and, like her, she is also in possession of a portion of common sense

and strength of mind, being eventually cured of the malady under

which Elmaide St. Clair breaks down. At first, indeed, her case seems

desperate. She is grown up into an ‘early, and exquisite, and dangerous

maturity;’ she has been educated ‘without example but of vice and

folly,’ and left to form her ideas from improper literature, until she

is ‘dying to be the heroine of a mad and wicked tale of a Rousseau,

of a Goethe, of a Wolstonecraft.’ And to become such a heroine she

imagines it necessary for her to have both a husband and a lover.

Therefore she encourages the attentions of the relative of her husband,

who otherwise is quite indifferent to her. Yet at the bottom of her

heart there is a yearning for fidelity, honourable love and quiet

happiness, and when difficulties are gathering around her husband,

this yearning grows stronger and stronger. At last she understands

that the duties of life differ greatly from those of romance, and in

a candid and touching letter--which her husband reads while she is

sleeping!--she renounces the relative for ever. Now this argumentation

would be very well if the aforesaid writers actually _did_ maintain

the views ascribed to them; but it is unquestionably a very childish

way of understanding them to long for a forbidden attachment even in

case you happen to be united to the man you love. Considering that

Athanasia has grown up in an environment so corrupt as Maturin tries

to depict it, it is certainly too far-fetched to throw the blame upon

Julie and Charlotte. Yet it is never explicitly stated that Athanasia

has misconceived what she has read; the opinions pass as those of the

author. This curious anti-romantic freak of Maturin, whatever its

cause, was not of long duration: eight years later accusations of the

same kind were brought against himself, in connection with his tragedy

of _Bertram_.--Among the secondary characters in the book that of Lady

Delphina Orberry has been pointed out[47] as representing ‘a type of

woman rare in English fiction.’ She is introduced as a rival of Lady

Montrevor and is her contrast in every respect; her weapons against

that lady’s dazzling brilliancy and sparkling wit are ‘soft, seducing

manners,’ a ‘timid silence,’ and ‘melting whispers.’ Behind, however,

this unterrifying exterior there is a mind totally depraved, whereas

the heart of Lady Montrevor is discovered to have remained uncorrupted,

in spite of her position in society. Undoubtedly how Lady Orberry

clings to Ormsby like something too soft for him to shake off, gently

but irresistingly involving her fate with his, is well described, and

how she understands to excite his compassion by representing herself as

unjustly suspected of that which she most wishes, in her relation to

him. But the end, again, is forced and unnatural; it is only because

the hero _must_ be got out of his difficulties that she takes poison,

confesses all her crimes to him, and gives him the letters of her

unhappy daughter.

* * * * *

Notwithstanding all that can be said against _The Wild Irish Boy_,

it is of considerable interest in Maturin’s earlier production,

when regarded as a kind of preparatory study to _Women_, one of his

masterpieces. Many of the characters and situations present obvious

similarities, and it will, therefore, be necessary later on to refer

to the present work. A few words are still required to define its

character as an Irish novel, one of the first where elements typically

Irish are brought forward.

Anything finished or complete these Irish ingredients do not form; that

Maturin longed to speak of his country but felt himself prevented by

other considerations has already been pointed out. Of the attempts to

treat of Ireland, her past and present, only some diffuse discussions

remain here and there, without being naturally introduced into the

story. The first idea of Ireland is introduced in a surprising and

poetical way. During his solitary wanderings in the mountains of

Cumberland, in his earliest youth, Ormsby sometimes amuses himself by

imagining a people whose destinies he is to lead and whose sovereign

and benefactor he is to become:

I -- -- -- imagined them possessed of the most shining qualities that

can enter into the human character, glowing with untaught affections,

and luxuriant with uncultivated virtue; but proud, irritable,

impetuous, indolent and superstitious; conscious of claims they knew

not how to support, burning with excellencies, which, because they

wanted regulation, wanted both dignity and utility; and disgraced

by crimes which the moment after their commission they lamented, as

a man laments the involuntary outrages of drunkenness. I imagined a

people that seemed to stretch out its helpless hands, like the infant

Moses from the ark, and promise its preserver to bless and dignify the

species.

These fancies he discloses to the good parson, his tutor, who

immediately answers that he has ‘accurately described the Irish

nation.’ Shortly afterwards Ormsby is sent to Ireland. He might now be

expected to come into some contact with the people of his dreams, but

this material is, unfortunately, allowed to run to waste. His first

stay in Dublin is occupied by a tedious discourse upon the University,

and by a description of a Calvinistic set among the students, who

endeavour to draw Ormsby into their circle. In Maturin’s days these

passages possibly might have excited some local interest, yet to a

modern reader they form a most unexhilarating digression, from the like

of which all other works of Maturin are exempt. Ormsby’s second sojourn

at Dublin, that which he otherwise avoids speaking of in the first

person, contains a lengthy comparison between the Irish and English

character. This is somewhat more to the point; but even at that time,

when but little had been written about the former, observations of this

kind were hardly original:

The Irish are more ardent lovers, the English better husbands. The

Irishman is more exhilarating in society, the Englishman’s comforts

are more domestic. One is formed to give more delight, the other more

tranquil and rational happiness to life. The Irishman approaches you

with facility and attaches himself to you with ardor; the Englishman

it is difficult to conciliate as an acquaintance, and more difficult

to obtain for a friend, but once obtained, the prize is beyond all

labor.

Now and then the political state of Ireland is mentioned: ‘her

depressed trade, her neglected populace, her renegade nobility, her

dissipated, and careless, and unnational gentry’--but almost always in

the form of a discourse, apart from the story. Events and personages

throwing light upon the state of Ireland and her national character,

are not allowed to speak for themselves; when the discourse is

finished, the reader again finds himself in the drawing-room of Lady

Montrevor. In a few instances only the descriptions present a glimpse

of Irish life freed from comment. There is a dinner-party at the

house of the elder Hammond, of a riotous and disorderly character,

the account of which, a note informs us, is taken from real life. The

other is an instance of so-called ‘paddyism,’ unique in the production

of Maturin who, unlike most older Irish novelists, was not at all fond

of depicting the lower classes with sympathetic humour. The night the

Montrevors arrive at their castle, the tenantry are gathered to receive

them, having shortened the tedium of waiting by indulging in a drop of

whiskey, with the result that the approaching family are hailed with an

Irish cry that frightens their horses and endangers their very lives.

Their intentions were all the best, as is explained by an old man:

But as we were all tenants to this great new lord, and old followers

to the family, though they never lived among us, why we all loved him

as we did our eyes, though we never set them upon his face till last

night. So we thought it would be but right to go out and give him

a shout of joy, when he was coming to his own house, that he never

was in before; and we all set out, and we were early enough to see

him, for the devil a bit of him was there, and so says I to them,

there’s no good at all in waiting to see a man in the dark, and we

are perished standing here in the bog, with nothing to warm us but

the rain and wind; and so let us step into Paddy Donnellan’s that is

within a step of the gate, and take a drop of whiskey, and when we

hear the carriage wheel, we’ll all come out as fresh as daisies, and

give him an Irish cry that he never heard from them English spalpeens

in his life.

This is one of the preludes to the innumerable scenes of Irish

boisterousness and characteristic blunders, found in the pages of later

writers, Carleton, Lover, Lever, and others.

The ancient glory of Ireland is touched upon in the figure of the

old Milesian.[48] The type had been introduced into fiction by Miss

Owenson; her story of _The Wild Irish Girl_ is the first patriotic

Irish novel of a predominantly romantic colouring, and essentially

influenced, as will be seen, Maturin’s third book. It is an immature

and extravagant, but not undelightful tale of an Irish chieftain, the

prince of Inismore, whose ancestors, in the Cromwellian wars, lost

nearly all their estates to an English soldier, the same estates still

being in possession of the English soldier’s descendants. The present

prince of Inismore lives in solitary retirement with his chaplain and

his daughter, a beautiful, gifted and accomplished young lady, whose

only ‘wildness’ is her naturalness of manners and purity of heart. The

head of the English family has made several attempts at reconciliation,

his advances having always been proudly rejected. Nevertheless both he

and his son visit the prince without revealing their identity, at the

same time also concealing their respective visits from each other; both

succeed in securing the friendship of the old man, and both fall in

love with his daughter. A tragedy is avoided by the father voluntarily

retiring and leaving to his son the girl and all his Irish estates.

