Charlotte Brontë and the Realists

Mr. Chesterton devoted his address to the relation of Charlotte Bronte to Realism, and at the outset referred to the letter written to her by George Henry Lewes, who, he considered, represented the evil genius of England in the middle of the nineteenth century. Lewes was, he said, a man of great intellect, but a man of a peculiar kind of stupidity or insensibility, and ranged perpetually with extraordinary energy and intelligence, doing nothing but harm.