CHAPTER V

_The Universe_; changed mode of living, intercourse with the

Morgans; _Siege of Salerno_ and other unpublished productions;

_Five Sermons_; _The Albigenses_; last illness and death;

conclusion 271

Notes 312

Index 323

I.

1780-1806.

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!

Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!

I feel ye now--I feel ye in your strength--

Poe.

In the history of literature change means liberation. The intellectual

aspect of a period having worn itself out, the forms which have

supported it are felt to be a clog and a burden; and when these forms

are dissolved, the channel of thought, from a natural sense of freedom,

takes a course diametrically opposite. The transformation seldom takes

place abruptly; it may even have been long prepared by pioneers more

or less conscious of the advance of a new time with new ideals; but

the greatest as well as the most characteristic productions of the

victorious movement are not brought forth until the previous order of

things has been completely overthrown, and sometimes there is but a

short step from the zenith of a literary current to its decadence.

Romanticism in England represented a reaction against that traditional

18:th century, into which Cowper, and Bums, and Ossian had already

brought elements new and resuscitating, and whose foundations had at

a still earlier date been gently stirred by Thomson, Collins, and

Gray. It was a reaction against a time when poetry, although of a

polish unequalled afterwards, was confined to subjects upon which the

expending of exalted emotions was impossible; when fiction chiefly

comprised moralizing descriptions pertaining to everyday life; and

when all sense of outward nature was excluded from both. In the

English literature of the beginning of the 19:th century the terms

romanticism and naturalism--in curious opposition to the subsequent

use of the words--represented collateral currents, springing from the

same source, and sometimes the terms were nearly synonymous. In their

very essence both of these terms implied a greater amount of freedom.

Return to nature was one of the leading catchwords of the time; and

the intention of seeing nature not only visually, but also in its

most intimate connections with human life, and as intervening in the

destinies of man, was to contribute a new depth to thought and feeling,

as well as to render the emotions more varied and more intense. The

lays of by-gone ages and primitive peoples were studied with admiration

and received as wisdom. This interest in nature, independent as it

was of any limits of time and space, was followed by the revival of

imagination, upon which faculty the romantic movement was largely

based. In order to gain a freer scope for imagination romanticism

took its literary models and ideas from the dim and mysterious middle

ages rather than from the clear and well-regulated classical; in

the contrast between the Gothic and the Antique the ‘barbarities’

of the former receded to the background, according as its greater

suitability to ‘the views of a genius and to the ends of poetry’[1]

became apparent. But in this approach of the mind to nature there was

an underlying sense of the incapacity of human conditions to impart

happiness, and the flight of imagination to vague and unknown regions

was prompted by the feeling that in reality there was no consolation.

It was, consequently, not with unalloyed delight that the romantic

mind turned to new and untilled fields. It is a characteristic of the

movement that it begot a melancholy of its own, a nervous, restless

kind of melancholy, connected with temporal rather than eternal

matters, and foreign to its predecessors in the previous century; the

difference from these is made apparent upon comparing the melancholy of

_Childe Harold_ to that of the _Night Thoughts_. If it were possible

to imagine the Renaissance with its gaiety turned into _Weltschmerz_,

the result would be something like the romanticism of the early 19:th

century.

However, freedom held sway, if not in life, still in literature, and

the English romanticism owed its masterpieces to originality, as the

English classicism did to imitation. Another consequence of this

freedom was a greater variety in the romantic literature. _Tintern

Abbey_ and _The Ancient Mariner_ were both written about the same time;

both are original and entirely different, and both would have been

inconceivable in 1750.

The liberation of the imaginative mind evidently had its perils. Among

the romantic writers--even among those of rank--were men to whom

freedom implied excess and whose originality was not always strong

enough to supply the breakdown of rules and restrictions, and who,

accordingly, have not escaped oblivion. One of these is Charles Robert

Maturin, the subject of the following pages: a man of unmistakable

genius, who was not without influence on some of his happier

contemporaries; in whose works the main currents of the time are

faithfully and variously reflected, and who occasionally gives forcible

proofs of his creativeness in passages that point to the standards of

much later periods.

* * * * *

The family of Maturin come from France. The ancestor, Gabriel Maturin,

was a Huguenot priest to whom life in that country was made impossible

and who, after various adventures, settled in Ireland towards the close

of the 17:th century. Concerning this ancestor there was a family

tradition, duly recorded in all the biographies of Charles Robert

Maturin, with the statement that it had, from his childhood, made an

indelible impression upon him and that he firmly believed it to be

true; or with the suggestion that he had invented it himself in some

romantic fit or other. The mystery connected with the birth of his

ancestor is usually represented as the principal charm Maturin found in

the story, yet if related in his own words[2] it is patent to all which

point of the narrative is most strongly emphasized. Many of the most

characteristic passages in Maturin’s writings can be explained by the

fact that he was fond of imagining his own family to have been a victim

of religious persecution. This is how he used to tell the legend:

In the reign of Louis XIV the carriage of a catholic lady of rank

was stopped by the driver discovering that a child was lying in the

street. The lady brought him home, and, as he was never claimed,

considered and treated him as her child: he was richly drest, but no

trace was furnished, by himself or otherwise, that could lead to the

discovery of his parents or connexions.

As the lady was a devotee, she brought him up a strict catholic, and

being puzzled for a name for him, she borrowed one from a religious

community, _les Maturins_, of whom there is mention in the Jewish Spy,

and who were then of sufficient importance to give their name to a

street in Paris, _la Rue des Mathurins_.

In spite of all the good lady’s pains, and maugre his _nom de

caresse_, my ancestor was perverse enough to turn protestant, and

became pastor to a hugonot congregation in Paris, where he sojourned,

and begat two sons.

While he was amusing himself in this manner, the king and _père_ La

Chaise were amusing themselves with exterminating the protestants;

and about the time of the revocation of the edict of Nantz, Maturin

was shut up in the bastile, where he was left for twenty six years; I

suppose to give him time to reflect on the controverted points, and

make up his mind at leisure.

With all these advantages he continued quite untractable: so that the

catholics, finding the case desperate, gave him his liberty.

There was no danger, however, of his abusing this indulgence: for,

owing to the keeper forgetting accidentally to bring him fuel, during

the winters of his confinement, and a few other _agremens_ of his

situation, the poor man lost the use of his limbs, and was a cripple

for life.

He accompanied some of his former flock, who had been grievously

scattered, to Ireland, and there unexpectedly found Madame M---- and

his two sons, who had made their escape there _via_ Holland.

The descendants of Gabriel Maturin remained in the service of the

church for which he is alleged to have suffered. His son Pierre is

mentioned in 1699[3] as ‘chapelin du regiment du Marquis de Pisar’

at the French congregation of St. Patrick and St. Mary in Dublin;

afterwards he became dean of Killala. One of Pierre Maturin’s sons,

Gabriel James, held the deanery of Kildare and, after Swift, that of

St. Patrick’s.[4] He died in 1746, leaving at least one son--William,

the poet’s father--who renounced the clerical career and became an

official in government service. After entering the Post Office he

was appointed Clerc of the Munster Road. The re-organization of the

Post Office by the Irish parliament[5] apparently made the situation

lucrative, for during the two last decades of the century William

Maturin was a wealthy and respected man in Dublin, and took active

part in the public life of the town. He married Miss Fidelia Watson,

who presented him with six children; of these Charles Robert was born

in 1780.[6] William Maturin was a man of refinement and was interested

in literature, so much so, that he is recorded[7] to have had some

intentions, in early life, of devoting himself to that profession, but

for the death of an illustrious personage to whose patronage he had

looked forward. The time of literary protection, in the old sense,

was, indeed, past and gone, and if his son also had been dependent on

it, the name would have been lost to literature. Maturin senior was,

however, a man in whose house literary inclinations were cherished and

encouraged, and the youthful lyrics which his son poured forth at an

early age, are said to have had a wide circulation among friends and

relations, sometimes even finding their way into the local papers.

In every respect the childhood of Charles Robert seems to have been

bright and happy. He was, no doubt, an amiable child, though spoilt on

account of his delicate health and looked up to for his cleverness.

His favourite pastimes, as those of so many future dramatists, were

juvenile theatricals, and in these he was allowed freely to indulge;

again and again the drawing-room was turned into a stage, the wardrobes

were robbed of what was thought fit, and an occasional piece from

Charles Robert’s own pen was acted, or else some old play--Lee’s

_Alexander_ for preference, where he always played the principal part

with wild impetuosity, to the delight and wonder of his sisters and an

admiring circle of companions.[8] The poets to whom his taste first

drew him were the dramatists of the Restoration, a period which always

interested him keenly. For Lee, Southerne, and Otway his partiality

prevailed even in later years, and he never admitted them inferior to

any but Shakespeare and the foremost Elizabethans. Once, when praising

Otway’s _Venice Preserved_, he is said[9] to have added:

I speak, perhaps, from an old feeling of attachment, but,

nevertheless, from deep conviction. The earliest associations of my

mind are with Pierre and Jaffier at the Rialto at midnight: I still

fancy I hear the sullen moan of the waters below me, and that I am

standing on that lofty bridge beside the glorious conspirators; I

could surrender almost any early impressions in preference.

In the field of fiction Maturin’s early impressions were equally

powerful, but here his taste was fixed and decided by productions of

his own time, such as saw the light in his growing years. The Gothic

Romance, or school of terror, which is usually considered to have begun

with Walpole’s _Castle of Otranto_ in 1764, had in the nineties an

extraordinary flight. All the romances of Mrs Radcliffe, Lewis’s _Monk_

and Godwin’s _St. Leon_, with a host of imitations, followed each

other in rapid succession and actually became, for a short time, the

rage of the public; and among the younger generation who listened to

these sombre and mysterious story-tellers, one of the most enthusiastic

listeners was the Irish boy who was, but too late, to become the

greatest of them himself. Of the merits of the novel of terror Maturin

afterwards made the following recognition:[10]

As a medium of excitement or impression, it (terror) was certainly the

most powerful that could be used by one human being on another, from

the clown who dresses up a figure to frighten his fellow into idiotism

or madness, to the romance-writer who rings bells by viewless hands,

encrusts daggers with long-shed blood, conceals treacherous doors

behind still more treacherous tapestry, or sends mad nuns or their

apparitions to wander about the gardens of their convents.

From this selfsame medium of excitement Maturin’s own works never

became wholly free; and even when applying criticism to the writers

that were the delight of his youth, he cannot but speak of them in a

tone of admiration, strongly contrasted with the marked aversion with

which he mentions Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett.[11]

These, then, were the literary auspices under which Charles Robert

Maturin grew up.--After attending the school of one Mr. Kerr, he

entered Trinity College, as a Pensioner, in November 1795; some years

later he obtained a scholarship, and finally a bachelor’s degree.

His intentions regarding the profession of an actor were probably

definitely abandoned by this time, and theology became the main

subject of his studies. According to biographers, Maturin’s university

career was successful and even brilliant, although a certain indolence

and eccentricity was always noticeable in his habits. He acquired

distinctions both as a classical scholar and an active member of the

theological class, and in the once famous Historical Society he is

also said to have distinguished himself by ‘rhetorical and poetical

productions.’[12] The Historical Society, afterwards abolished by the

government, had been founded the year previous to Maturin’s entrance

at College, and was a fruit of the vivid intellectual activity ruling

in every department during the short period of Irish independence. The

time in which Maturin lived, it is important to note, was the most

remarkable in the political history of Ireland. In 1782 Grattan had

had the satisfaction of hailing Ireland as a nation; the parliament

in College Green began its work of reforms with a joyous sense of

reconciliation with England, and a general hope that it would last

for ever. Dublin became, for a time, one of the liveliest capitals in

Europe, and the meeting-place of the greatest wits and most eloquent

men of the kingdom. The generation, however, which was born with the

Irish parliament, had not reached their manhood ere calamities loomed

ahead again. They saw the rebellion of ’98 with all its horrors; they

also lived to see the Union and felt the oppressive calm that followed

in its wake, interrupted only by the unfortunate insurrection of Emmet

in 1803. The works of Maturin demonstrate sufficiently that he was

an ardent Irish nationalist who resented the Union; but he was, by

temperament, nothing of a politician, and none of the family seem to

have been involved in any political intrigues. There was, however,

another side of nationalism--closely connected with the romantic

movement in all countries--which he eagerly embraced. It expressed

itself in an interest in the folklore, antiquities and early history of

Ireland, preferably seen in a slightly romantic colour. The _Historical

Memoirs of the Irish Bards_ of Joseph Cooper Walker, which was long

considered a standard work in its subject, appeared in 1786, giving

rise to other investigations of the same kind. Among Irish novelists

Maturin and Lady Morgan were those in whose (earlier) writings this

sense of a glorious past first found expression, besides which their

works also, for the first time in fiction, aimed at a conscious and

artistic description of genuine Irish scenery. Maturin’s sense of

nature was ever on the alert, and the beautiful Wicklow mountains were

to him, as to so many other Irish writers of later times, a constant

source of poetic inspiration.