This intrigue, however, is merely a setting for the real tendency

of the story, which is to make Ireland known. The colloquies held

at Castle Inismore form the principal part of the book; they treat

exclusively of the past of Ireland and are furnished with notes and

quotations from Walker, Ware, Young, and other historians, all tending

to prove the oriental descent and great antiquity of the Milesian

race, its attachment to poetry and music, as well as its other noble

qualities and high standard of civilization at a very early period.

In spite of its promising title, Maturin’s second book contains no

loans from _The Wild Irish Girl_ except the venerable Milesian with his

inevitable _chapelain de maison_, and even this figure has undergone a

change. De Lacy is a rich man who has travelled much in foreign parts

and is, in every way, more modern and less romantic than the prince of

Inismore. The latter always appears in a dress ‘strictly conformable to

the ancient costume of the Irish nobles;’ De Lacy wears ‘the English

habit of fifty years ago,’ with only an Irish cloak to remind one of

his nationality. But their notions of their race and their country

are the same, De Lacy also assuring us that ‘he who shakes my belief

in the antiquity of my country, must first shake my belief in the

beatitude of the immaculate Virgin Mary.’

* * * * *

_The Wild Irish Boy_ appears to have met with the very fate Maturin

had hoped to avoid by trying to please all: it attracted but little

attention, or, if the statement of a writer[49] is to be relied upon,

that the book was ‘admired, talked of, praised,’ the attention probably

was confined to the literary circles of Dublin. In dedicating his

third book to the ‘Quarterly Reviewers’ Maturin says that they had

been pleased to notice his romance of _Montorio_, but there are no

indications of his second book having been subject to public review.

As a means of brightening the economic outlook of its author, _The

Wild Irish Boy_ failed completely; it was, like _Montorio_, published

at his own risk, and the success was not distinct enough to induce any

publisher to purchase the copyright. Discouraged from an immediate

renewal of the attempt, Maturin, for four years to come, devoted his

leisure hours exclusively to some less precarious occupation, which,

in all probability, consisted in the enlargement of and still closer

attention to his boarding-school. What support he might hitherto have

had from his father now also ceased, for about 1810 Maturin senior was

dismissed from his situation. One biographer,[50] alluding to this

deplorable event, says that Charles Robert was ‘roused to poetry by

disappointment,’ which would antedate the event in question by about

5 years. There seems, however, to be more reason to believe Alaric

Watts, who, writing in 1819, states that William Maturin was dismissed

after a service of 47 years, adding the following particulars: ‘The

day of his dismissal he was pennyless: it is singular, that though the

commissioners of inquiry, who sat repeatedly on the business pronounced

this unfortunate gentleman wholly innocent of the charge (of fraud)

brought against him, he has been suffered to linger for nine years

since, without redress, without relief, and without notice.’ Whether

this be correct or not, there is no further intelligence about Mr.

William Maturin; but in any case his last years must have cast a gloom

over all the family, and exercised a further pressure upon the toiling

life of his son.----

In 1810 appeared Scott’s critique on _Montorio_, ending with this

passage:

If the author -- -- -- be indeed, as he describes himself, young and

inexperienced, without literary friend or counsellor, we earnestly

exhort him to seek one on whose taste and judgment he may rely. He

is now, like an untutored colt, wasting his best vigour in irregular

efforts without either grace or object; but there is much of these

volumes which promises a career that may at some future time astonish

the public.

As Maturin had, somehow or other, come to know who this friendly

reviewer was, he availed himself of the opportunity to write to Scott

and solicit him to become his literary friend and counsellor. This

gave rise to an intimate, lifelong correspondence, during the course

of which Scott faithfully assisted the poor Irishman with good advice

and, sometimes, even in a more substantial way. His epistolary intimacy

with the great novelist Maturin always counted among his greatest

distinctions, and although the two men never met, their friendship

continued warm and sincere until Maturin’s death.[51]

There are no more details available with regard to Maturin’s life at

that period, but he was undoubtedly successful in his vocation as a

teacher, for when he again turned to literature, he did so in rather a

hopeful state of mind. His biographer[52] says that when Maturin was

writing _The Milesian Chief_--which was published in the beginning of

1812--his genius was ‘elastic and ardent, his knowledge of composition

improved with the errors of his former works before him, and an

increasing desire to do something worthy of fame: he was at the age

and under the circumstances that are calculated to improve and correct

the taste.’ Colburn paid 80 pounds for the copyright, which was the

first success of this kind Maturin had ever experienced; and full

of confidence he finishes his preface--in which he does not care to

enlarge upon his second book--:

In my first work I attempted to explore the ground forbidden to man;

the sources of visionary terror; the “formless and the void”: in my

present I have tried the equally obscure recesses of the human heart.

If I fail in both, I shall--write again.

The preface is in the form of a dedication to the Quarterly Reviewers,

whom Maturin accuses of writing reviews merely to make a display of

their own cleverness and neglecting to speak of the works they are to

judge:

Seriously I read the Reviews for information, and information I could

get none--about myself. All I learned was that I was a bad writer, but

why, or how, or in what manner I was to become better, they graciously

left to myself.

The tone is throughout very different from that of the preface to _The

Wild Irish Boy_; herein speaks the artist to whom a literary reputation

is by no means indifferent. Here also is found the much-quoted sentence

where Maturin defines his characteristic powers:

If I possess any talent, it is that of darkening the gloomy, and of

deepening the sad; of painting life in extremes, and representing

those struggles of passion when the soul trembles on the verge of the

unlawful and the unhallowed.

Of the work now at hand Maturin adds:

In the following pages I have tried to apply these powers to the

scenes of actual life: and I have chosen my own country for the scene,

because I believe it the only country on earth, where, from the

strange existing opposition of religion, politics, and manners, the

extremes of refinement and barbarism are united, and the most wild

and incredible situations of romantic story are hourly passing before

modern eyes.

All this material is, very likely, not attended to in _The Milesian

Chief_, yet it is certainly by far the noblest of Maturin’s three

earlier romances.--

The Milesian Chief is Connal O’Morven, a young man of an ancient and

formerly potent Irish family, now reduced to extreme poverty. Their

castle and estates have been sold to an Englishman, Lord Montclare,

and Connal lives with his aged and insane grandfather in a ruined

watch-tower, subsisting chiefly on memories of bygone glory. The

old man, in his frantic rage against England, conceives a plan of

insurrection, for the liberation of Ireland; and Connal, young and

inexperienced as he is, engages himself to be the leader of it. In the

meantime Miss Armida Fitzalban, the daughter of Lord Montclare, whose

beauty and talents have struck all Europe with amazement, arrives at

the castle, and a violent passion flames up between her and Connal.

Fully comprehending the impossibility of success in his enterprise,

Connal is determined to dissolve the conspiracy, but the treacherous

conduct of Armida’s unsuccessful lover, an English officer called

Wandesford, who happens to get wind of the plan, compels him to take

up arms. Armida renounces everything and follows Connal and his band

to a remote island on the Atlantic coast. The government troops,

however, track them even there, and as the cause of the rebels is

hopeless, Armida is conducted back to her home. Becoming now a prey to

the machinations of an unnatural mother, she ends her days by taking

poison; Connal surrenders himself to the government and is sentenced to

death.

By the side of this love-story there is another, equally unhappy, but

bizarre rather than gloomy, curious rather than grand: of Connal’s

younger brother Desmond, and Armida’s younger sister Ines. The

last-named, for family reasons, is, by her mother, given out as a

boy; and being very young and innocent she never suspects her sex but

imagines herself to love Desmond as brother loves brother. At last

the secret is revealed and they are married for a short time, but

subsequently Ines is also implicated in the schemes of her mother, and

dies of a broken heart in a state of insanity.

The destinies of these four people form the contents of the book. It

is a record of human passions which are incalculable from the external

basis upon which the incidents take place, and the interest is absorbed

by the sufferings and inner conflicts of a few figures powerfully

domineering at the expense of the _milieu_. This is, indeed, the case

with all Maturin’s Irish stories; a dissection of the social state of

Ireland, with a comprehensive view of the different classes, something

in the style of Gerald Griffin’s well-known tale of _The Collegians_

(1828), it would hardly have been within his capacity to create.

