We have seen that, in the summer of 1845, Branwell lost his employment, and returned to the neighbourhood of Haworth, and that he, too, at that most miserable period of _his_ life, when he wrote his novel, and 'Real Rest,' and 'Penmaenmawr,' had had a notion that the lady of his affections had nearly forgotten him.
It may be observed that Catherine Earnshaw, in an earlier part of the book, uses a like antithesis to that quoted by Mr. Reid. 'Whatever our souls are made of,' says she, speaking of Heathcliff and herself, 'his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.' Though it is not strictly accurate that in _all_ Branwell's letters at this period there are similar ravings, or that such were always on his lips, there are, at all events, other coincidences of thought and expression to be found in his letters and poems with certain features and passages in 'Wuthering Heights,' which are not less striking. A few instances will illustrate much in that work which it is not easy to believe could have been transcribed by the writer from the utterances of another. Even so early as his letter to John Brown, we have seen with what force Branwell could express himself when he chose. He speaks in that letter of one who 'will be used as the tongs of hell,' and of another 'out of whose eyes Satan looks as from windows.' Let us turn to where Heathcliff's eyes are described, in Chapter vii. of the novel, as 'that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies;' and, in Chapter xvii., where Isabella Heathcliff says of them: 'The clouded windows of hell flashed a moment towards me; the fiend which usually looked out, however, was so dimmed and drowned that I did not fear to hazard another sound of derision.'
We have noticed how Branwell plays upon the word _castaway_ at the close of his letter on his novel. Charlotte has said they all had a leaning to Cowper's poem, 'The Castaway,' and appropriated it in one way or another; she told Mrs. Gaskell that Branwell had done so. The word is used twice in 'Wuthering Heights.' Heathcliff is described as having been a 'little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway,' and the younger Catherine addresses pious Joseph, oddly enough, and by a coincidence singular enough, remembering Branwell's allusion in his letter, in these words: 'No, reprobate! you are a castaway--be off, or I'll hurt you seriously! I'll have you all modelled in wax and clay.'