As for life and circumstances in general, towards the end of the 18th

century, they were indeed ‘wild, wonderful, and savage,’ to use a

critic’s words of Maturin’s _Women_ in its quality of an Irish story.

Reality abounded in startling and extraordinary incidents, not seldom

outdoing even the confessedly fertile imagination of the poets of

Erin. The picture which Miss Edgeworth drew, in her immortal _Castle

Rackrent_ (1800) of a typical Irish estate, other writers confirmed to

be eminently faithful; life in the country, all around, was feudal,

wild and reckless; elopements occurred frequently, and duels were

daily bread among the gentry. The disposition of the lower classes was

likewise all for the adventurous, so much so that the autobiography

of a famous highwayman became one of the most popular schoolbooks,

effects of which reading by no means failed to make an appearance.[13]

In the capital the social contrasts presented themselves at their

sharpest. Beside the refined, gay and brilliant Dublin there was

another, where the sullen murmur of discontent was never hushed,

and which was constantly hovering on the brink of rebellion. ‘There

existed,’ says Carleton,[14] ‘in Dublin two distinct worlds, each as

ignorant of the other--at least, in a particular point of view, and

during certain portions of the day--as if they did not inhabit the

same country.’ Fierce street-frays occasionally raged for whole days

in public thoroughfares, and the students of Trinity College were said

to be particularly prone to take part in these and other such-like

amusements.--

What other records there are left of the youthful years of Maturin

are centred in the story of a courtship which ended in marriage at an

early age. The object of his attachment was Miss Henrietta Kingsbury,

like himself of an old and respected Protestant family. According to a

tradition it was Miss Kingbury’s grandfather to whom Swift is supposed

to have uttered his last words before the light of his powerful mind

was darkened for ever. A brother of hers was archdeacon of Killala.

Now biographers[15] generally maintain that Maturin married while

still going through his college course, and decided in favour of the

clerical profession _after_ his marriage, in hopes of being promoted

through the interest of his wife’s relations; but this, at least

partly, seems to be wrong. Maturin was not exactly a child at the time

of his marriage--he was 23 years old--; he had most probably finished

his college course and had certainly taken holy orders, being already

in enjoyment of the title Reverend, as may be seen from his marriage

license at the Public Record Office in Dublin[16].

The union proved happy. Though the maintenance of a growing family

early compelled Maturin to strenuous work, his literary occupations

being thus influenced by pecuniary considerations, it at the same

time gave him full compensation for his labours. His wife was a woman

of beauty and talents--she was one of the best singers in Dublin, a

pupil of Madame Catalani--and the conjugal harmony is said never to

have been broken. In many of his works Maturin speaks of a happy home

with nothing short of devotion, and in one of his sermons he calls

domestic felicity ‘the best, the only that deserves the name, the sole

flower that has been borne unwithered from paradise.’ Yet it was, no

doubt, well for the domestic felicity that Mrs Maturin _was_ a woman

of elegance and possessed talents admired in society; for her husband

was not always content with a quiet home-life but would, from time to

time, emerge from it to be a lion of reception-rooms and to play the

part of a dandy and a _grand seigneur_. His was a complicated nature,

and there was--though certainly much exaggerated by tradition--another

side of his character, vain, pleasure-loving and extravagant, which

broke out, as will be seen, with singular force after his only great

success in life.--As for Maturin’s choice of profession, it must

be considered a failure. Not that he lacked qualifications for his

calling: he was naturally religious, and distinguished himself as a

very eloquent preacher, nor was he ever accused of neglect in the

discharge of his duties; but the ‘worldly’ side of his character was

too strong not to bring about conflicts. The union of clergyman and

author was, after the classical examples of Swift and Sterne, probably

not in itself an abomination in the eyes of the British public. Yet the

apparent incompatibility of the two in Maturin’s case was continually

emphasized by hostile critics, and his eccentric habits, his connection

with the theatre and his excessive fondness for dancing was more than

the average mind could ever understand in one of his profession; to

judge from certain utterances[17] Maturin was, at least in the most

rigorous-minded circles, actually considered more or less insane.--

What induced Maturin to choose a profession in the earliest years of

the century was, besides his intention of marrying, the declining state

of his father’s affairs. About the time of the Union the work of the

postal establishment appears to have fallen into a decay, which sadly

affected the Clerks of the Roads, who were paid in proportion to the

frequency and quantity of their sendings. As early as 1802 Mr. William

Maturin is found writing[18] to the secretary of the Irish Post Office

to complain of the distressing diminution of his income. After drawing

a comparison with the extent of his sendings in previous years, he

continues:

Under these embarrassing Circumstances, already deprived of the

principal part of my subsistence, and with the melancholy prospect of

the rapid failure of the residue, I earnestly supplicate you, Sir, to

lay this application before the Post Masters General, whose humanity

I trust will not permit an old and faithful servant, to be reduced,

without any fault on his part, from a state of humble competence, to

wear out the short remains of his Life in penury and distress.

Yet this must be the case, if Government do not graciously interpose,

by granting not only some Compensation for past losses, but some

provision against those exigencies which are encreasing every hour,

and threaten the total extinction of the emoluments of a Clerc of the

Road-Emoluments, which after a service of 40 years, are almost all the

provision left us.

This application was forwarded with the secretary’s recommendations,

but whether it had any effect is uncertain. At all events it is clear

that the family was not quite abruptly plunged from affluence into

poverty at the final dismissal of Maturin senior from his situation--of

which more later on--and that his son had long before been obliged to

work hard both as a curate and an author. His first appointment was

the curacy of Loughrea, to which he attended some time between 1804

and 1806.[19] The sojourn of Maturin in Loughrea was, upon the whole,

felt as a kind of exile; wretched place as a small Irish country-town

at that time must have appeared to all, it was intolerable to a man

of literary interests and social habits. His dreariness was, however,

pleasantly interrupted by his sojourn as a guest at Cloghan Castle,

the seat of the family of O’Moore, who were supposed to be the lineal

descendants of the old kings of Leix. In a note to _Melmoth the

Wanderer_ Maturin says that he was an inmate of the castle for many

months, and to his friends he used to speak with delight of ‘that

ancient structure, and the Irish hospitality he there enjoyed and

witnessed.’[20] For Maturin’s literary conceptions this visit was of

importance. He saw now, for the first and only time in his life, a

glimpse of the wild nature of Western Ireland; he actually inhabited,

himself, one of those old castles the occurrence of which in the

romantic productions of the period was a _conditio sine qua non_; and

he came into contact with genuine types of Irish peasantry, such as he

was afterwards to describe with an impartiality and a graphic realism

unequalled in earlier Irish fiction.

Through some exertion on the part of his relations, Maturin was before

long removed to the curacy of St. Peter’s in Dublin, where he remained

to the hour of his death. The parish was one of the most extensive

in the town, and was said to contain ‘most of the wealth, rank, and

talent of the metropolis.’[21] The salary of the curate, however,

did not amount to more than 80-90 pounds per annum, and Maturin was,

consequently, forced to eke out this slender income by other means.

Alaric Watts says in his article that Maturin resided in his father’s

house until the final economic ruin of that gentleman; according to

other writers he established himself, immediately on his return to

Dublin, in York Street,[22] where he set up a kind of boarding school

and prepared young men for College. The task was rather congenial to

him; he was always fond of the company of very young people, and at

his well-known house, alternately the scene of luxury and poverty,

he was wont to arrange private theatricals and other amusements with

his pupils. York Street was then very different from what it is now,

belonging to the fashionable Dublin, round Stephen’s Green.

By this time, also, Maturin’s first romance was composed. He wrote for

money, it is true; but he turned to this mode of gaining--or trying

to gain--money, because literature represented his greatest interest

in life. Few authors, in fact--whatever Maturin himself may say in

the prefaces to his books--have felt themselves to be literary men so

intensely as Maturin. If he had been a rich man, he would certainly

have been an author all the same, as were Beckford and Lewis. As for

his first book, it was conceived from his own innermost inclinations.

_The Fatal Revenge; or, The Family of Montorio_ was written in the

Radcliffe style, not because Maturin believed it to be the style

best relished by the general public, but because he, at the time in

question, relished it best himself.

II.

1807-1815.

For things we never mention,

For Art misunderstood--

For excellent intention

That did not turn to good....

Kipling.

It was, however, not without secret apprehension Maturin went forth

to realize his literary aspirations. The unfortunate conflict between

his bent and his profession--as understood by the multitude--asserted

itself at the very beginning of his career; ‘Maturin’s friends,’ as

a biographer[23] puts it, ‘being a little evangelical, he could not

risk offending or scandalizing them by appearing publicly as a writer

of novels.’ He was, accordingly, compelled to choose a pseudonym,

and lighted upon the rather unhappy one of Dennis Jasper Murphy. So,

at least, it was judged afterwards by those who were interested in

Maturin’s productions. A writer[24] describing a visit he paid to the

novelist in the days when his fame was at its highest, says, with

reference to this _nom de plume_:

I remarked that his assumed name of Dennis Jasper Murphy, from its

vulgar and _merely_ Irish sound, must have injured the character of

‘Montorio’ and his other romances. In this he seemed to agree with

me, observing, that at the time he was inexperienced, and in some

instances badly advised.

That the author was an Irishman, and without any ‘literary friend or

counsellor,’ is explicitly stated in the preface--the last-named

circumstance remaining, for the future, a constant theme of lamentation

for Maturin. No doubt there is an air of helplessness about the

publication of _Montorio_. Being unable to dispose of the copyright,

Maturin had no choice but to publish it at his own hazard; and the

bookseller again, at _his_ hazard, thought it proper to embellish the

title of the book by adding the words _The Fatal Revenge_, the name

intended by the author being only _The Family of Montorio_. In the

preface to _Women_ (1818) Maturin mentions this, admitting the addition

to have been ‘a very bookselling appellation;’ but how bookselling

it was is best seen by the fact that the book did not reach a second

edition before 1824.

* * * * *

The Gothic Romance, the school of fiction founded upon ‘the passion of

supernatural fear,’ was already in disrepute at the time _Montorio_

came out. In the preface, therefore, Maturin presents an eloquent

defence of this style of writing, which, though much abused by ‘vulgar

and unhallowed hands,’ he still maintains to be most fit for artistic

treatment:

I question whether there be a source of emotion in the whole mental

frame, so powerful or universal as the _fear arising from objects of

invisible terror_. Perhaps there is no other that has been at some

period or other of life, the predominant and indelible sensation

of every mind, of every class, and under every circumstance. Love,

supposed to be the most general of passions, has certainly been felt

in its purity by very few, and by some not at all, even in its most

indefinite and simple state.

The same might be said, _a fortiori_, of other passions. But who is

there that has never feared? Who is there that has not involuntarily

remembered the gossip’s tale in solitude or in darkness? Who is there

that has not sometimes shivered under an influence he would scarce

acknowledge to himself? I might trace this passion to a high and

obvious source.

Here, in a few words, is expressed the peculiarity of the Gothic

Romance.[25] Its soul is terror; terror, preferably, if not always,

arising from a cause of supernatural import. It is often considered as

a crude precursor of the magnificent revival of the English letters

with the romanticism of the early 19:th century, nor can it be denied

that in some instances the threads of the two currents are interwoven,

and that certain details from the one are taken up and ennobled by

the other. The Byronic hero, for example, who was to influence the

poetry of Europe, has his prototype in the Gothic Romance. Yet in its

essential nature this movement is different from all others, and,

instead of coalescing with romanticism, it is developed apart from

and alongside with it, Maturin’s _Melmoth_, which is unquestionably

the greatest production of the actual Gothic Romance, appearing as

late as 1820. According to this distinct character of its own, the

present writer would be disposed considerably to restrict the range

usually allotted to the Gothic Romance. Especially with regard to

works in which the use of supernatural agency is eliminated, the

limit has sometimes been fixed with obvious arbitrariness; if the

occurrence only of startling incidents or violent and extraordinary

characters[26] were to be the criterion in this respect, the Gothic

Romance would include, not only a collection of rubbish, but a great

many productions which English literature has cause to be proud of. It

is the main and only purpose of the work which must be kept in view,

and that, as in all Gothic romance, is to appeal to the reader’s sense

of fear. The terrible and revolting elements are introduced entirely

for their own sake--not, for instance, to lend force to the total

impression, or give depth to the study of character; ghastly crimes,

torture, and painful situations form the very aim of the book, that

for which it was written. It is evident that this kind of composition

was not likely to attain any artistic excellence. A good example of it

is Shelley’s youthful story of _Zastrozzi_ (1810), probably one of the

most worthless things ever fabricated by a great poet in a moment of

misdirected energy. A book like John Moore’s _Zeluco_ (1786?), on the

other hand, can hardly be classed among the productions of the Gothic

Romance, although it is habitually mentioned together with them; it is

a dispassionate, rather didactic display of a very vicious character,

totally lacking those qualities that are calculated to make nervous

readers afraid of going to bed.