In _The Milesian Chief_ the political state of the country and the

insurrection, instead of being the main subject of the story, form but

a background to the personal tragedy of Connal O’Morven, which becomes

only the more poignant as he fights for a cause in which he does not

believe. He is the first to comprehend that it is ‘impossible for

Ireland to subsist as an independent country,’ and the masses he has

at his disposal are in no way calculated to heighten his confidence.

The Milesian spirit so highly admired Maturin finds only in a few

surviving descendants of the noblest families; his ideas of the people

are tinged with the somewhat aristocratic notion which makes one of

the distinctions between the typical 19th century romanticism and its

pioneers in the preceding one. In some of his sermons Maturin clearly

expresses his opinions on this point:

It is an absurd and mischievous prejudice that supposes the existence

of vice confined to the higher classes of life, and virtue (as they

call it) the everlasting inhabitant of a cottage--it is a prejudice

originating in utter ignorance of life, cherished by the silly

illusions of pastoral poetry, and inflamed by the wild and wicked

ravings of political enthusiasts, without any reason in nature and in

life.

This, it must be added, Maturin does not find to be entirely the fault

of the people:

The root of the wretchedness of the lower orders of this country is in

their depravity, and the root of their depravity is for the most part

in their ignorance; they are wicked because they are uncultivated, and

they are uncultivated because they have been shamefully, abominably

neglected; more neglected than the people of any civilized country

under heaven.

But much ‘sinned against’ as the lower classes are, in the opinion

of the clergyman, to the romantic they remain unattractive; and

here is the basis of the fact that the Irish peasantry occupies,

upon the whole, so inconspicuous a place in Maturin’s production,

and never--except in the opening chapters of _Melmoth_--gives him

the inspiration to his most interesting work. On the other hand his

treatment of the subject is never undignified; if he has not created

anything like the dark and impressive pictures of Irish rebels and

outlaws found, say, in the pages of John Banim, neither does he give

way to the popular habit of representing the Irish peasant as a cross

between a fool and a jester, which idea was so keenly resented in the

Irish literary circles in the fifties.[53]

Yet _The Milesian Chief_ must be considered, in a way, a national

tale, and it is even extremely characteristic as such; the plot, in

its roughest outlines, is the identical one used by Irish novelists

up to this day with a persistence which cannot escape any student

of Anglo-Irish literature. These rough outlines are as follows. A

person of eminence arrives in Ireland; he (or she) possesses every

qualification for a rich and interesting life, yet nothing noteworthy

has ever happened to him, and he is full of spleen until, once there,

he is dragged into a whirl of undreamt-of adventures; his former

habits, prejudices and ways of thinking suddenly give way to an

all-absorbing passion, which irresistibly hurries him towards bliss

or destruction, as the case may be. In the predilection of Irish

novelists for an intrigue of this description there is something more

than a natural partiality to a theme which aptly lends itself to

literary aims; it is the revenge of a subdued and oppressed country

upon her masters. In the field of fiction the conquered becomes the

conqueror, and the first come in as the last. Connal O’Morven, unreal

and idealized though he be, is the embodiment of all that is great and

proud in the Milesian spirit, which spirit here subjugates the most

brilliant representative of the happier race. This, again, does not

hinder Armida’s infatuation from being quite individual in character,

limited only to the person of Connal. His princely ancestry of which

he is so proud, the ancient glory of Ireland, her poetry and music,

are all indifferent to her, and Irish scenery, in all its grandeur,

only makes her sigh for the sunny regions she has quitted. As Connal

is persuaded that he could never be happy out of Ireland, their love

is born under most unpromising auspices, and its tragic issue is

necessitated by the circumstance of their having nothing in common.--

Armida and Connal--and Wandesford, too--are all nearly related. This

fact is made no mystery of, but plainly communicated to Armida by her

father, on their way to Ireland. At the time of the ruin of the Irish

family, and upon the estates forthwith becoming the property of Lord

Montclare, his sister has married Mr. Randal O’Morven, son of the old

Milesian. The latter has never forgiven his son, any more than Lord

Montclare has forgiven his sister; but shortly before her death Mrs

O’Morven has written to her brother and disclosed the extreme misery

of their condition. Lord Montclare has, consequently, appointed her

husband to be his land-steward, and offered her sons commissions in

the army. The younger, Desmond, has accepted the offer, while Connal

prefers to starve with his grandfather.

The family has, it is true, been shrouded in a real mystery, but this

also is shortly afterwards revealed by Lord Montclare, when lying

at death’s door to which he is brought by the unexpected arrival in

Ireland of the rest of the family, whose existence Armida has been

wholly ignorant of. Her father has, long ago, contracted a marriage,

having in view the sole purpose of excluding the O’Morvens from

the property, by begetting a son. Armida, however, is the only

child remaining alive, whereupon Lord Montclare, exasperated by his

misfortunes, confines his wife in an obscure place and spreads the

report of her death; this is done with the assistance of an Italian

monk called Morosini, who subsequently turns out to be in the service

of two masters. Before Lord Montclare has time to form another

connection, his lady is delivered of a son. Under the circumstances

he cannot acknowledge his heir without acknowledging his imposture,

and threatened and persecuted by Morosini he flees from land to land,

too feeble in courage to reveal the secret. Wandesford--who is the

son of his younger sister--is the only person acquainted with the

actual facts of the case, and therefore Lord Montclare eagerly presses

Armida to accept his proposal. At last he is determined to give the

matter publicity in Ireland, for the consolatory reason that in this

country ‘the judgment of his character was indifferent to him from his

contempt for its inhabitants.’ Before, however, he has accomplished his

purpose, his death is caused by the sudden arrival of his family, who

make their appearance at Castle Montclare, attended by Morosini and

Desmond O’Morven. Desmond has come from Italy by the same boat as Lady

Montclare, and has had an opportunity of saving her son from drowning,

after which a very tender friendship has sprung up between the two.--

The commencement of the story in Ireland is preceded by two prologues,

representing ‘Armida in Italy’ and ‘Armida in England.’ The first

describes a banquet given by Lord Montclare at Naples, where Wandesford

also makes his appearance. Armida has, for the occasion, arranged

some tableaux in which her manifold accomplishments are dazzlingly

displayed. In one of these the scene

represented the garden of an oriental palace: the sides filled with

flowers, whose lofty and luxuriant clusters seemed to rise above the

height of the apartment, and whose deep and sunny hues were softened

by the magic diffusion of the lights; and the perspective terminated

in an arch, beyond which was caught a view of the ruins of Persepolis.

-- -- -- Armida advanced on the stage alone: she was in the oriental

dress, and she had an instrument in her hand resembling the lute.

Wandesford gazed with astonishment: the pale, slight, simply clad

girl he had lately seen was transformed into the most brilliant

female in the world. The colour which applause brought to her cheek

mantled richly through the tinge of rouge she had put on to conceal

the effects of her exertions. -- -- The torrent of sound that she

now poured forth, the height to which she soared, the rapidity with

which she traversed intervals that connected the widest extremes

of human voice, the precision with which she marked their minutest

subdivisions, and, above all, the ease of attitude and expression

which she preserved amid her exertions, like a skilful charioteer, who

commands and enjoys the flight of his coursers, whilst their speed

terrifies the spectators, filled the Italians with a sensation which

applause could neither express nor exhaust.

There is, it will be observed, no stint of powerful attributes, the

marvels of Armida leading directly back to Lady Montrevor in _The Wild

Irish Boy_. Yet the descriptions here _are_ somewhat softened, and

the style is free from the extravagances of Maturin’s second book;

Armida, somehow, seems more fit for a heroine of this extraordinary

kind. Her cousin Wandesford, though a cold and selfish character, is

so enraptured by her performance that he declares himself on the spot.

Armida decidedly rejects his attentions, and on the following morning

when he calls on her again, he is informed that Lord Montclare and

his daughter have departed from Italy without any intentions of ever

returning.

The second prologue represents Armida in London society, of which

Maturin draws an amusing and curious picture. Here she is incapable of

creating any sensation:

But what was the astonishment, the horror, of the beautiful,

intelligent, and ambitious foreigner, on her first introduction to

fashionable life in London: lost amid a crowd where beauty could not

be distinguished; stunned by a buz of nothings, where mind could not

be displayed; elbowed by rouged, naked, dashing dowagers; suffered to

stand unnoticed or eyed through a glass by yawning, lounging bucks

of ton; sinking amid the crowd, to be permitted to help herself to

refreshments, or to want them; to be without conversation, though a

mistress of half the dead and living languages, from her ignorance of

fashionable jargon; to walk down a set with a partner who appeared to

be debating whether it would not be high ton to drop asleep during

the exercise--what a reception for a woman who had seen at her feet

Italy and France contending to scatter the laurels of fame and the

roses of pleasure.

