About this time,
to her more familiar correspondents, she occasionally calls herself
"Charles Thunder," making a kind of pseudonym for herself out of her
Christian name, and the meaning of her Greek surname. In the next place,
there is a touch of assumed smartness, very different from the simple,
womanly, dignified letter which she had written to Southey, under nearly
similar circumstances, three years before. I imagine the cause of this
difference to be twofold. Southey, in his reply to her first letter, had
appealed to the higher parts of her nature, in calling her to consider
whether literature was, or was not, the best course for a woman to
pursue. But the person to whom she addressed this one had evidently
confined himself to purely literary criticisms, besides which, her sense
of humour was tickled by the perplexity which her correspondent felt as
to whether he was addressing a man or a woman. She rather wished to
encourage the former idea; and, in consequence, possibly, assumed
something of the flippancy which very probably existed in her brother's
style of conversation, from whom she would derive her notions of young
manhood, not likely, as far as refinement was concerned, to be improved
by the other specimens she had seen, such as the curates whom she
afterwards represented in "Shirley.
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