The occurrence, however, of really or seemingly supernatural elements,

is the chief characteristic of the Gothic Romance. These elements are

always treated seriously; they form the part on which the reader’s

attention is meant to be centred, the fearful sensations created by

these means being, again, what the writer aims at--as expressed in

Maturin’s preface quoted above. Another vital point there alluded to

is that the ‘passion of supernatural fear’ is intended to come home

to the reader by way of his own recollections of moments when he has

involuntarily shivered in solitude or in darkness. In other words, the

unearthly incidents about to be told are to take place among ordinary

people, in environs more or less resembling real life. This, in fact,

is admittedly a requisite to the Gothic Romance;[27] and, that being

so, a tale like Beckford’s _Vathek_ (1781?) ought to be excluded from

the _Schauerromantik_, the meaning of this word being limited to the

definite literary movement now in question. In _Vathek_ the course of

action is, from the beginning, raised to the realm of a fairy tale from

the _Arabian Nights_; here, consequently, the supernatural becomes

‘natural,’ never being startling or unexpected in its mere capacity of

supernaturalness, nor in any way connected with experiences which the

reader might be familiar with.

The denomination ‘Gothic story’ was invented and introduced by Horace

Walpole, who furnished his _Castle of Otranto_ with this sub-title. The

wonders themselves, in this romance, are crude and primitive in the

extreme, such as statues found bleeding, and portraits walking out of

their frames. The _Castle of Otranto_ was, however, greatly admired

by Scott,[28] who points out that in this crudity lies a deliberate

artistic purpose of re-calling the ideas of the distant times, when the

things related would have been ‘received as matter of great credulity.’

In its attempt at time-colouring the _Castle of Otranto_ really stands

alone among the Gothic romances where, as a rule, personages of any

time or country speak the language and express the ideas of 18:th

century England. In the present age, indeed, the success of this effort

seems very indifferent, and the tedious horrors of Walpole proved too

much even for his direct imitators. Clara Reeve, in her _Champion of

Virtue_ (1777), afterwards called _The Old English Baron_, which she

candidly confesses to have been inspired by Walpole, prudently keeps

aloof from his copious use of supernatural elements. Yet the childish

character of all these inventions could not long satisfy the public

taste for horror, which grew very intense in the last decade of the

century. Originality was soon sacrificed to the demands of power and

suspense; _The Monk_ (1795) of Matthew Gregory Lewis, which is the

best known--and probably the worst written--of all the more famous

productions of the school of terror, consists, for the most part, of

plagiarisms from foreign sources. Only his manner of handling his

readers’ nerves without gloves was, at that time, a novelty in English

fiction. The unearthly elements in _The Monk_ comprise popular legends

of ghosts that find no rest in their graves, and one of the principal

personages is a female demon sent forth by the devil himself to corrupt

the morals of the monk Ambrosio. Compared to the nursery-bogeys of

Walpole and Clara Reeve the preternatural world in _The Monk_ is, of

course, much more imposing in itself, although the author’s treatment

of his subject-matter is exceedingly blunt and coarse. With regard to

the occurrence also of situations physically revolting and disgusting,

the school of terror celebrates one of its doubtful triumphs in the

romance of Lewis.

About the same time, however, the movement took another course in a

gentler direction, with the appearance of Mrs Ann Radcliffe within the

province of imagination. She refrains altogether from representing

anything actually supernatural; whatever is made to appear so

throughout the tale, is finally explained as proceeding from some

natural cause. This innovation in the mode of composition by no means

marks an improvement from the artistic point of view. In a story

written in the Radcliffe style a certain want of dignity is constantly

felt, the reader being, to use the words of Scott,[29] ‘cheated into a

sympathy’ with horrors shown, at last, to be connected with very petty

and trivial circumstances, while the ‘explanation’ tendered is often as

improbable as would be an appeal to supernatural forces. Nevertheless

there still remains a sort of halo about the work of Mrs Radcliffe.

She was indeed a far cleverer writer than either Walpole or Lewis,

possessing, in a considerable degree, the rare art of suggestion, so

important in novels of suspense. Another innovation introduced by Mrs

Radcliffe into the Gothic Romance is an intense, romantic feeling for

natural scenery. In her tales a moonlit landscape is as indispensable

as a half-ruinous castle, and to the dreamy, sentimental atmosphere

which prevails throughout her works, her enormous popularity was,

no doubt, partly due. It was under her influence Maturin started

his career as a novelist; _Montorio_ is, as far as its construction

is concerned, composed in the typical Radcliffe style. That he was

entirely in sympathy with his subject is already seen from the preface,

and the warmth with which he speaks of Mrs Radcliffe even twelve years

later,[30] clearly demonstrates that he must have been, in his youth,

one of her most ardent admirers, and thoroughly acquainted with her

works and all their peculiarities. The following extract from Maturin’s

article deserves to be quoted all the more so because of its being one

of the ablest and most beautiful characterizations of the once famous

authoress ever written:

-- -- -- her romances are irresistibly and dangerously delightful;

fitted to inspire a mind devoted to them with a species of melancholy

madness. The very light under which she paints every object, has

something fatally indulgent to such an aberration of mind in its early

and innocent, but mournful stage: her castles and her abbeys, her

mountains and her valleys, are always tinged with the last rays of the

setting sun, or the first glimpses of the rising moon; her music is

made to murmur along a stream, whose dim waves reflect the gleam of

“the star that bids the shepherd fold”; the spires of her turrets are

always silvered by moonlight, and the recesses of her forests are only

disclosed by flashes of the palest lightning; a _twilight shade_ is

spread over her views of the moral, as well as of the natural world:

her heroines are “soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair”; they have

no struggles of energy, no bursts of passion--they are born to tremble

and to weep;--their love, from its very commencement, has a tinge of

despair, and their susceptibility of nature (which seems always their

strongest feeling) has all the character of a religious resignation

of its charms to the solemn duty of extracting melancholy from its

scenes; they hang on the parting beauties of an evening landscape,

and their tears fall in solemn unison with the dews of heaven; they

are revived only by the toll of a sepulchral bell, and wander among

the graves of their departed friends, as if the intercourse of human

existence were suspended, and the living were to seek not only

recollection, but society, among the dead. The works of this writer

lead us for ever to the tomb; but the wand which she bore was gifted

only to call up the milder and unalarming spirits: we listen to her

charms as we would to the incantations of a benevolent enchanter,

whose “quaint apparitions” may soften and solemnize, but neither

terrify nor hurt us. Her spirits were those who

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make

Whereof the ewe bites not, and those whose pastime

Is to make midnight mushrooms, who rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew--

and “weak masters though they be”, their melody hovers round us as

sweet as the air-borne songs of Ariel, and when we wake from the

trance into which they have plunged us, “we cry to dream again”--

In spite of similarity in construction it will be seen that the general

atmosphere of _Montorio_ differs greatly from the feminine gentleness

of Mrs Radcliffe--as much as it does from the crude straightforwardness

of Lewis; and it speaks much for Maturin’s originality that he at once

succeeded in preserving a tone so distinctly his own among patterns so

highly admired.--

Lastly, a third class of the novel of terror is that in which the

marvellous or seemingly supernatural phenomenon is represented

as a result of scientific or quasi-scientific occupations, and,

consequently, within the limits of possibility. Instead of receiving

a ‘natural’ explanation à la Mrs Radcliffe, the reader is referred

to the effects of mesmerism, hypnotism, or some other suggestive and

incompletely known branch of natural science. This class, of which

Edgar Allan Poe was to become the most brilliant representative--and

in which the elements strictly _Gothic_ are often dispensed with--was

the latest developed of the three. At the time _Montorio_ was written,

it had been touched upon in some of the tales of the American Charles

Brockden Brown (1771-1810) which, however, it is very uncertain

whether Maturin was acquainted with. Closely related to novels of this

class are the so-called Rosicrucian stories, which deal with alchemic

pursuits; the most celebrated of these, the _St. Leon_ of William

Godwin, to which Maturin’s _Melmoth the Wanderer_ is largely indebted,

appeared in 1799.

* * * * *

The plot in _Montorio_ is sufficiently intricate to necessitate a

commencement of the analysis from the end and to reveal the mystery at

once.

The ‘fatal revenge’ is perpetrated by Orazio, count of Montorio, upon

his brother, who has, in a diabolical manner, caused the death of his

(Orazio’s) wife and the ruin of all his family. Orazio and his younger

brother are, some twenty years before the commencement of the story,

the only surviving representatives of a house which for centuries

has been one of the most illustrious in the kingdom of Naples. Orazio

is of a brave and enthusiastic disposition, and warmly attached to

his unworthy brother; the latter is incapable of holding any of the

commissions procured for him by Orazio, and finally marries a woman

whose family are on a decidedly hostile footing towards his brother. At

the same time Orazio himself marries a beautiful and distinguished lady

called Erminia di Amaldi, whom, with his usual impetuosity, he drags

to the altar almost by main force. Very soon it becomes obvious to him

that his love is not reciprocated, and all the goodness and gentleness

of his wife cannot conceal the fact that she feels profoundly unhappy.

Now Orazio is reconciled to his brother and invites him to the castle

of Muralto, the family residence. The brother, coveting the title

and estates of Montorio, determines to avail himself of the apparent

depression of Erminia, whom he hates, being a rejected suitor of hers,

while his wife, who is equally depraved, eagerly abets him in his

intentions. He conceives a plan of exciting the jealousy of Orazio,

which, considering his vehement nature, he rightly conjectures will

be of fatal consequence. The plan is easily executed. It is generally

known that a young officer of the name of Verdoni has been in love with

Erminia before her marriage; and with the assistance of a rascally

servant dismissed by Verdoni and taken up by the younger Montorio,

the suspicions of Orazio are awakened and successfully kept alive by

means of continual hints and allusions. Letters written by his wife to

Verdoni are thrown into his way, and at last it is even proved that

Erminia is in the habit of meeting Verdoni at the house of a peasant,

where there is a little child who is the object of the tender care of

both. Orazio’s rage knows no bounds. Verdoni is treacherously assaulted

and brought to Muralto, where Orazio lets him be murdered before the

eyes of Erminia; which horrible sight puts an end to her life also.

Well-nigh deranged with sorrow and fear, Orazio leaves the country and

finds a solitary refuge on a small isle in the Grecian archipelago,

which is believed to be haunted and is never visited by the people of

the neighbouring islands. Here his ‘propensities and habits cease to be

those of humanity,’ and his bodily strength and perseverance likewise

grow almost superhuman. His tranquillity is unexpectedly disturbed by a

boat landing on the shore, with two men in it, whom he understands to

speak Italian. From a part of their conversation which he overhears,

he gathers that they are assassins sent out by the present count of

Montorio, who cannot feel at ease while his brother is alive. In the

night he is attacked by the men but easily dispatches both of them.