Wandesford reappears, and Armida, in her desolation, receives his

attentions with something akin to gratitude. He renews his proposal,

which is eagerly embraced by Lord Montclare. Harassed on all sides

Armida at last complies and gives Wandesford her word; upon this she is

hurried off to Ireland, where Wandesford is shortly to follow them.--

These two chapters are a clever preliminary to the thrilling adventures

Armida is going forth to meet, besides giving a good idea of her

character and circumstances. In spite of her brilliant position in

society she feels lonely and unhappy in her restless life, where in

everything she is subjected to the caprices of her father. Her only

pleasure is the gratification of her pride through the admiration she

excites with her talents; but in England her pride also gets a severe

blow. She feels utterly humiliated and is, as it were, prepared to

meet what she will be forced to surrender to. In a state of dejection

she accepts the proposal of Wandesford, who is less than indifferent

to her, nor is her future brightened by her father’s determination

to set out for Ireland, which determination she cannot imagine to be

anything but a fit of his incurable melancholy. She shudders to think

of the country she is taken to, and travels on almost in apathy. Much

‘fury’--of which there is quite enough already--is spared by her not

entering the scene of action immediately from the highest pinnacles of

glory and triumph; and the deeper and truer side of her character is

naturally developed in sorrow and desolation, which her father’s death

increases to the uttermost. Her new-found relations cannot compensate

for the loss. Lady Montclare, though always wearing a mask of unvarying

suavity, inspires not the least confidence in her daughter, and her

young son, Endymion, is so closely watched by her and Morosini, that

it is impossible for Armida to approach him. Thus she is inevitably

drawn to Connal O’Morven, who comes like an incarnation of his wild

country, grand and solitary, distinct from anything she has ever

seen or dreamt of, while at the same time the boundless devotion he

offers her recalls by-gone, brighter days to her mind. Being thus

mentally prepared for their fate, they are thrown together by external

events with rather unnecessary violence: in the first dawn of their

acquaintance Connal finds an opportunity of saving Armida’s life--at

the risk of his own--three different times. Upon her first arrival to

the castle her horses are terrified and rear staggering backwards on

to the rock, and she would be lost did not Connal rush to the scene of

imminent danger and snatch her from the carriage. The following day she

walks out to the shore and sits down on a rock. Lost in meditations

she fails to observe the tide coming on before it has cut off her

return; again she would perish but for Connal, who happens to be close

at hand. And a few days later, when Wandesford, too, has arrived,

he and Armida and Connal visit a small islet to look at some Celtic

antiquities. In the meantime a dreadful storm breaks out, and only

by exerting his superhuman strength to the utmost Connal succeeds in

rowing them back sufficiently near the shore to be rescued when the

boat capsizes. In all this, however, there is a kind of inner veracity

which saves any of the passages from becoming merely melodramatic. The

delineation especially of Armida, who is not (like Connal) raised above

human weaknesses, is skilfully represented, and the descriptions of

her mental struggles are both psychologically, as well as poetically,

true. In Ireland everything is so different from what she is accustomed

to, and her relation particularly to Connal is so uncomfortable, that

all her experience of the great world is unable to guide her upon her

first encounters with him. When Connal rescues her from the waves of

the tide, Armida, in her confusion, offers him her purse. The manner in

which this ill-chosen retribution is rejected she imagines to imply

contempt of her person. This is a possibility that has never before

entered her mind; and though it makes her shed tears of resentment, she

is unable to answer with the same feeling by dismissing him from her

recollection; in order to rid herself from thoughts of Connal, she sits

down to--write to Wandesford.

Wandesford himself arrives before he is expected, and is received by

Lady Montclare with joyful attention, but with very marked indifference

by Armida. She has contracted the habit of frequently strolling on the

shore, attended by a newly-acquired friend, Rosine St. Austin. Here she

meets Connal, and their acquaintance is quickly developed. He sings

Irish songs to her and is, on the whole, quite at his ease, taking no

pains to conceal his admiration for her, as he fully comprehends from

first that his love is hopeless. But Armida, too, is in love, though

her feeling, to begin with, asserts itself as a desire to dazzle him

by the display of her accomplishments, for which purpose she invites

him to the castle; or as what she imagines to be hatred, when he

refuses, being disinclined to enter, as a stranger, the abode of his

forefathers. He comes, however, and appears to be the only person

capable of understanding Armida and appreciating her talents according

to their merits. Their intimacy grows stronger every moment. Then

follows the excursion to the islet, to which much piquancy is added by

the presence of Wandesford, who is well aware that he has acquired a

formidable rival; the storm under which Connal is exerting his strength

to save Armida and at the same time his enemy, is very dramatically

depicted. Being at last beyond all danger, Connal, wildly happy to have

Armida in his arms and pressed to his heart, insists on carrying her so

all the way to the castle:

Her wet hair had fallen back from her cheek: he touched it with

his lips: she sighed: his hyacinth breath, warm with life and

passion, passing over her cheek was balmy to her returning senses:

she seemed to see him in a dream. Her arm that hung on his shoulder

now half-extended itself, and sunk again; the soft fingers, with a

tremulous motion, touched his neck: he felt every nerve in his body

shiver: the anguish of passion increased with its hopeless fondness:

he held her to his breast in sweet and bitter ecstacy; he felt her too

precious to be possessed, or to be resigned; he felt that he could

clasp her to his heart with desperate love, and then spring with her

from the rock he was climbing.

Half-conscious as she is, the attitude touches a latent chord in

Armida’s bosom, which makes her understand her own feelings; that same

night her passion becomes clear to her. Yet there is still another

experience in store for her, as novel as it is startling: the suspicion

of a rival. The next time she goes to the shore, Connal appears in the

door of a solitary hut which he, with some embarrassment, confesses

that he often visits. Approaching it, Armida sees through the open door

a beautiful woman with an infant in her lap. After this episode all

the pangs of jealousy are roused to life, and sometimes take a very

frenetic mode of expression. An explanation, however, is soon given

by the woman herself, who accosts Armida and Rosine on one of their

walks and tells them the story of her life. The father of her child

is Wandesford, by whom she has been seduced during one of his former

stays in Ireland, whereupon he has taken her with him to England and

there abandoned her; under much suffering she has returned to Ireland,

and would have perished but for the assistance of Connal, who is the

only one that has taken pity on her fate. She is, and has always been,

desperately in love with Connal, but as she understands that he adores

Armida, she wishes to clear his character before her. Armida is calmed,

and when she next meets Connal she is triumphant and impossible to

resist. He is forced to throw himself at her feet, but remembers the

conspiracy he is engaged in, and darkly hints that they must part for

ever.--

The progress of Armida’s mind to the point of an all-absorbing passion

is described with a consistency and a flexibility that gives the first

remarkable proof of Maturin’s deep insight into feminine psychology.

The characterization of Connal is much more _schablonenmässig_: he

simply possesses every mental and bodily perfection. Nevertheless

there are some good observations upon his character, which tend to

naturalness rather than to eulogy. His inexperience of life and

society, an effect of his solitary existence in which he has thought

more than he has seen, is distinctly presented. Thus his high-sounding

theories are sometimes dispersed by Armida’s charms and his own

feelings. Once she asks him to come to a fête given by a lady in the

neighbourhood. He first refuses to visit a house where, he says, his

grandfather has been insulted; and when Armida resents his disobedience

he assures her that ‘to a Milesian the sacrifice of his life is trivial

to the sacrifice of his pride.’ All the same he makes his appearance

at the feast, the description of which is one of the finest things in

the book. Armida has been, all the evening, in a state of weariness

and absent-mindedness that greatly enrages Wandesford. Through his

carelessness a part of her drapery is torn in a dance, and she retires

to repair it in the room of Lady Gabriella, the granddaughter of

their hostess. Here she is joined by Connal, who has been wandering

round the gardens in hope of catching a glimpse of her. Hitherto they

have met mostly under circumstances endangering their lives, or else

amid wildness and desolation; but now they are brought together in

surroundings inviting them to happiness and joy. Armida confesses

to Connal that his feelings are reciprocated, and they succeed in

becoming oblivious to all but the present moment. Their interview being

interrupted she asks him to accompany her, and he instantly obeys:

But what a different figure entered the ball-room from that which

had quitted it--glowing, brilliant, her features sparkling with the

tremulous, with the gem-like lustre of hope and passion; her form

almost too bright and light for any element but air to support or

to convey; her very vestments seemed to undergo a change like the

Cameleon from the air she respired; and her whole figure realized

the fable of the statue converted into woman by the charm of love.

