably. He liked the sick offense son of Kini Anna. Better yet, might a have have escaped a bloody death had he but stopped his ears to flattery and open them to faithful counsel? There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society, Much as the son of Imola came before the throne Kings of Judah and Israel and who speaks truth as deep with a power as profit like and as vital, a mean as dauntless and as daring is the satirist of Vanity Fair, admired in high places? I cannot tell, but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm and over whom he flashes the Levin brand of his denunciation, We're to take his warnings in time. They or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramos Gilead. Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, reader, because I think I see in him an intellect, profound ER and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognized. Because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him the terms which rightly characterized his talent. They say he is like fielding. They talk of his wit, humor, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does of altar Fielding could stoop on carry on. But Thackery never does. His wit is bright, his humor attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet lightning playing under the edge of the summer cloud does to the electric death spark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr Thackery because to him, if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger, I have dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre Kerbel. December 21st. 18 47. End of Preface, read by Amanda Island for lit to go on the Web at f C i t dot USF dot e d u