By the corpse of one he finds some letters containing an account of

the tragedy at Muralto, which clearly demonstrates the innocence of

Erminia. It appears that she had been attached to Verdoni from her

earliest youth. Her father being opposed to their union, they were

married privately, and the following year Erminia was delivered of a

daughter at the house of a relative. At the same time reports were

spread of Verdoni’s death while on an expedition, and in the meantime

Erminia’s father had compelled her to accept Orazio. When Verdoni had

returned, Erminia was the unhappy but faithful wife of another.--Such

are the tidings Orazio learns in his solitude, and to them are added

those of the death of all his children. He lingers long in a state

of stupefaction, but at length his energies are roused and inflamed

into their former fury, whereupon a thirst for revenge is the only

feeling which fills his soul, night and day. The revenge is to fall

upon the whole family of his guilty brother, whose children, according

to Orazio’s idea of combining justice with vengeance, are to be made

the punishers of their father. Before, however, starting to put his

purpose into effect, Orazio undertakes an extensive journey to the East

where he becomes an adept in secret and magical studies, and during

which his mental and physical abilities are developed to the highest

perfection. Thence he returns to Italy and enters a convent under the

name of father Schemoli. As he knows how to give himself an air of

particular sanctity, he is soon called to the castle Muralto, to be

the confessor of count Montorio, who has, by this time, become a rigid

devotee.--

The story begins with a description of the family residing at

the ancient castle. The gloomy retirement in which the count and

countess pass their days is in no wise brightened by the presence

of the confessor who is their only companion. Their eldest son,

Ippolito, lives at Naples, as the admired and brilliant leader of

the pleasures and dissipations of its _jeunesse dorée_, while the

younger, Annibal, who is of a timid, melancholy, and suspicious

disposition, is an inhabitant of Muralto. The members of the family

have, from time immemorial, been noted for their love of magic and

the preternatural. It is subsequently upon this inclination which the

young men, otherwise so different, have in common, that the monk bases

his scheme of inducing them to destroy their father. The story is one

of a continuous, unrelenting process of strong mental suggestion,

operating through its victims’ readiness to believe in supernatural

agency. The plot goes forward alternately at the castle and at Naples;

the adventures of Annibal are told by himself in letters to his

brother. Muralto is furnished with everything required for a scene of

‘Gothic incidents.’ There is an old, uninhabited wing of the castle,

with a cemetery-chapel partly in ruins, and no end of secret doors,

intricate passages, and subterranean vaults. It is the delight of

Annibal to ramble about in these desolate places; he has heard that

a mystery is connected with the sudden and tragical end of the late

possessor of the castle, whose fate greatly excites his curiosity.

He attaches himself to an old servant who apparently knows more than

he dares disclose. Much against his will the old man is persuaded to

accompany Annibal on his nocturnal visits to the deserted part of

the building--nocturnal, because the count is suspected to be very

unfavourably disposed towards this kind of occupation. With difficulty

they open the long-shut door to the apartments used by count Orazio.

A portrait of the countess Erminia makes a profound impression upon

Annibal, who feels assured that the original is still in the land of

the living; he makes a copy of the picture, which he always carries

about him. These excursions are exactly what Schemoli would wish, it

being very easy for him, with his familiarity with all the recesses of

the building, to awaken superstitious fear in the visitants. At times

they see a human figure issuing, as it were, directly out of the wall;

they hear mysterious steps and observe strange lights moving around

them. Blood is detected on the floors, and in a cavity of the wall a

skeleton is discovered. Once the old man disappears, for a while, as if

swallowed up by the tombs. Shortly afterwards he dies, without being

able to reveal what he has seen among the dead; he merely repeats that

‘the house of Montario must fall!’ Attended by a nephew of the old

man, called Filippo, who now becomes his companion, Annibal continues

to explore the ruins, until one night they are surprised by the count

and Schemoli. The count, in a fury which betrays him to be conscious

of a crime, has Annibal imprisoned in a lonely chamber in the castle,

where, for some time to come, he beholds no face but that of the monk.

At this stage Schemoli deems it fit to commence his work. He never

speaks to the prisoner, or heeds his queries, by day; but every night

at twelve he emerges from his castle of silence and sallies forth

to Annibal’s room, where he serves up a fantastical story which he

pretends to be allowed to relate at that hour only. He tells that he is

the spirit of the dead body discovered by Annibal in the chapel. His

life has been wild and sinful, and he has suffered a violent death.

The body Annibal now sees before him is one two thousand years old,

re-animated to become the abode of his spirit, until his real body is

properly interred and vengeance wreaked upon his murderer. This task

an implacable fate has destined to be executed by Annibal; and he is

made to understand--although it is never distinctly uttered--that the

criminal he must punish is his father. Annibal repudiates the idea with

indignation, but Schemoli calmly repeats that his fate is inevitable,

and that he is compelled to pursue Annibal everywhere until the deed

is done. The mind of Annibal is already beginning to give way under

the regular pressure of Schemoli, when these midnightly visits are

suddenly interrupted. Annibal has, for some time, been permitted to

enjoy the society of Filippo.--The count had promised to send Filippo

to another of his estates, while the ruffian who was to be his guide

had received a secret commission to murder him on the way. After a

marvellous escape, however, Filippo had boldly returned to the castle

and offered himself to act as a spy upon Annibal.--As he is really

devoted to Annibal, he has the difficult task of operating as a double

spy; but in this he succeeds so well as to find out that his master

is to be poisoned by the monk. Through the dexterous management of

Filippo, the draught prepared for Annibal is swallowed by Schemoli

himself, after which the prisoners make their escape from the castle.

Annibal determines to proceed to Naples to his brother, but on arriving

there he learns that Ippolito has just left the town in a state of

desperation.--

Interesting as are Annibal’s letters to his brother, Ippolito pays them

but little attention, being wholly absorbed by business of his own.

He has run across a stranger who exercises a mysterious, irresistible

ascendancy over his mind. This stranger, otherwise father Schemoli,

introduces himself to Ippolito in a manner calculated to excite, by

degrees, his interest and curiosity; speaking, at first, but little at

a time and then disappearing. Ippolito is usually called to meet him by

letters which he finds in his room, none of his servants being able to

explain how they get there. Soon it is generally observed that Ippolito

is in the habit of spending his nights at some unknown place whence he

always returns with a pale and haggard appearance; and when at times he

takes part in his former amusements, he does so with the wild despair

of one who wishes to escape his own thoughts. His young page, Cyprian,

who takes tender care of him, endeavours, by every means, to keep him

at home; sometimes he reads a diary to him, partly in verse and partly

in prose, written by a nun and dedicated to some one she is hopelessly

attached to. The gentle influence of Cyprian, however, is no match

for the miraculous power of Schemoli. When midnight arrives, Ippolito

departs. Once he has invited a company of friends to his house, but at

the usual hour a gigantic figure, with his face concealed in a mask,

appears among them, beckoning to Ippolito, who submissively follows

him. Their destination is a subterranean vault, whither Ippolito

is always conducted blindfold, and the purpose of these excursions

is to impress upon him that he is ordered, by fate, to commit an

extraordinary deed. Just as in the case of Annibal, the monk enjoins

upon Ippolito that he himself labours under the same fate, and that his

is no voluntary service; and the credulous mind of Ippolito soon proves

susceptible to the imposture. One night he is informed that ‘the hour

is come.’ He is again conducted to the vaults where he is received by

several figures fantastically attired; after a multitude of mysterious

rites and ceremonies he is shown, by a pantomimic display, that he is

destined to commit a murder against his will, and also who is to be his

victim. Like Annibal he is seized with violent indignation, but the

serenity of Schemoli remains unperturbed. In great despair Ippolito

leaves Naples at the very time Annibal arrives there from Muralto.

Ippolito roams about in the neighbourhood of Naples, without any

definite object in view. His journey, however, soon becomes very

painful. It appears that rumour has travelled ahead of him and spread

news of his magical pursuits and his supposed alliance with the devil.

Everywhere he is received with maledictions and threatened with the

Inquisition; and, worst of all, he seems to be followed by the dreaded

figure of his persecutor. Once he passes a night in a large, deserted

building, where strange voices and footsteps induce him to descend

into a subterranean locality of vast dimensions. There he is joined

by Schemoli, who reminds him of the uselessness of trying to avoid

his fate. He then leaves Ippolito to wander about in darkness, until

he discerns two figures advancing before him in the dim light of a

lantern. One of them is Schemoli, and the other a monk who carries the

lifeless form of a young female. After a while the former is seen to

depart, and the monk, with apparent hesitation, prepares to plunge a

dagger into the breast of the lady; frightened by Ippolito he releases

her and makes his escape. Ippolito seizes the lady and, following

the course taken by the monk, emerges at last into the garden of a

cloister. In fresh air the lady revives and learns with joy the name

of her preserver. She informs him that she has been forcibly separated

from his brother Annibal, and implores him to save her. There is a

river flowing through the garden; seeing a boat Ippolito springs into

it, but before he has time to assist her to follow him, the river is

disturbed by an earthquake, and the boat is borne along with great

rapidity. After a perilous course Ippolito gets safely ashore, and

his ramblings begin again. Yet the suspicions entertained against

him are gaining strength every moment, and at last he is imprisoned

by the members of the Inquisition. He is repeatedly examined, but

nothing worse happens to him so far as the Holy Office is concerned.

Schemoli, however, regularly visits him in his cell. Ippolito’s power

of resistance has nearly vanished, when he is once more released

by another earthquake, which rends asunder the prison-tower of the

Inquisition. With the few surviving inhabitants of the town he embarks

for Sicily, but the bark is wrecked and Ippolito drifts ashore where

he is received by Schemoli. Now he passively yields to the will of his

persecutor, who conducts him first to Naples and then to the castle of

Muralto.--

Annibal, not finding his brother at Naples, betakes himself to Puzzoli,

to seek protection with a relative of his mother, a distinguished

ecclesiastic, who lives at enmity with his father. On his way he

arrives at a small town by a river which, just then, threatens the

inhabitants with an inundation; the nuns of an Ursuline convent are

arranging a solemn procession to induce the saint to prevent the

impending calamity. In that procession Annibal detects the original

of the picture which he still cherishes as his dearest treasure. In

ecstasies he rushes to the lady, beginning to address her--to the

strong resentment of the nuns--when the flood suddenly comes on with

terrible force. Annibal is separated from the object of his rapture,

but, in the general confusion at last finds her and succeeds in saving

her from the water. She is taken back to the convent, but Annibal

contrives clandestinely to meet her. It appears that she is a novice

called Ildefonsa, and is forced to take the veil much against her

inclinations. Annibal now writes to his relative to request him to

interfere on behalf of Ildefonsa. His effort is crowned with success

in so far as a letter really arrives from the bishop of the diocese,

ordering the removal of Ildefonsa from the convent; but shortly before

this Annibal has seen the well-known figure of Schemoli glide past

him, and from that moment he is plunged into desperate gloom which

nothing is able to dispel. Nor is he mistaken in his forebodings of

evil. The messenger bringing the bishop’s letter is sent back with the

intelligence that Ildefonsa is dead. Assisted by his faithful Filippo,

however, Annibal finds out that this is not the case; accordingly, at

the funeral procession, he steps forward accusing the abbess of having

arranged a mock funeral, after immuring Ildefonsa in the dungeons of

the convent. The abbess allows him to remove the pall, and, to his

astonishment, he sees the lifeless form of Ildefonsa. The indignation

of the public is now directed against Annibal; he is even imprisoned

on account of his extraordinary conduct. Ildefonsa, however, who is

not dead but only rendered insensible by a strong opiate, is conveyed

to the vaults where Ippolito accidentally saves her from the hands of

her enemies. The earthquake which separates Ildefonsa from Ippolito,

reunites her with Annibal, whose prison is crushed to pieces. After

some time spent in close retirement they venture to set out for

Puzzoli. Their guide proves to be bribed by Schemoli, and they are

attacked by his attendants, whereupon Annibal is severely wounded. When

he comes to his senses he finds himself in the power of his persecutor.

By this time he is also a broken man, and bereft of all further power

of resistance he consents to all the propositions of Schemoli. He only

expresses a wish that there might be another human being in the same

condition as himself--and Schemoli has no reason to conceal that there

is one: his brother Ippolito. Annibal follows Schemoli to Muralto,

where he unexpectedly finds Ildefonsa lying on her death-bed. He has

no opportunity, however, to inquire into her fate, for the fatal night

draws on apace. That same night the count Montorio is, more than ever,

beset by pangs of conscience. He dare not be left alone for a moment,

although his wife is quite unable to soothe him. At last he summons

the confessor to give him absolution, and now, for the first time,

confesses to him that he has tried to palliate his crime by rearing

the children of his unhappy brother as his own: Ippolito and Annibal

are the sons of his brother Orazio.... The confessor rushes out to

the youths, but is powerless to utter one articulate sound. Nor would

it be of any avail; in a trance-like condition they enter the count’s

apartment, and their swords meet in his body.--

At the moment of the young men’s arrest, Orazio surrenders himself

to justice, protesting that he alone is guilty. He asks permission

to compose a written account of what has happened, and in this he

reveals his identity, relates the story of his early misfortunes, and

explains the method adopted by him to carry out his vengeance, which is

fatally visited upon himself, his own children becoming murderers at

his instigation.--As for Ildefonsa, she is the unacknowledged daughter

of Erminia and Verdoni, and the very picture of her mother. Montorio

destines her for a convent to get rid of her; when she is brought to

the castle by Schemoli’s attendants, we are told that Montorio, ‘on

beholding her, felt a long extinguished passion for her mother revive.