No longer shrinking into obscurity, she accepted the trembling hand

that Connal offered, and when they joined the set, they scarce seemed

beings of the same species with those who surrounded them.

When the dance began, all the other performers paused almost

involuntarily. Envy was stifled by resistless admiration, and even

applause by wonder. The perfection of their figures, the ease,

lightness, and enjouement of their movements, the exquisite modulation

of their attitudes, that seemed to form a kind of visible music,

gave to the spectators the idea of two descended genii mixing in the

festivity. The light movements of Connal scarce disturbed a ringlet

of the glossy hair that fell on his white neck: and as Armida’s

nymph-like form glided among the dancers, it appeared like a star

sometimes passing through the clouds, sometimes sparkling as it

emerged from them: all gazed with delight, but the anxious Rosine (who

could as little account for Connal’s appearance as for Armida’s sudden

re-animation) and the disappointed Gabriella.

The pressure of company towards the door announced the approach of

supper, and Connal, ignorant of the modern custom of the young,

hurrying down to secure the best accommodations, waited with the

reverence of other days, till every female had quitted the apartment.

The supper-room was completely filled when he entered, but Lady

Gabriella eagerly displacing those near her, offered him a seat next

herself, but Connal slightly bowing, placed himself at the back of

Armida’s chair, and intoxicated with his situation, forgot alike the

luxuries of the feast and the gaze of strangers.

Never had they appeared to each other so resistless: that

rose-coloured light which a brilliant entertainment diffuses on every

object was more congenial to the voluptuous splendour of Armida’s

beauty than the gloom of rocks, or the paleness of moonlight: and

Armida, who amidst all her passion revolted from the chill and stern

character of Connal, his apathy of life, and his contempt of luxury,

now amid scenes that renewed her former existence saw him all she

wished, and like the sun-flower expanded in his unclouded rays.

This, indeed, is the only time the sun shines upon them. The fête does

not pass off without ominous collisions between Connal and Wandesford,

and Lady Montclare, anxious for many reasons, hastens to take leave

of the party. Having arrived home Armida again goes to meet Connal

on the rocks. He dare not speak of the conspiration, but gives her

to understand that he is compelled to leave Ireland to seek his

sustenance. Armida, with tears, implores him to take her with him. All

her pride is vanished; henceforth she is only a woman who loves. A hope

springs to life in Connal, but this night the fatal event takes place

which frustrates all his chances--it is told by Connal to Armida long

afterwards, but may, for the sake of elucidation, be mentioned now.

Inspired by Armida’s love Connal determines to dissolve the conspiracy.

He seeks out his men, who are assembled in a cave, adjures them to

surrender themselves to the mercy of the government and make him their

hostage, if need be. They listen with conviction, when Wandesford, who

has traced Connal’s footsteps from the castle, suddenly appears in

their midst. The men are on the point of killing him, but Connal saves

his life and appeals to him to intercede for them with the government,

which Wandesford promises on his word of honour to do.--When Armida,

however, on the following morning solemnly rejects him--on account of

the story of the woman in the hut--Wandesford breaks his word without

a scruple. He disappears for some days to prepare for his plan. This

interval is filled by a very romantic description of an old Irish

harper, who has remained faithful to the house of O’Morven. Connal

takes Armida to see him, but he terrifies them both with prophecies

of death and woe. And the following night, when they are together

on the heath, the tower where Connal lives with his grandfather, is

suddenly seen bursting into flames and besieged by soldiers, who are

sent to suppress the intended rebellion. From this moment Connal is

forced to appear in the character of a leader of rebels. He succeeds

in retiring with his band into an inaccessible place in the mountains,

whence reports of his miraculous valour soon reach Castle Montclare.

Armida, having never taken any interest in Irish politics, has great

difficulty in grasping what has happened. All the same she would be

ready to follow Connal under any circumstances, but one day the news

is spread that he has enticed Lady Gabriella to accompany him into his

retreat. In reality this warm-blooded young lady, who has taken a fancy

to the interesting Milesian, has followed him of her own accord, and

Connal immediately restores her to her grandmother. Armida, however,

finds no reason to doubt the news, and thus once more becomes a prey to

unfounded suspicions. Besides being repetition, this means of bringing

the plot forward is not very brilliant; but the emotions of Armida

are again admirably analyzed. This time there is no outburst of pride

or indignation, only silent despair. She walks out on the darkening

heath, followed by Rosine, and hurries onward without aim or purpose,

until they sink down exhausted and presently recognize, without being

seen, two figures passing by them: Connal, conducting Gabriella back

to her home. Having now lost all interest in life, Armida re-engages

herself to Wandesford. His treatment of her continues to be very

unchivalrous, as she does not conceal that her heart cannot be his; it

is, however, determined that they are to proceed to England directly

and get married there, Armida still being attended by Rosine. Their

journey is soon impeded by a snowstorm, and they fall into the hands of

the rebels. Wandesford is dragged away, but Connal, who is under the

impression that Armida is already married to him, once more saves his

life, enabling him to proceed alone to the nearest town. Connal then

undertakes to conduct Armida back to Castle Montclare; before long he

understands that she is not the wife of Wandesford, and she, on her

part, learns the truth about Gabriella. After scenes of great passion

their final resolution is impressively told in a few words, sounding,

as it were, like the bang of a heavy gate:

The distracted Connal, kneeling before her, implored for a word, a

look of life. “I can no longer see you,” said Armida, sinking from his

arms to the ground; “and though I stretch out my hands, they wander

about, without being able to reach you.”

“God! this is too much for man. Armida! answer!--Will you be mine? I

speak in despair; I have nothing to offer or to promise: will you be

the companion of a rebel, in a desert, amid war, and want, and danger?”

Armida, with an impulse like fate, threw herself into his arms. He

clasped her to his heart. -- --

There follows now a pause in the narrative, as Connal tells Armida the

story of his life, his engagement in the rebellion, and the treachery

of Wandesford. Upon this they are obliged to set out for the coast of

the Atlantic, and at this period even Rosine is compelled to leave

them. After a march through a country devastated by the ravages of

famine and rape, enduring intolerable hardships and continual attacks

from the troops of the government, they finally reach the isles,

where a solitary hut with a bed of rushes becomes the dwelling of

Armida for a long time to come. Ireland has taken her revenge; the

proud and brilliant being at whose feet Europe has lain prostrate,

is changed into a silent and self-sacrificing woman, deprived of all

qualifications ever to re-assume her place in society. This trait is a

remarkable one in the romantic fiction of the time, where the freshness

and buoyancy of a heroine are usually not in the least affected by

perilous adventures and privations ever so hard.

* * * * *

The story of Desmond and Endymion is more eccentric and presents a

curious mixture of passion and fantastic gracefulness. It has already

been said that Endymion, in reality, is a girl, though her mother,

who covets the estates of Montclare, endeavours to conceal her sex.

From the moment Desmond has clasped her to his heart, in saving her

life, Endymion is absorbed by a feeling for him, the nature of which

she does not comprehend. She plainly avows her love to Desmond, whom

she imagines herself to regard in the light of an elder brother; he

fully shares her sentiments, but, dreading their apparently unnatural

tendency, tries, though without success, to avoid her presence:

-- -- -- -- -- “Oh that sensation,” cried Endymion, “how often I

feel it in your presence: at some moments, at the present, it almost

deprives me of breath, of sense: it is a delight that makes me sick

and giddy: the Italians before an earthquake, have a sensation for

which there is no name; such is the sensation I feel in your presence,

that I could throw myself into your arms and weep, if you would let

me.”

“Stop, stop,” said Desmond, “talk this language no more: if the sight

of each other be thus intoxicating, thus ruinous, let us part, and see

each other no more.”

Endymion wept.