To gratify a romantic illusion of posthumous passion she was arrayed

in fantastic splendour by the count, and to appease fear and jealousy,

was poisoned by his wife.’--Ippolito is, in his prison, visited by his

former page, who turns out to be a woman called Rosolia di Valozzi.

After seeing him once, in the days of his splendour, an irresistible

passion had made her quit her convent and enter his service; the diary

she used to read to him referred to herself and her attachment to

Ippolito. Now her health is undermined, and she expires shortly after

her secret is revealed.

Ippolito and Annibal are finally released, but banished from the

country for ever. Orazio is condemned to death; but at the last

interview with his sons he bursts ‘one of the larger vessels’ and

dies, rejoicing that ‘the last of the Montorios has not perished on a

scaffold.’

In a short introduction to _Montorio_ it is narrated how two young

officers enter the French service at the siege of Barcelona 1697, and

distinguish themselves as much by their reckless intrepidity as by

their melancholy aloofness from their comrades. When the city is taken

both of them perish; and an Italian officer, who is the only person

acquainted with their history, relates all that follows.--

* * * * *

It would not be possible to give an account of all the windings of

this intricate production, which is said[31] to contain ‘sufficient

sparkle and movement for half a dozen ordinary romances.’ An extract

from another critic[32] likewise goes to show--besides the fact that

_Montorio_ had its admirers--that it is not such a very easy matter to

trace even the bare outlines of Maturin’s first story:

In the “House (sic) of Montorio” there is a vast exuberance of all the

impulses of humanity,--the young passions, fantasies and aspirations,

dancing and eddying like the waters of a gushing fountain, and

sparkling in the coloured light of romance. Plot, sentiment,

character, and description, in an abundance that seems to mock the

anxious effort of ordinary genius, and to perplex the youthful author

with his own riches, mark the entire of this extraordinary production.

Yet all these riches, unfortunately, rest on an unsubstantial

foundation. The Radcliffe style of composition requires, in fact,

the prudence and moderation practised by its originator, in order to

preserve anything like an artistic balance. It follows from the very

nature of a story of this kind, that the more the scope of action

is enlarged, the more unsatisfactory is the inevitable explanation,

and the greater the disappointment felt at the implausibility of the

solution. In _Montorio_ the disproportion between cause and effect is

nothing less than prodigious; and such elements as would actually be

grand and imposing in the plan itself, are, in the course of execution,

sadly affected by the air of charlatanism inseparable from a plot

constructed in the Radcliffe manner. It would be different, and far

more satisfactory, if the brothers were, for instance, represented as

acting under a kind of hypnotic influence. As it is, the scheme of

Orazio is, essentially, carried out by means of talking sheer nonsense

to two full-grown people; and facilitated by accidents and singular

coincidences which are as incredible as would be the appearance of

all the legions of the supernatural world. The wonderful talents of

Orazio, above all his capacity of swiftly covering great distances,

become almost unnecessary, considering the never-ending maze of

secret passages and subterranean recesses at his disposal; there

are no two apartments, far or near, unconnected by these means of

escape, if need be, and the strangest thing of all is that Orazio,

after an absence of twenty years, still is the only person perfectly

acquainted with them, wherever they are. For him there is no more

difficulty in smuggling letters to Ippolito’s room at Naples, than in

suddenly turning up in the prison-cell of the Inquisition. Among other

extraordinary circumstances contributing to the success of Orazio’s

enterprise, the occurrence of two earthquakes with the same issue, the

liberation of a person from his prison by crushing its walls, is the

most unfortunate. This repetition of an event which, even if introduced

singly, makes unusual claims upon the reader’s credulity, seriously

cools his excitement even at the first perusal. As for any recurrent

enjoyment, it has very appropriately been pointed out by Scott,[33]

that a composer of Radcliffe romances cannot expect his productions to

be relished twice or oftener. When everything mysterious and suggestive

is carefully explained, there is nothing left to excite curiosity or

keep the mind in suspense a second time, as is often the case with

powerfully told supernatural incidents which receive no explanation

whatever. It is almost intolerable to re-read _Montorio_, from

beginning to end, in spite of the many impressive passages it contains.

However, as it is unavoidable in a story constructed in accordance with

the principles of _Montorio_, that the elaborate fabric collapses at

the final revelation of the ‘truth’ and the placing side by side of

causes and effects, it must still be considered as a success in its

kind if this does not happen too soon; and in _Montorio_ the reader

is, until the explanation of Orazio, really kept believing that the

incidents related are of a preternatural character. Hence the ‘passion

of supernatural fear,’ though capable of being inspired only once,

is as genuine as that which any Gothic story is likely to create. As

far as the purely terrific element is concerned, it has justly been

observed[34] that ‘_Montorio_ surpasses all the excellences of Ann

Radcliffe and Godwin combined.’ An atmosphere of intense suspense

is brought about by the parallel development of two actions, always

broken off at the most interesting point, and the vigour, vivacity, and

youthful freshness of the style also leaves far behind all that which

had been produced, up to 1807, within the Gothic Romance.

Of the two actions the adventures going on at Muralto form the happier

one, the tricks of Orazio being, in this instance, far more probable.

In the gloomy surroundings where the very air is filled with surmises

of some mysterious and horrible secret, it is not unnatural that

Orazio should succeed in appealing to the superstitious tendencies

of the melancholy-minded Annibal, nor is it astonishing that he is

thoroughly acquainted with all the localities of his own castle. The

fearful expectations with which Annibal looks forward to his nightly

excursions, are cleverly transferred to the reader:

The hour is approaching--a few moments more, and the castle bell

will toll. The hour that I have longed for, I almost begin now to

wish more distant. I almost dread to hear the steps of Michelo....

Hark! the bell tolls--the old turret seems to rock its echo; and the

silence that succeeds, how deep, how stilly!--would I could hear an

owl scream across me! Ha! ’twas the lightning that gleamed across me.

I will go to the casement; the roar of the elements will be welcome

at such a moment as this.... The night is dark and unruly--the wind

bursts in strong and fitful blasts against the casement. The clouds

are hurried along in scattering masses. There is a murmur from the

forests below, that in a lighter hour I could trust fancy to listen

to; but, in my present mood, I dare not follow her wanderings. Would

my old guide were come! I feel that any state of fear is supportable,

accompanied by the sight or sound of a human being.... Was that shriek

fancy?--again, again--impossible! Hark! there is a tumult in the

castle--lights and voices beneath the turret.... What is it they tell

me?

Every night some new discovery is made, ingeniously calculated to

increase his curiosity, and the marvellous occurrences become more

and more startling, until the climax is reached in the night-scene

where Orazio suddenly drags the old servant after him into the vault,

and there addresses him ‘in the hollow voice of death.’ The mind of

his victim being thus sufficiently prepared for his purpose, Orazio

rouses the count, and Annibal is conveyed to his lonely prison. The

tale which Orazio here unfolds to him is one of the boldest flights

of ‘terrific’ imagination: a description of the abode of unblessed

spirits, where he has been condemned to linger before entering the

ancient body kept unconsumed amid magical flames--in which shape his

doom then is involved into Annibal’s. A comparison of this fantasia to

the mummery by which Ippolito is informed of his fate is of interest

as a proof of the injustice Maturin did to his own talents in applying

them to the Radcliffe style of composition. With Ippolito the means

resorted to are as follows. Orazio takes into his service a number

of professional impostors who, in the subterranean vaults into which

Ippolito is conducted, act the part of beings of another world. Masks,

modelled in wax, are procured of Ippolito and the count, so that, in

the figure which suggests to him the idea of a murderer, Ippolito

recognizes himself. Then he is induced to plunge his poniard into the

breast of another waxen figure whose face, when disclosed, reveals the

features of his father. Now all this, when subsequently explained,

appears extremely cheap; but even the account of the performance itself

has none of the unearthly power of the tale told to Annibal. That tale

is the only passage in the book in which Maturin gives rein to his

imagination and which has the enduring merit of being subjected to no

trivial explanation, certain to destroy every impression. The reader

is also much more disposed to accept as a fact that Annibal believes

what is only told to him, than that Ippolito is convinced of what he

is made actually to experience. The plot laid at Muralto is, moreover,

interspersed with scenes powerful in effect, relating to the state of

the conscience-stricken count Montorio. That he has committed some

formidable offence is clear from the very first, though it is, of

course, merely mentioned allusively. The characters of the count and

his wife--who are never haunted but by their own thoughts--are those

most vividly depicted. Montorio is totally broken down by fear and

repentance, and clings anxiously to the offices of religion; his nights

are passed in raving under the pressure of hideous dreams, represented

with great zest and spirit. The countess, on the other hand, is as

strong as he is weak, and outwardly as calm and proud as he is restless

and dejected. Without uttering a complaint she undergoes a penance

of her own invention, wearing a sharp iron belt around her waist.

This contrast between her self-restraint and his cowardly despair

is, upon the whole, skilfully effected. Otherwise characterization,

in _Montorio_, yields place to adventure, for under the exceptional

circumstances in which the principal personages find themselves, they

act by necessity rather than by choice. Yet the difference said to

exist between Ippolito and Annibal also clearly asserts itself when

their wanderings begin. Annibal, who has the deeper mind of the two,

is fully persuaded that his persecutor is a preternatural being; and

thus, though he is apparently more composed, his calmness is more

dangerous than the impetuosity of Ippolito, and he is far nearer to

surrendering himself. Ippolito does not debate whether the powers by

which he is beset be human or superhuman; following his first impulse

he goes on to treat them with ‘sallies of rage and convulsions of

resistance.’ From this difference in their characters, by which their

subsequent adventures are fixed, it follows that those of Annibal

are, even henceforth, more satisfactory from an artistic point of

view. His encounters with Orazio are simple and natural, there being

no further need of any extraordinary tricks for his bewilderment. The

draught emptied by the confessor at Muralto he firmly believes to be

poison, while it is only a strong opiate, from the effects of which

Orazio easily recovers. Consequently it is sufficient for Annibal to

see Orazio glide past him in the garden of the convent, in order to

disperse the last shadow of doubt as to his superhuman character; and

when he again falls into the hands of Orazio after being separated

from Ildefonsa, he could not reasonably be expected to offer any

further resistance. Ippolito, on the other hand, before his strength

is exhausted, continues to be hurried through subterranean passages

without end and marvellous experiences defying all natural explanation

of any kind.

* * * * *

The productions of the Gothic Romance, owing to its limited range

and peculiar character, naturally present obvious similarities among

themselves. The fundamental principle of them all is an appeal to

the same source of emotion;--from their very appellation we may

deduce a common background to most of them, and the motifs with which

the ‘terrific’ imagination loves to occupy itself are always less

remarkable for variety than for suitability to imitation, according to

the special genius of each successive writer. In _Montorio_ there is

as ample proof of Maturin’s indebtedness to his predecessors within

the school of terror, as of his unquestionable originality. The idea

of a supernatural imposture of intricate apparatus and vast dimensions

Maturin might have received from _Der Geisterseher_ (1789) of Schiller,

of which a translation was much read and relished at that time in

England. In Schiller’s story a mysterious Armenian possesses the same

surprising familiarity with other people’s concerns, and the same

exaggerated facility of appearing when and where he chooses, as Orazio.

There is also a Sicilian necromancer, a ghost-seer by profession, who

gives a minute description of the tricks he and his compeers are in

the habit of practising while trading upon people’s credulity, which

affords a parallel to the performances of the hirelings employed by

Orazio at Naples. Complications like these are, at all events, foreign

to the novels of Mrs Radcliffe, of which especially _The Italian_

(1797) is often called to mind by _Montorio_. In this romance the

principal plotter and schemer is a monk called Schedoni, and he, as

regards external appearance at least, is distinctly a precursor of

Orazio, _alias_ father Schemoli.[35] They have the same large, gaunt

figure, hollow voice and unearthly appearance in general, and both

enjoy a reputation of uncommon sanctity, very little deserved by

either. However, Schedoni has, in his former life, been a villain

of an ordinary kind, who possesses none of the grandeur of spirit

by which Orazio is distinguished, nor are his machinations pursued

on a scale at all comparable to that invented by Maturin’s hero.

The simpler adventures of Annibal, on the other hand, are typically

Radcliffeian: in _The Italian_, too, mysterious footsteps allure

inquisitive young men to dangerous places, ghastly voices disturb the

stillness of ruinous chapels, and nocturnal flights are undertaken

through sombre forests. Yet this is not the only point of contact

between the two romances. A general characteristic shared by Gothic

stories with very few exceptions, was the placing of the scene in

the Mediterranean countries, in this case in the South of Italy.

Besides the romantic charm those regions always suggest to a northern

imagination, they possessed the special merit of admitting the

introduction of the Inquisition with all its horrors, and affording

an opportunity of penetrating the walls of a convent. To Maturin,

with his strong anti-catholic tendencies, the theme of ecclesiastical

cruelty was doubly welcome, and in his treatment of the subject there

is always a tone of genuine indignation, distinct from all aims of

a literary character. The absolute power of the Holy Office and the

abuses of monastical authority were, in a forcible manner, illustrated

already in Lewis’s _Monk_, nor were these attractions withstood by

Mrs Radcliffe. The passages in _The Italian_, relative to the prison

of the Inquisition at Rome, are among the greatest triumphs of her

method of arousing the reader’s anxiety only to be soothed again. The

hero is several times brought to the utmost point of being submitted

to torture; at one time he is already fastened to the rack, but

the procedure is always suspended. The examinations of other less

fortunate prisoners are suggested only by feeble groans and expressive

allusions, still by these scanty means a most gruesome atmosphere is

created. Maturin, in _Montorio_, follows _The Italian_ in so far as

bodily torture is not resorted to--it would, indeed, be very much out

of place, the plan of Orazio tending to subdue Ippolito by working

upon his mental faculties. Maturin even, contrary to Mrs Radcliffe,

represents the chief inquisitor as a man of some humanity; but at the

same time he takes care to give a powerful picture of the demoralizing

influence a superstitious religion exercises upon the people. The

report of Ippolito’s heretical inclinations spreads like wild-fire, and

wherever he arrives he is viewed with hatred and abhorrence. In vain he

approaches man or woman; all refuse to listen to his protestations, to

which the sole answers are curses and maledictions. Here, evidently, a

literary impulse outside the actual school of terror asserts itself.

Ippolito’s situation is as desperate and as passionately depicted as

Caleb’s in Godwin’s _Caleb Williams_ (1794), when he is accused of

robbery by Falkland and appearances are strongly against him; he is

regarded as the ‘opprobrium of the human species’ and is allowed no

opportunity to defend himself, nobody deigning to lend an ear to his

demonstrations. Caleb and Ippolito are both, at last, driven to seek

the mercy of an old man of mild and venerable aspect, and both, alike,

are sadly disappointed. In Godwin the old man calls the unfortunate

youth ‘a monster with whom the earth groans,’ and deplores that he has

ever seen him or uttered a single word to him; in Maturin he laments

at having lived too long being thus forced to behold Ippolito, and

declares that his grey hairs are defiled by the appeal Ippolito makes

to them. This pathetic description of the involuntary isolation of a

man among his fellow-beings, this heart-rending agony of his upon

seeing the ties broken that unite him to his species, is born of the

spirit of a time in which feeling was raised to the seat of honour.

A strong sense of loneliness, of some sort or other, is an essential

feature of the romantic literature of the period, and will often be

seen to recur in Maturin’s writings. Here, under the influence of

Godwin, it is expressed in its most painful aspect. _Caleb Williams_ is

a protest against the ‘despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of

man;’ while Godwin directs his attacks against wrongs in the existing

state of social institutions, Maturin traces the source of evil in

misapplied religious ideas. The result, however, is the same, and Caleb

might well have uttered the words in which Ippolito sums up the state

he is reduced to:

Then I am outlawed of nature. I am divested of the rights of being.

Every ear is deaf, and every heart is iron to me. Wherever I tread the

sole of my foot dries the streams of humanity.--

An incident, in _Montorio_, of monastic oppression, is represented by

the episode of Ildefonsa. A young lady held in a convent against her

will was a special favourite with the novelists of terror; the episode

in question is, no doubt, suggested by the history of Agnes de Medina

in _The Monk_. For the liberation of Agnes, also, an appeal is made

to high ecclesiastical authorities, whereupon the tyrannical abbess

compels her to swallow an opiate which plunges her into a death-like

state, arranges a mock funeral and has Agnes conveyed to the hideous

dungeons of the convent. In _The Italian_, too, the heroine is placed

in a convent where she feels but ill at ease under the government of

an unkind prioress; however, she succeeds in escaping with her lover.

Mention is also made of a stone chamber ‘within the deepest recesses of

the convent’ where disobedient nuns have sometimes been confined--but

thither the gentle authoress forbears to conduct her readers.

Yet another episode in _Montorio_ is inspired by ‘the powerful and

wicked romance of the Monk,’ which was, in Maturin’s opinion,[36]

‘the most extraordinary production’ of the time of its appearance. It

has been told that Annibal’s servant, Filippo, incurs the displeasure

of the count for assisting at the investigations of his master, and

is sent away from Muralto. His guide conducts him into a large house

where they are expected by a party of bandits. Filippo is ushered

into a room on the upper floor and there finds out that he is to be

despatched during the night, yet effects a hair-breadth escape by

a passage below the apartment. The episode, though of considerable

length, is completely detached from the main plot and introduced solely

for the sake of delineating Filippo’s sensations when threatened with

horrible and immediate death. Lewis relates, with the same laudable

purpose, how Don Raymond and some other travellers pass a night at the

house of a man who turns out to be the leader of a gang of robbers,

and how they, too, succeed in eluding the danger. Differently as the

adventures are made up, still one conspicuous detail in _Montorio_

comes very near direct plagiarism. In the first as well as in the

second story the victim is made aware of his danger by the hostess of

the house, who, though of a surly aspect, appears to disapprove of

the impending proceedings. The robber’s wife, in a whisper, warns Don

Raymond to look at the sheets of his bed, which are stained with blood;

Filippo is called by the hag who manages the household of the bandits,

to examine a particular corner of his room which he, also, finds to be

blood-stained. Otherwise the episode in _Montorio_ is certainly much

more exciting than the one in _The Monk_.

Aside from these instances of immediate influence from some of the most

admired productions of the Gothic Romance, _Montorio_ exhibits many

minor traits characteristic of the school in general. Among these is

the committing, either consciously or unconsciously, of great wrongs

against near relations. The happiness of Orazio is destroyed by his

brother, and Orazio himself unwittingly ruins the life of his sons. Of

secondary characters, both attendants of Annibal at Muralto are very

typical of a genuine Gothic story: the old and decrepit domestic who,

in a provokingly imperfect way, attempts to satisfy the curiosity of

the hero, and the young and ready-witted fellow, who stoutly follows

him in his breakneck adventures. Yet in one vital point _Montorio_

occupies an almost exceptional place within the Gothic Romance, namely,

with regard to the highly tragical issue of all its incidents. In

spite of its blood-curdling qualities, the novel of terror by no means

excludes a happy end for the hero and the heroine; the reader may be

made to wander about in charnel-houses for ever so long, but finally

he is led to a nuptial chamber as infallibly as in other stories that

have boasted of a wide and merited popularity. This rule was, rashly

enough, disregarded by Maturin; when Helene Richter[37] says that

‘alle Schauerromane haben ein glückliches Ende, und würde es auch an

den Haaren herbeigezogen,’ she evidently forgets _Montorio_. Maturin

adhered faithfully to the programme he had fixed for his romance--to

found it upon the passion of the supernatural fear alone, not troubling

himself about the traditional compensation for the horrors. There

is, in fact, no heroine in the book; it was not without cause that

_Montorio_, as Maturin states in the preface to his next work, was

pronounced to be ‘deficient in female interest.’ Ildefonsa is there to

fill but a short episode, and is, moreover, discovered to be Annibal’s

sister. As a type she is modelled according to the innocent and

persecuted young ladies in Mrs Radcliffe’s stories, being in no wise

remarkable among the female characters Maturin has depicted. Still

less likely is Rosolia to satisfy the demands for a heroine. Matters

never develop to an understanding between her and Ippolito; her sex

is not even revealed before it would be too late to invent a happy

solution. Rosolia is introduced into the story, in the development

of which she takes no part, merely in order to intersperse it with

her lyrical effusions. A character like this is not uncommon in the

Gothic Romance. It may be mentioned that Don Raymond, in _The Monk_,

also has a page who composes ballads which he, like Rosolia, subjects

to the benevolent judgment of his master. The diary Rosolia presents

to Ippolito is rather unsubstantial in matter, but some of the prose

passages are exquisitely graceful and truly Maturineian in style.--

There is, however, within the compass of _Montorio_, one complete

and consummate story where female interest is also attended to.

Orazio’s account of his early misfortunes--immediately preceding the

disheartening explanation of the details of his revenge--admittedly

contains the best parts of the book.[38] The progress of the violent

action is admirably concentrated, and the rapidity and poignancy of

the style is powerfully indicative of the anguish felt by the writer.

The character of Orazio, before he becomes the superhuman being known

as father Schemoli, is illustrated with a few vigorous strokes. The

motif itself--a tragedy ensuing from the groundless suspicions of a

jealous husband--is not original. Mangan[39] points out that the idea

had been utilized by Edward Young in _The Revenge_ (1721), though, he

adds, ‘Maturin has contrived to invest it with a new and overpowering

interest.’ In Young’s tragedy the revenge is taken by a Moor called

Zanga upon his master, a distinguished Spaniard, who has wronged him.

Zanga helps him first to marry the lady he loves, and then ingeniously

awakens his jealousy by means of forged letters and pictures deposited

in suitable places. The lady, upon finding herself suspected, commits

suicide, and her husband, when undeceived, follows her example. The

plot of Orazio’s narrative certainly bears similarity to _The Revenge_,

and it is not impossible that Maturin may have received an impulse

from Young, although it seems somewhat far-fetched to refer to this

comparatively little known play, as long as _Othello_ remains the great

prototype of a tragedy of his kind. In this respect, at least, Maturin

shows originality, that he allows Orazio to remain alive and only

after a long interval be informed of his fatal mistake. Fantastic as

is Orazio’s situation on the islet, it required unusual imaginative

power to treat it so as to render it credible; however, Maturin was

equal to the task. Here are to be found the most splendid proofs of

his prose-style--compared to which the metrical pieces scattered

through the work are of very great inferiority--showing to what degree

of excellence it was capable of rising even at that early period. It

is most pathetically described how the innocent victims of Orazio’s

rashness are never out of his mind--how they seem to threaten him

when nightly tempests are roaring around him and how, at moments of

fortuitous tranquillity, he endeavours to imagine them in a state of

glory:

The dreams of the night are easily dissolved, and strange shapes

are sometimes seen to shimmer through the twilight of a cavern; but

I have met them at noon on the bare sunny shore. I have seen them

on the distant wave when its bed was smooth and bright as jasper;

the curtained mist that hung on mole and breaker, and mingled with

the sheeted spanglings of the surf floated back from them, did not

throw a fringe of its shadowy mantling on their forms. I could not

be deceived. Sometimes the light was glorious beyond imagination.

Towards sunset I would sometimes see a small white cloud, and watch

its approach; it would fix on a point of the rock that rose beside my

cave; as twilight thickened it would unfold, its centre disclosing a

floating throne of pearl, and its skirts expanding into wings of iris

and aurelia that upbore it. By moonlight the pomp grew richer, and

the vision became exceeding glorious. Myriads of lucent shapes were

visible in that unclouded shower of light which fell from the moon on

the summit of the rock; myriads swam on its opal waves, wafted in a

fine web of filmy radiancy, canopied with a lily’s cup, and inebriate

with liquid light. Among them sat the shadows of the lovers, sparkling

with spheral light, and throned in the majesty of vision, but pale

with the traces of mortality. There sat the lovers in sad and shadowy

state together; so greatly unfortunate, so fatal, passing fond.

Sometimes when stretched on my cold, lone bed, I have heard her voice

warbling on the wind touches of sweet, sad music, such as I have heard

her sing when she thought herself alone and unheard. I have risen

and followed it, and heard it floating on the waters; I listened,

and would have given worlds to weep. On a sudden the sounds would

change to the most mournful and wailing cries, and Erminia, pale and

convulsed as I saw her last, would pass before me, pointing to a gory

shape that the waves would throw at my feet. Then they would plunge

together into the waters, and where far off the moon shed a wan and

cloudy light on the mid wave, I would see their visages rise dim and

sad, and hear their cry die along the waste of waters.--

There are, in the prefaces to Maturin’s both second and third work,

hints that his first romance had been subjected to unfavourable

criticism on the part of the reviewers. In the leading periodicals of

the time, however, no such are to be found. The only article upon the

book, that of Scott in the _Quarterly Review_, did not appear until

three years after the publication of _Montorio_. It is not quite so

panegyrical as maintained by some of Maturin’s biographers, although

the conspicuous talent of the rising novelist is readily admitted.