“Oh torture me no more with this fantastic fondness,” said Desmond,

“so unlike what we ought to feel for each other: this female

fastidiousness I cannot bear. I wish to love you like a younger

brother; you treat me with the caprice of a mistress. Endymion,

I cannot endure this. Never did I feel before these wild, these

maddening sensations. I know not what you have done with me; what

strange influence you have obtained over me, but it is an influence

that I must fly from to preserve my reason, my life.”

“Oh! do not, do not talk of going,” said Endymion, ringing his hands

in agony. “Am I so lost that I cannot love or be loved without being

guilty: is my affection a crime, or a curse--why must I not love

you? It is so sad, none can envy me; none shall ever see me.” She

whispered, “If you will sometimes let me twine those bright ringlets

on my fingers, or gaze on you, when your eye is averted from me, or

touch your hand when it is unconsciously suspended near me--and is

that too much; can you refuse me that?”

“I can refuse you nothing, and therefore I must fly from you. I tried,

but I cannot love you as a man: I know what it is to love a brother

well; for Connal I would die, but for you, Endymion, I would live:

live, in you, for you, in your sight: dream life away in voluptuous

and frantic melancholy: the feelings that oppress, that soften, that

sicken me, even now while I speak to you I cannot describe them; I

must not feel them; no, not another moment. Oh! untwine those arms

from me; you are making me wild; my blood burns like fire in my veins:

do not believe these hot tears that drop on your hands: they are tears

of hatred,--hatred of myself and you” -- -- --

The appearance, in the literature of all times, of a young female in

male attire is, as a rule, connected with the gay and humorous--it is

enough to call to mind Shakespeare’s comedies--or else it is used

as a pretty and sentimental expedient finally leading to a happy

result, as in _Cymbeline_, in certain episodes in _Don Quixote_, in

the _Monastery_ of Scott and the _Albigenses_ of Maturin. The figure

is not often taken very seriously, and the disguise still more seldom

leads to conflicts of a tragical import. Of famous literary characters

of the last-mentioned description, Goethe’s Mignon is slightly recalled

by Endymion,[54] while the peculiar circumstances appertaining to the

concealment of Endymion’s sex render her case well-nigh exceptional in

fiction. The topic is delicate enough and its treatment difficult to

the extreme. The tone might easily get a tinge of the ridiculous, or

even of the coarse, yet here it does neither; Maturin’s singular skill

and delicacy in depicting those young, pale and ethereal beings that

unite precocity and purity, timidity and passion, by no means denies

itself in the creation of Endymion.--Desmond, as a character, is more

successful than Connal, if only as being less faultless. He is brave

and high-minded like his brother, but at the same time light-headed

and choleric; he is said to have been ‘famous for rural gallantry,’

and is not insensible to refined gallantry either. Shortly before

the disastrous events narrated above take place, he learns the fact

of Endymion’s being a woman from the old harper, who has overheard a

conversation between Lady Montclare and the monk Morosini. About the

same time he receives a note inviting him to a nightly _rendez-vous_.

He takes it to come from Endymion, and, in spite of the serious

admonitions of Connal, whom he makes his confidant, he goes to the

meeting-place; but to his astonishment he finds that the writer of

the billet is not Endymion, but her mother. Shocked and disgusted he

leaves the castle, being thus absent when the rebellion breaks out. In

the meantime he is thrown into the arms of Lady Gabriella. Having been

rejected by Connal, she seeks consolation with the younger brother;

Desmond, passionate and disappointed as he is, surrenders himself

to her charms, and they disappear together for a long time.--In the

meanwhile Connal leaves his island and undertakes an adventurous

journey to Dublin, having heard that an eminent person there would

be willing to intercede for him with the government. By accident he

enters a theatre, where he sees his brother with Gabriella, and from

a conversation near him he gathers that their life is considered

to be a perfect scandal. He seeks out Desmond and persuades him to

re-join his regiment, which is in the vicinity of Castle Montclare.

The brothers part, Desmond being still entirely ignorant of Connal’s

participation in the rebellion. Desmond travels back to the castle,

where his position becomes very painful. Lady Montclare is about to

contract a marriage with his father the agent, who is wholly unlike his

sons. As for Endymion, she continues to be a victim of the shameful

imposture and is, moreover, surrounded by dangers threatening both her

life and her reason. Her love for Desmond is more conspicuous than

ever; one night he finds her in the chapel where she is doing penance

which Morosini has imposed on her for permitting her thoughts to

dwell too much on Desmond. As the monk is often present during these

penances, and she confesses that he talks to her in a way she does

not understand, Desmond concludes that his motives for staying alone

with the slightly-clad girl are not purely ecclesiastic. Indignant and

despairing, but at a loss how to treat her, Desmond withdraws from

the scene. The decisive moment, however, comes that very night; as in

the case of Armida and Connal, it is told in a few simple sentences.

Desmond is roused from his slumbers by hearing Endymion sobbing at his

door and imploring him to open it. At last he yields to the entreaties:

“Desmond!” she cried, starting at his altered looks, though she could

not understand their expression, “Desmond! the wildness of your eyes

terrifies me: I feel there is danger, though I cannot comprehend it.

How your hand burns! how you tremble! Are you afraid?”

“I am, I am,” said the panting Desmond.

“And what is it we fear? I have seen you sit beside your brother; I

have seen you lean on his arm; I have seen your hand locked in his.”

“Yes, yes, you have, and would it were locked in his now, instead of

yours.”

“And why can you not caress me like a brother?”

“Because a woman cannot be my brother,” said Desmond, distractedly.

At these words Endymion started from his arms, and with a scream of

horror flew towards her own apartment; and Desmond, terrified at the

consequences of his own imprudence, pursuing her, kneeled at her door,

and supplicated in his turn for admission in vain.

Endymion’s horror does not arise from any immediate realization of

what she has heard; though she has attained a standpoint at which a

continuation of the imposture would destroy her reason, the vital

truth regarding herself becomes clear to her but by degrees. But

she recollects having heard her mother say to Morosini: ‘should she

ever learn she is a woman, she must live no longer,’ and this she

at once applies to herself. The next day she rushes to Desmond and

wildly implores him to save her, as she is to be sent away under the

protection of the monk. Desmond fortunately remembers a clergyman

called St. Austin, uncle to Armida’s friend Rosine, to whom they

succeed in flying. He unites them and procures for them a solitary

retreat, where they spend some idyllic months in perfect felicity.

* * * * *

On arriving at Dublin Connal learns that the eminent person in whom

he has placed his hope is in Ireland no more. The only thing for him

to do, under the circumstances, is to return to the island, where his

presence indeed would be urgently necessary. He has confided Armida

to the protection of a young man of the name of Brennan, who secretly

hates him and, what is worse, cherishes a violent passion for Armida.

He begins to harass her with his attentions, and they being met in

a way that may be surmised, extends his hatred towards her as well,

devising an exquisite mode of vengeance. He comes one night to the

hut where Armida lives attended by a peasant woman, and requires her

to accompany him, on the pretext that O’Morven has returned and wishes

to see her. He then conducts her into a cavern where there really

is an O’Morven: the old grandfather of Connal, who is now totally

insane and appears to bear a particular malevolence against Armida.

It is Brennan’s intention to have her murdered by the maniac, which

undoubtedly would happen, did not Connal arrive at the very last

moment. His journey thither has been much retarded by his being wounded

by three men whom Brennan has sent out to waylay and assault him.

Now, after a hideous fight, Brennan’s own life is ended. Yet Connal

is wanted for more than one reason. The state of his band has, in his

absence, grown utterly desperate; it is again seen how soberly and

realistically Maturin conceived the business of the rebellion:

The discipline that Connal had established was destroyed: instead

of confining themselves to the islands, they had spread themselves

along the shore, exercising every outrage and aggression on the

inhabitants; and, from the indiscriminate admission of every vagabond

and profligate into the ranks, their numbers had increased beyond all

power of control, and the spirit of humanity and honour, that Connal

had tried to inspire them with, was utterly extinguished.

In proportion as this barbarization increases, the chances of any

reconciliation with the government naturally diminish, and the final

traces of Connal’s own enthusiasm for the cause disappear as well.

Troops are now everywhere collected to march against him, and besides

being daily beset by enemies, Connal is besieged by a terrible anxiety

for the fate of Armida. One day a detachment of soldiers come over to

the island. The officer at their head is wounded, and it is only with

difficulty that Connal saves him from being killed by the rebels. He

is taken care of, and to his horror Connal recognizes Desmond, who,

to this moment, has been ignorant of the story of Armida and Connal.