Severely condemning the Radcliffe manner as little better than humbug,

the reviewer speaks of Mr. Murphy’s adherence to it with disapproval

and regret:

-- -- -- Amid these flat imitations of the Castle of Udolpho we

lighted unexpectedly upon the work which is the subject of the

present article, and, in defiance of the very bad taste in which it

is composed, we found ourselves insensibly involved in the perusal,

and at times impressed with no common degree of respect for the

powers of the author. We have at no time more earnestly desired to

extend our voice to a bewildered traveller, than towards this young

man, whose taste is so inferior to his powers of imagination and

expression, that we never saw a more remarkable instance of genius

degraded by the labour in which it is employed. -- -- -- He possesses

a strong and vigorous fancy, with great command of language. He has

indeed regulated his incidents upon those of others, and therefore

added to the imperfections which we have pointed out, the want of

originality. But his feeling and conception of character are his own,

and from these we judge of his powers. In truth we rose from his

strange chaotic novel romance as from a confused and feverish dream,

unrefreshed, and unamused, yet strongly impressed by many of the ideas

which had been so vaguely and wildly presented to our imagination.

This article was to become of the greatest consequence to Maturin’s

literary career, and will be returned to further on.

* * * * *

The _Family of Montorio_ brought to its author nothing more substantial

than fame in his nearest environs, for, notwithstanding the pseudonym,

it was universally attributed to Maturin.[40] His income thus remained

as scanty as ever, whilst his family kept on increasing; his son

William Basil, afterwards a well-known member of the Irish Church, was

born in July 1807. Nonetheless Maturin resolved to try his luck once

more and produced, in 1808, a romance titled _The Wild Irish Boy_. This

time his task was executed under circumstances peculiarly embarrassing;

harassed by clamouring duties in every direction, Maturin was often

forced to ‘borrow from the hours of night to complete his story.’[41]

The book was intended, more directly than most of his productions, to

bring in some remuneration and by every means to attract the attention

of the reading public. Its very title was chosen with a view to

exciting curiosity, suggesting a counterpart to Lady Morgan’s (then

Miss Owenson’s) story of _The Wild Irish Girl_, which had appeared the

previous year and proved an eminent success. Another attempt in the

same direction was a lengthy dedication to Lord Moira[42]--written in

very bad taste and containing the hopeful assurance that the work in

hand would now determine whether the author possesses talent or no;

for, if he does, the book cannot fail to secure his lordship’s notice.

At the same time Maturin was fully aware that his talent was here

by no means displayed to its advantage. _Montorio_ was written in a

spirit which he felt to be his special power; _The Wild Irish Boy_ was

calculated to please all--except the author himself. That the audience

appealed to was not the most cultivated part of the public is rather

candidly alluded to in the preface. Maturin states that his head is

full of his country, but that he can perforce not give vent to his

thoughts, being compelled to resort to other material, better relished

by the public:

The fashionable materials for novel-writing I know to be, a lounge in

Bond-street, a phaeton-tour in the Park, a masquerade with appropriate

scenery, and a birth-day or birth-night, with dresses and decorations,

accurately copied from the newspapers.

He who writes with an hope of being read, must write something like

this. I say must, because this species of writing, not exacting a

sacrifice of principles, but of taste, the public have reasonably a

right to dictate in. He who would prostitute his morals, is a monster,

he who sacrifices his inclinations and habits of writing, is--an

author.

At the same time, it is desirable to look forward to the time, when

independence, acquired without any sacrifice of integrity, will enable

a man to consult only himself in the choice and mode of his subject.

He who is capable of writing a good novel, ought to feel that he was

born for a higher purpose than writing novels.

From the last sentence it has, naturally enough, been inferred that

Maturin entertained but a mean opinion of novel-writing. Yet his

prefaces cannot be taken literally. The tone of apology which, more or

less, pervades nearly all of them, is much akin to the passing humility

following close upon the heels of intoxication; and as prefaces are

always composed after the conclusion of the respective works, these

were written in moments of weariness attendant upon great mental

exertion and extravagant sallies of imagination. Maturin was not

lacking in literary ambition, nor did his poetical vein ever flow more

richly than during his short period of, not exactly independence, but

something like tolerable circumstances. His unfavourable judgment of

novel-writing, in the present case, was probably due to the fact that

he was not himself pleased with _The Wild Irish Boy_.

This, of course, is no excuse for the book, which indeed shows inferior

work to a degree truly astonishing. Were it not for certain episodes

where genuine power is displayed, and for the fact that the book was

entirely a work of imagination, without any hidden aims of personal

import--it would not fall very short of that species of composition,

the producers of which Maturin once characterized[43] as ‘infamous

and ephemeral scribblers, who pander for the public lust after

anecdote that vilify the great, debase the illustrious, and expose the

unfortunate, under the titles of a Winter, a Month, or six Weeks at

the metropolis or some place of public resort.’ _The Wild Irish Boy_

is brimful of august personages, lords and ladies, represented in a

most unfavourable light, distorted and exaggerated by the feverish

imagination of one who knew nothing of his subject. The fashionable

world is condemned as sinful and utterly demoralizing, high life

consists but of high vices, described and investigated from every side;

while the kind of pure, old-fashioned, religious, home-like existence

that is recommended as its contrast, is not found interesting enough to

be illustrated otherwise than by very imperfect glimpses. Extravagant

as the tone is, it becomes perfectly absurd when the moralist comes

into conflict with the patriot. The author appears to have feared

that the feelings of the public whose taste he is trying to gratify,

might be offended by too much abuse of the British aristocracy--the

pride of the nation!--and occasionally the tendency bursts into quite

an opposite direction. The young fool of a hero--whose autobiography

the book represents--has been painting the whole lot in the blackest

of dyes, indulging in the grossest of dissipations and capable of the

most contemptible baseness; yet once, seeing them all collected at a

royal birth-day, he hits upon comparing them to the ‘courtiers’ of

Napoleon--whom he has never beheld--with the result that he is ‘elated

with confidence, with exultation, with pride,’ and feels satisfied

that the English upper ten yet ‘loved their king, and worshipped their

God,’ and, with many vices, ‘yet were the first on earth in national

virtues.’ The sense of national superiority in the English public is

flattered by a sweeping condemnation of everything foreign--it is

clear that the glorification of _Ireland_ must consequently be rather

loose and rhapsodical--; especially are all Frenchmen and -women

represented as monsters of malignity and immorality, and Voltaire and

Rousseau mentioned with Puritan abhorrence. It was in vogue at that

time to introduce into a ‘fashionable’ novel discussions about the

leading writers of the day, and this duty is also carefully fulfilled.

These passages are to be considered among the most interesting in the

book, although they have no bearing upon the story proper. Among wicked

writers who corrupt both taste and morals are Goethe (_Werther_),

Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Miss Edgeworth, on the other hand, is

enthusiastically lauded as the author of _Belinda_. It is curious to

see Maturin here defy the mental parents of his own production, and

make ineffectual efforts to free himself from that which has, even in

the present work, too strong a hold upon him: without Rousseau and

_Werther_ the opening chapters of _The Wild Irish Boy_, containing

a series of letters from a young lady attached to the hero in a

thoroughly romantic fashion, would never have been written; whereas

there is not a single page for which Miss Edgeworth would have been

willing to take the responsibility. As for Godwin, he was of all the

writers of the age the one who exercised the strongest influence upon

Maturin’s work.--The purity of the manners and descriptions of Southey

is gratefully admitted, while the literary qualities of his epics are

subjected to vigorous criticism, very uncommon at the time, but agreed

to by the judgment of posterity. The _Anacreon_ of Moore, as might be

expected, does not escape censure. The following passage is an example

of the nonsensical style which prevails in the book; it is uttered by a

boy of eighteen, who has just been cured of a desperate passion for his

own mother-in-law:

I speak of him (Moore) with real sorrow: he might have done much, he

has done nothing, but what I hope he will yet wish undone. -- -- --

for the attempt to communicate what he must have felt the injuries

of himself, for the attempt to add seduction to pleasure, and teach

impurity a new system of sentimental logic, to add an impulse to the

lapse of vitious feeling, and modulate the _death dance_ of vice with

the harmony of a lyre strung by heaven; for this--there is, there can

be no excuse, even at the bar of literature; and if he carries the

cause to an higher court, I doubt still more tremblingly his acquittal

there.--

But the story, involved as it is, remains to be told. The book opens

with a letter to one Miss Elmaide St. Clair from an old maiden aunt,

who, possessing some knowledge of her niece’s character and the

pernicious tendencies of the age, warns her against false sensibility

and fancies too romantic. Then follow the letters of Elmaide

herself, who at once informs her correspondent (not the aunt) that

the admonitory epistle was received too late: she is already, and

irrevocably, in the fetters of a romantic attachment to the hero, a

young man, almost a boy, whose wild and dissipated habits the whole of

Dublin is talking of. She is fully persuaded of the hopelessness of

her case, understanding that he suffers himself to be led into such a

mode of life in order to forget an unfortunate love-story of his own,

the subject of which is a woman living at present somewhere in Western

Ireland. That woman is widely celebrated for

fashionable folly and vice, without an equal or rival, till her reign

was extended over subjects of a second generation, whose beauty

triumphed over nature, and whose wit is unimpaired by time, whose sons

have entered into public life, whose daughters have married, whose

grand children form a numerous family already, and whose beauty is

still as distant from decline as from competition.

The retirement of Lady Montrevor--such is her name--has taken place

under extraordinary circumstances. Her husband, a statesman of much

influence, has illegally held the title and fortunes of the earldom

of Westhampton for thirty years; at last the legitimate heir, long

pursued and oppressed by the usurper, has made his appearance and laid

claim to his own. To the usurper naught else remained but the title

of Montrevor and his Irish estates, whither his lady, who was wholly

ignorant of the story, has accompanied him. Here the hero of the tale

has met her and subsequently become fatally infatuated; he has then

been sent to Dublin in the company of a relation who introduces to him

that class of pleasure which now forms the torture of Miss St. Clair.

Her correspondence ends with the intelligence that he has unexpectedly

set out for the West.

Now the hero, whose name is Ormsby Bethel, rises to speak. It appears

that he has returned to the neighbourhood of Dublin and lives somewhere

on the coast. Miss St. Clair, happening to move near the place, hits

upon the expedient of leaving anonymous letters addressed to him, in

a recess amongst the rocks where he is in the habit of strolling. In

these she requests him to tell her all about his life. He complies and

places letters for her in the same recess.

This is mentioned in letters from the parties concerned, but at this

point the story itself commences: an autobiography of the hero, written

to an un-named friend, which he begins by the narrative he has written

to Miss St. Clair.

His birth and childhood are involved in a deep mystery. Born in France,

he has faint reminiscences of having been hurried from place to place,

until, at the age of seven, he is taken to London and committed to

the care of an old and wealthy couple. Here he also visits a school,

where he enters into friendship with a boy called Hammond, who

subsequently plays a certain part in his story. One day he hears his

father mentioned and after this knows no rest; his health declines,

and he is sent to a parson in Cumberland, where he pursues his studies

and improves both in mind and body. His stay here is interrupted by a

message from his father, who announces his desire that Ormsby is to set

out for Ireland and forthwith to graduate at the University of Dublin;