His own paradisiacal existence with Endymion--or Ines, as she is now

called--has come to a sorrowful end. They have been traced to their

retreat, and one night the door is burst open whereupon Morosini rushes

in with two attendants. The monk pursues Ines as she flees out of the

hut, while the attendants attempt to detain Desmond. He overpowers

them, however, and follows in pursuit of his wife, whom he sees plunge

herself into the river with the monk in hot haste after her. Some days

later the body of Morosini is found, but no traces of Ines. Desmond,

being now possessed of the sole desire to court death, joins his

regiment, and Wandesford immediately takes care to command him to march

against Connal.

Though disapproving of the rebellion, Desmond resolves to fight and

perish with Connal. Before the decisive battle he conducts Armida away

and places her at the house of St. Austin, where Rosine still resides,

and then returns to the island. The battle is fought, and, contrary to

all expectation, both Connal and Desmond survive it. The former finds

his way to a remote and solitary cave, where he hides himself with his

dying grandfather. Desmond, weak and wounded, goes back to the castle.

He is carefully nursed by Lady Montclare, whose husband has recently

died and who now conceives a plan concerning Desmond. Her whole life

has been a struggle to keep in her family the estates of Montclare, and

her last resort turns out to be a marriage between Armida and Desmond.

To that end she has her daughter brought to the castle and imposes on

her the fraudulent statement that Connal is in the hands of Wandesford,

and is to suffer death unless she consents to marry Desmond. Of Armida

there is, by this time, left but a faded beauty and a ruined mind; but

seeing that she is only required to persevere in her self-sacrifice

for Connal, she easily consents. Nor does Desmond oppose himself;

both are too weary and apathetic even to enquire for the reasons

of Wandesford’s singular resolution. The report of their intended

marriage reaches Connal. He meets Lady Montclare who, in fear of her

life, solemnly declares that it is Armida’s will and that he is to

hear it from her own lips. She arranges an interview between them, and

Armida has strength enough to stand to her resolution, the reasons for

which she promises to disclose to Connal immediately after her wedding.

The night of this very interview, however, Connal is plunged into

despair at seeing how innocent people are punished for having given

him shelter, and thus he straightway betakes himself to Wandesford to

deliver himself up. Still he is not to die yet; Wandesford, to whom

the whole affair is one of personal hatred and vengeance, orders five

hundred lashes to be administered to him, whereupon he is to be set

free, in case he survives the scourging. He does survive it, and is

able to keep his last appointment with Armida. The night of Armida’s

wedding Connal is wandering near the castle, when Wandesford rides

past him. Connal challenges him and shoots him through the heart,

and he expires repenting his crimes.--In the meantime Armida, having

fulfilled what she imagines her last duty towards Connal, takes her

fate in her own hands. Her late father has been an expert in, and also

initiated his daughter into, the interesting science of preparing

poisons. Immediately before the ceremony is to commence she swallows a

dose of poison that has the power of dismissing life, without pain, in

eight and forty hours. The marriage, however, is destined never to be

contracted; just as the priest is opening his book, a piercing shriek

rings through the chapel, and Ines appears in their midst. She has been

saved from the river by the agents of Lady Montclare, and, since then,

been secretly imprisoned in the castle. Her reason is irrevocably lost:

she does not even recognize Desmond. Sick of horrors Armida retires

to her apartment, whither Rosine brings Connal at the appointed hour.

Everything is now explained; the conversation is interrupted only by

a party of soldiers breaking into the castle, in quest of Connal. He

is conducted to take his trial for rebellion, by martial law, and the

sentence is death. At the moment the soldiers fire, Desmond rushes to

Connal and falls with him. Armida and Ines likewise find their death

beside the corpses of their respective lovers. Rosine and her uncle are

left to inter the dead; Lady Montclare, it is stated, buries her crimes

and her remorse in a convent.

* * * * *

The end, it is clear, somewhat lowers the level of the book and

disturbs the final effect. From the rather unnatural idea of marriage

between Armida and Desmond and onwards in the ensuing events there is

much that is strained and stilted in the story; the circumstance of

Armida’s extraordinary poison is too trivial and absurd to make any

serious impression. The closing scene is entirely melodramatic: the

eight and forty hours come to an end exactly at the time of Connal’s

execution, and Ines expires at the same moment for the simple reason

that everybody else does. But, strange to say, the chief incident

itself, causing this conventional winding up of a highly romantic

story, strikes one with its painful realism. One of the most remarkable

features in _The Milesian Chief_ is the mode of Connal’s death. In

romances with tragical issue, of the time, the hero may die in a

battle, he may die by accident, he may commit suicide or even be

assassinated; but to let him first be flogged and then executed in

consequence of the sentence of a court martial, is to excite terror

and pity at the expence of the atmosphere of greatness and invincible

superiority with which he is surrounded in the beginning of the tale.

To reject everything conciliatory in the tragic, to bereave the death

of a hero of every trait of sublimity and poetical splendour, to let

his own person, as it were, be degraded by the ignominy he is exposed

to, is certainly alien to the spirit and methods of the early 19:th

century romanticism. The manner in which Scott allows the Master of

Ravenswood to end his days is perfectly characteristic of the period,

while the death of Connal O’Morven anticipates ideas much more modern.

There is, in the end of Connal, something that brings to mind a very

impressive Irish story of later date, the _Maelcho_ (1894) of Emily

Lawless, treating of the Desmond wars (1579-81), where the romantic

halo in which the hero is enveloped is torn into shreds by degrees,

until he is, both mentally and physically broken, hanged obscurely, _en

passant_, like any of the countless victims of those troubled times.--

Of the principal personages in _The Milesian Chief_ Armida and Ines

are the most remarkable as types of some novelty in the fiction of the

time. The latter is not without parallels in Maturin’s own work, but

her originality lies in the absence of all reflection or principle:

she acts solely by instinct, never expending a thought upon the moral

standard of her feelings, and guided only by the nature contrary to

whose intentions she has been reared up. A young lady answering to

the description of Armida is uncommon in all romantic literature.

The Radcliffe heroine, as has been pointed out by a critic,[55] is

but a slight variation of the one favoured by Richardson: weak and

sentimental, only calculated to move pity, never doing anything for

her lover, who gladly sacrifices his life for her. As for the heroines

of Scott, many of them, no doubt, display activity and courage and

accomplish wonders for others, yet none would, in all likelihood,

take the step Armida does, were they in her position; none have the

independence of mind and superiority of intellect which render her

perfectly regardless of the opinion of the world. The pride and the

accomplishments, the _grandezza_ and the accustomedness to obedience

and admiration with which she is invested, usually distinguish females

of a maturer age, like Lady Ashton in _The Bride of Lammermoor_ and

Lady Montrevor in _The Wild Irish Boy_. But though Armida entirely

lacks that girlish docility and inexperience which seems to require

manly protection, Maturin has succeeded in making her young and

natural, and it is described with great beauty and power how her

stateliness melts away before an overwhelming passion, and how the

burning heart of youth demands its due when opportunity arises.