from his father’s letter Ormsby learns that he is illegitimate. After

having spent some time in the Irish capital, he is summoned to join the

family in the West. He travels there with his father’s confidential

servant, a Frenchman, from whose very impious conversation he gathers

that his father is a worn-out libertine. Mr. Bethel is, indeed, a

wretched invalid, who is constantly tormented by the memories of

pleasures he has lost the power to enjoy, and who regards his son with

feelings of envy because of his youth and strength. The rest of the

family consists of his daughter Sybilla, a gentle and pure-minded girl,

and her gouvernante, a Miss Perceval, an atheist and admirer of French

writers; one episode occurring in the family life is that Miss Perceval

tries to prevent Sybilla from reading the Bible, and would even be on

a fair way to succeed but for the intervention of Ormsby. Among his

neighbours he finds his school-fellow Hammond, whose father, an old

drunkard, owns an estate in the vicinity. The most remarkable person

there, however, is an elder brother of Mr. Bethel, called De Lacy. He

leads a life in the style of an ancient Irish chieftain, but, unlike

most ‘Milesians’ he is rich, and Ormsby at once becomes his favourite

and heir-apparent.--Upon this the Montrevors put in their appearance,

and turn all the country upside down with their splendid fêtes and

assemblies. Ormsby has been interested in the brilliant and unhappy

Lady Montrevor even before he has seen her, and when he actually meets

her he is perfectly overwhelmed by her attractions. Her husband, for

his part, only expects to be called back to England as soon as his

recent scandal has been forgotten and his talents and influence are

required again. Meanwhile he employs his time in canvassing votes

for his son, and pretends, to that end, to be intent upon proposing

all sorts of reforms and improvements for Ireland. There is no love

lost between him and his lady, who, in opposition to his suavity and

courteousness, treats her neighbours with capricious ridicule. Among

their younger children there is Miss Athanasia Montolieu, whose French

gouvernante is doing her utmost to corrupt the soul of her charge with

the literature of her country.--The whirl of pleasures comes soon to

a tragical end as far as the Bethel family is concerned. One night

Miss Perceval insists on following Ormsby and his sister to a grand

entertainment given by Lord Montrevor in some public place. Ormsby

is sitting with Lady Montrevor and her daughter, when a gentleman

approaches and requests the ladies to allow him to escort them away

from the place, the house being unfit for them, as there is a woman

present who is the mistress of Mr. Bethel; she is recognized by the

speaker himself and another gentleman, with whom she has formerly been

on intimate terms. A violent scene ensues, and the fête is broken

up. The following morning Ormsby receives a visit from a relative

who confirms his worst doubts, namely, that Miss Perceval is not

only the mistress of his father, but is also Ormsby’s and Sybilla’s

mother. He declares that a duel seems inevitable, but that Ormsby is

disgraced for ever if he takes part in it; the consequences must fall

upon his father, whose age and feeble health may, perhaps, excuse him

from sending a challenge. Ormsby is convinced of the justness of his

argument and keeps away the whole day, but on returning he sees the

thoughtlessness of his conduct. His father, greatly astonished at his

absence, _has_ been engaged in a duel, burst a blood-vessel, and now

lies dying. His uncle, the old Milesian, who is also convinced that

Ormsby has refused to fight a duel, has disowned him and forbidden

him his presence. Miss Perceval has taken refuge in the house of

the adversary in the recent duel, her former acquaintance. Upon

Ormsby falls the painful duty of taking her off by main force, but,

incorrigible as she is, she flees and takes with her the greater part

of Sybilla’s money. Fortunately, Sybilla has been secretly married

to Hammond, but as his father, too, leads a life which the son must

blush for, he cannot take her to his home; he succeeds, however, in

procuring her a refuge elsewhere. Ormsby, standing now alone in the

world, resolves to leave the country, yet an unexpected event changes

his plans.--In a solitary tower in the neighbourhood lives a mysterious

person who never speaks to or visits any one except the poor, whose

misery he endeavours to relieve. The night Ormsby prepares to depart

he is stopped by the stranger and exhorted to save his uncle. His

striking manner induces Ormsby to yield to his exhortations; he hastens

to the castle of the Milesian and arrives just in time to save the

old man from the hands of a murderer. Upon this a reconciliation

takes place. Ormsby is again acknowledged as the heir of his uncle,

and the castle becomes his home. His hopeless attachment to Lady

Montrevor, however, makes him profoundly unhappy, and at length his

uncle sends him to Dublin in company with the relative who gave him

the ill-fated advice about the duel. In Dublin his life is what the

letters of Miss St. Clair, in the beginning of the story, indicate

with so much pain. His disappearance, the mention of which puts an end

to her correspondence, is caused by the news that his uncle has been

arrested for Ormsby’s debts. Ill as he is, he sets off on his journey

in a delirious condition, is once more forgiven by the old man and sent

back near the capital where, as has been told, he begins to write down

his recollections to his unknown correspondent, Miss St. Clair.--In a

letter to his uncle Ormsby confesses that the cause of his dejection

may be traced to Montrevor-House, in answer to which the old man

summons him back, informing him that he has ‘worked wonders’ in his

favour. Though unable to understand the meaning hidden in his uncle’s

message, Ormsby sets out for the castle of Montrevor and, on arriving

there is, first of all, greeted by the Milesian who draws forward Miss

Athanasia Montolieu and places her hand in Ormsby’s. It occurs to

Ormsby that this, in fact, was the only rational way of interpreting

his letter, but now it is too late for any explanation. He is married

that very night; Lord Montrevor, whose star has re-risen in England,

entertains the intention of immediately returning there with all his

family. Shortly afterwards the old Milesian dies, leaving Ormsby in

possession of a large fortune.--The rest of the story is mainly a

fulfilment of what was promised in the preface. The company is divided

between Bond-street and fashionable entertainments, most of which are

held within the family-circle. Lord and Lady Montrevor have several

daughters, one of whom has, strangely enough, married the present Earl

of Westhampton--an uneducated man of blunt manners--whom her father has

treated so infamously. The principal amusement at these entertainments,

aside from questionable gallantries, are cards, at which they attempt

to rob and even cheat each other. Ormsby before long gambles away every

shilling of his property as well as of that of his wife, and once

more he comes face to face with ruin. A depraved woman of fashion,

Lady Delphina Orberry, the greatest enemy of Lady Montrevor, falls

violently in love with him. Ormsby, who fortunately has become amorous

of his own wife, is insensible to attentions of this character, yet

Lady Orberry contrives to become his sole creditor, thus to get him,

economically at least, at her mercy. Lady Montrevor, at this time,

contemplates a retirement from the world altogether. She has met a man

who has loved her in her youth, before she was a woman of fashion, and

whom she wantonly rejected; now they discover their feelings to be

unchanged. The situation, however, becomes acute in the extreme, when

Lord Montrevor, who hates his wife, determines to prosecute Ormsby for

adultery with her, and appearances are against them. Lady Montrevor

attempts to commit suicide; Ormsby bursts into her room, and tears the

laudanum from her, upon which, it is said, ‘all recollection forsakes

him.’ When he regains his self-possession, all complications are

quickly and wonderfully unravelled. Lady Delphina Orberry takes poison

and dies, confessing to Ormsby that she had a daughter who was educated

in Ireland in separation from her mother; she gives him some letters

whence it appears that her name was Elmaide St. Clair. Lord Montrevor

falls in a duel, his wife becoming thus free to unite herself with the

lover of her youth. The _dramatis personæ_ once more retire to Ireland,

for Lady Montrevor’s lover turns out to be the identical inhabitant of

the solitary tower, and, still more strange, the father of Ormsby,

a third brother of De Lacy and Mr. Bethel. Miss Perceval had been

his mistress shortly before she became Mr. Bethel’s, and Ormsby was

believed to be the son of the latter. Ormsby’s affairs are forthwith

cleared up. It appears that the often-mentioned relative, who has been

his agent, has secretly hated him because of the frustration of his

hopes of becoming De Lacy’s heir himself, and thus he has been trying

to rob Ormsby of his property and, moreover, to seduce his wife; but

so far from succeeding in his designs, he has, at last, shot himself.

Athanasia now presents Ormsby with a child, and the book ends with this

paradoxical sentence: ‘Let those who cannot feel my felicity, attempt

to describe it.’--

* * * * *

From the short _précis_ above it ought to be evident that the story

is diffuse and clumsily constructed; that it contains certain good

suggestions that are not made the most of, and cleverly built-up

situations which lead to platitudes or are forcibly and implausibly

dissolved. The cause of this, no doubt, may be traced to the manifold

and contradictory considerations Maturin imagined himself to be bound

to observe while writing his second book. The autobiography does not

attach itself quite naturally to the correspondence that precedes it,

and the intrigue, when it once commences, is continually interrupted

by discussions and episodes. From the latter, however, is to be sought

what interest the book is capable of arousing. The correspondence of

Miss St. Clair is, in itself, an instance worthy of note. It has been

admired by a critic[44] for ‘its method of pure suggestion of character

without incident;’ and the character revealed is that of a heroine

typically romantic.[45] Her love is soft and dreaming, made to live on

sighs and tears, too platonic and ethereal even for the vicinity of its

object:

But he has seen me, and has felt, as if he looked on vacancy; and it

is better, much better so. I can hardly bear his sight, I could not

bear his voice speaking to me; his rich and angel tones would madden

me; no, I cannot woo him. I will hide myself in the solitude of pride

and despair. Perhaps when he treads on my grave, he may pause, he may

ask--Oh! let him not, let him not; shall I not rest in a grave?

This self-denying feeling, it is seen, has reached a degree where every

positive aspiration ends. The writer is herself aware that she leaves

far behind her the sentimental novels she has read:

They never loved who wished to be near what they loved. Werther talks

of dancing with Charlotte, of holding her in his arms; what feelings

men have! Such a time is with me, a time of fear and blindness. I love

to be so far from him, that it is requisite for me to watch and devise

how I may catch a glance or a tone from him. I would not be nearer if

I might; a glance, a tone is enough, is too much for me.

The story of Elmaide St. Clair is given as a warning example of

overwrought sensibility and its fatal consequences, and it might

be supposed that this quality in her is, therefore, deliberately

exaggerated. Yet that part of the book, most of all, impresses the

reader with the genuineness of its conception; it is written with

obvious inspiration, and there is absolutely nothing of parody about

the style. It is one of the few instances where the author seems

to be in perfect sympathy with his subject, and he actually excels

in the very kind of composition he at the same time pretends to

condemn.--Another of the better episodes is neither romantic nor

‘fashionable,’ but foreshadows Maturin’s best attainments in realistic

description of ordinary life of a certain kind. Whether it was an

individual trait of Maturin, or whether it belongs to the Irish

temperament--few English writers have displayed so intense a horror

of a narrow, monotonous existence without any sort of excitement or

interest. In _The Wild Irish Boy_, in _Women_, in _Melmoth_, this

aversion is expressed more and more powerfully each time. In the

present work this feeling is given an outlet in the case of the old

couple in London, with whom Ormsby is placed while a child. They have

retired from business in order to pass the remainder of their days

in quietness; but instead of enjoying an agreeable rest, they are

seized by an intolerable tedium, and by and by their life, as it were,

develops into a stagnant pool:

The morning was passed by Mr. Sampson in examining books of obsolete

accounts, which he had brought with him from the city “against a rainy

day,” as he said in totting up sums, whose numbers he could by that

time tell blindfold, and when he had found the amount, yawning and

beginning again; sometimes he strolled about the house, examined locks

that did not want repairing, shook his head at the weather-glass, and

projected a removal of the clock from behind the parlour door, where

its ticking made him melancholy after dinner. His wife retired to her

room, examined the contents of old drawers, discovered that things

grew yellow by lying by, and resolved to expose them to the sun some

day in the following week; at a certain hour she visited the kitchen,

watched the intrusion of strange cats, and detected the turnspit in

his many contrivances to escape from duty, by which she boasted,

dinner was prevented from being five minutes later than the time. They

dined early without appetite, and retired early without drowsiness;

sometimes a walk was proposed, on the appearance of a fine morning,

but then the weather-glass was examined, till the time for walking had

passed away; and looking wistfully at each other, they sunk into their

easy chairs, and counted how many minutes till dinner.

The great bulk of the book, as has been said, aspires to treat of

modern life in higher circles, of which Maturin, at the time, knew

little or nothing. The descriptions, consequently, lack all atmosphere

of reality, nor does the characterization augment the value of the

whole. The worst of it all is that the hero is so uninteresting, and

does not in the least fulfil the expectations roused by the effusions

of Elmaide St. Clair. A very self-exulting tone is generally not in

keeping with an autobiographical form, yet Ormsby Bethel does nothing

to suppress the eulogies lavishly bestowed on him by well-meaning

people, eulogies which he certainly does not deserve. He calls himself

wild, but wildness is merely an embellishing name for weakness;

there is nothing in him of real, refreshing wildness, or youthful

recklessness; he is always in an unnatural state of exaltation,

either of virtue or repentance. A preacher of morals and defender of

religion as he aspires to be in a society that cares for neither, he

displays, when emergency arises, no more strength of mind than his

neighbours. What is it but a deplorable weakness in a man to publish

about himself the letters of Elmaide St. Clair on the pretence that

they treat of a period of his life of which he ‘could not speak in the

first person?’ It is very doubtful whether Ormsby Bethel ever became

popular among the public of circulating libraries. That the reader

cannot feel sympathy for the hero is, of course, in itself no fault in

a book, but in this case it is only too evident that it is the author’s

intention he should.--The wholly imaginary character of Lady Montrevor

is too superlative and violently exaggerated, and her wonderful

accomplishments, of mind and body, are endlessly repeated in a most

extravagant language. Her daughter Athanasia is more interesting; she

is one of those delicate and ethereal beings Maturin always succeeded

in designing, and of which there are no two quite alike. Athanasia is,

like Byron’s Aurora,

--a fair and fairy one,

Of the best class, and better than her class[46]--