The characterization of Connal and Desmond, as has already been pointed

out, is not equal to that of Armida and Ines. The best-drawn male

character in the book is Wandesford, who is surprisingly real. He is

a man of the world of the selfish and unfeeling kind, retaining some

outward dignity by displaying a sort of conventional courage, that,

‘stimulated by witnesses, or by military tumult, could rush on death:

the courage of the senses rather than the mind.’ When the latter is

required, as on the occasion of his being well-nigh drowned with

Armida and Connal, he proves to be a coward at heart. He is incapable

of generosity towards his enemy, and his bad qualities always grow

worse when met by adversities; thus in his strife with Connal, whom

he hates as a rival and dislikes as an Irishman, he continually sinks

deeper into the quagmire of crime and dishonour, which process is quite

plausible and recounted without exaggeration. The narrow, unimaginative

side of his character is well illustrated by his discussion, especially

with Armida, whose superiority he cannot avoid instinctively to feel:

“The hearts of your whole sex,” said Wandesford, furiously, “are not

worth the earth I tread: you have no heart: you have nothing but

pride, caprice, and desire. While the first men in Europe were at your

feet, you spurned them. My honourable addresses, the addresses of a

man of the first family, fortune, and character were despised; but the

moment you saw this Irishman, this heir of the poverty, and pride,

and infamy of his country, you rushed into his arms, though he dashed

you from them. Perhaps his figure awoke your classical taste, and you

wished to transfer your study, like the statuary of old, from marble

to flesh.”--

In the case of certain other personages Maturin’s sovereign contempt

for a secondary character comes to light. This is, indeed, one

of the most conspicuous flaws of the book. All delineation, for

instance, of the wonderful mind of Lady Montclare is omitted. She is

perfectly stereotyped; it is only evident that her every thought runs

upon keeping the estates of her husband, and that she is, to this

end, ready to commit the most atrocious crimes with an ever-smiling

countenance--but in the reality of her being it is impossible to

believe. Another character of whom much might have been made is the

elder O’Morven, Connal’s father, who has gratefully accepted the

situation of land-steward to Lord Montclare. He might be all the more

interesting as he is expressly said to represent the worst kind of

Irish character, being intent upon ‘unfeeling, unworthy self-enjoyment,

not destitute of affection, but wholly without dignity.’ He receives

Armida and her father on their arrival at the castle, and his

conversation is expressive enough:

There he (Connal) has shut himself up in a hovel with that old fool my

father, and all my hopes of him are destroyed; and it was not from my

want of speaking to him either, for says I to him, as I said, ‘Why,

Connal, where’s the use of your refusing his lordship’s kindness?

Where did I get this good coat on my back, and a seat at his table

(for your lordship promised I should not dine with the servants)?

and where did your brother get his commission? Was it not from his

lordship condescending to take us up, and forgetting our offence in

being his relations?’ And says I, Do you think that poring over an old

Irish manuscript, or wandering over these wild shores, listening to an

old harp with hardly a string to it will put a potatoe in your mouth,

or give a stone to repair those ruins you live in, or bring you back

your land to you again?

Upon this, however, he is all but dropped out of the plot; he is

very seldom brought into contact with his sons, and, upon the whole,

plays no part in the story. Towards the end it is told that he is

married by Lady Montclare, and shortly afterwards dies, wearied by

her ‘violence’--of which the reader is not favoured with one single

instance.

_The Milesian Chief_ could not be better characterized than

Talfourd[56] does in his much-quoted phrase: ‘There is a bleak and

misty grandeur about it which, in spite of its glaring defects,

sustains for it an abiding place in the soul.’ The defects are

glaring indeed. The composition, here as always the blind side of

Maturin, is anything but flawless. The development of the intrigue

is sometimes primitive, sometimes rough and rhapsodical. Repetition

occurs frequently in the adventures--the saving of lives especially is

an actual habit with the brothers O’Morven; Connal’s journey to Dublin

is so long as to be a digression, and not particularly interesting;

the end is forced and theatrical, and some of the characters are made

nothing of. These faults were, at all times, counterpoised by plenty

of good characterization and impressive narrative; but now, at a

distance of a hundred years, they appear so unimportant just because

the whole is wrapped up in that ‘bleak and misty grandeur.’ The absence

of technical defects is, after all, but a negative merit which swiftly

loses its charm, while the creations of a truly poetical imagination

are never entirely defaced by the wear and tear of time. The romantic

atmosphere about the best scenes in _The Milesian Chief_, in so far

as such a thing can be defined, arises from a close affinity between

the human emotions and the sombre scenery around, effected by the

instrumentality of a suggestive, passionate, and musical style. In

point of description _The Milesian Chief_ shows a great advance from

Maturin’s earlier works; the nature of Western Ireland had, perhaps,

never yet been depicted with a power and accuracy like this. Hence

it is difficult to embrace the opinion of a critic[57] that in the

description of scenery the influence of Mrs. Radcliffe is discernible.

In _Montorio_ it was, and it is easy to perceive that neither was

acquainted with the Mediterranean nature which they painted in such

glowing colours. But here there is quite a different strain, Northern

and familiar; or what is to be said, for instance, of this sonorous

passage:

The character of the scene was grandeur--dark, desolate, and stormy

grandeur. The sea, troubled with rains and winds, dashed its grey

waves along a line of rocky coast with a violence that seemed even

in the absence of a storm to announce perpetual war and unexhausted

winter. The dark clouds, though they moved rapidly along, never left

the horizon clear, and seemed too thick for rains to melt or storms to

disperse. The country near the shore, brown, stony and mountainous,

looked as if the sun never shone on it, as if it lay for ever under

the grey and watery sky: the shore itself, bold, high, and sweeping,

had all the savage precipitateness, the naked solitude, the embattled

rockiness, which nature seems to throw round her as a fortress, where

she retires from the assaults of the elements, and the approach of man.

* * * * *

It has been hinted before that _The Milesian Chief_ seems indebted to

Miss Owenson’s _Wild Irish Girl_. The germ of the plot may have been

taken from the latter: an Irish family of princely descent have sunk

into poverty and lost their lands to an Englishman whom they regard

as an usurper--the complications this circumstance leads to form

the incidents in both tales. These, however, are quite differently

developed. Miss Owenson’s story has the character of an idyll rather

than a tragedy, being brought to a happy and harmonious end. Nor is

there any communion between the principal personages. The venerable

figure of the prince of Inismore Maturin had already borrowed in _The

Wild Irish Boy_; here, presumably to avoid repetition, the burden of

chieftaincy is placed upon younger shoulders, and the old Milesian,

who is but once brought upon the scene of action, is represented as

a complete ruin. Connal, then, as an Irishman, is a new type in the

fiction of his country. Reminiscences of the antiquarian enthusiasm

of Miss Owenson crop up in some of the conversations between Armida

and Connal, where particularly the poetry and music of the ancient

Irish is extensively discussed and warmly striven for.--The Radcliffe

school--through the medium of _Montorio_--is slightly recalled only

by the trio of Lord and Lady Montclare and Morosini. From Maturin’s

first romance proceed the figures of the dark, melancholy-looking

nobleman whose conscience is weighed down by an evil deed, and of the

diabolical monk who is his confidant and tormentor at the same time.

Yet Lord Montclare shows a development from the genuine Gothic Romance,

represented by count Montorio. The latter has committed a bloody and

terrible crime, the remembrance of which confines him within the walls

of a gloomy castle, where he sits brooding over his deeds and starting

at the slightest sound. The offence which Lord Montclare is guilty of

is of a less violent kind and has the opposite effect of driving him

restlessly from land to land. With him a step is taken towards the type

of the Wanderer.

A great many passages in _The Milesian Chief_ anticipate the manner of

Scott rather than recall Mrs Radcliffe and Lewis. Very characteristic

is the well-written episode where Brennan conducts Armida to the

old O’Morven. The silent desolation of the night; Brennan’s sudden

appearance in the hut and the alarm of the peasant woman, who in vain

dissuades Armida from following him; his conversation on the way; the

impotent rage of the maniac, and lastly the furious fight between

Connal and Brennan: all this is horrifying, certainly, but in the same

way horrible as are innumerable scenes in Scott. The difference, in

this respect--apart from the question of the supernatural--between the

school of Scott and the school of Radcliffe, is, that the thrilling,

the exciting, is removed from the vaults of a castle and the dungeons

of the Inquisition out into the open air under a Northern sky. But

there is even a more obvious reason to mention Scott in connection

with _The Milesian Chief_. Talfourd adds to his phrase quoted above:

‘Yet never perhaps was there a more unequal production--alternately

exhibiting the grossest plagiarism and the wildest originality.’

From where the plagiarism is suggested, unless from _The Wild Irish

Girl_, the present writer is unable to say; Maturin’s novel is, on

the contrary, alleged to have been a subject for imitation for no

less a man than Walter Scott himself. The resemblance of _The Bride

of Lammermoor_ (1819) to _The Milesian Chief_ is, in fact, far more

detailed than that of the latter to the story of Miss Owenson. Edgar

Ravenswood, like Connal O’Morven, is the heir of a once powerful family

whose dominions have passed into the possession of an Englishman. Like

his Milesian counterpart he lives in an old tower in great poverty,

profoundly discontented with the supposed oppressor. The new owners,

in both cases, have a daughter, and the two heroes of the respective

tales have occasion to begin their acquaintance with the fair ones

by saving their lives. Both fall in love, and the love of both is

reciprocated. Connal becomes the leader of a rebellion which his love

to Armida would induce him to suppress; Ravenswood, too, is involved

in a conspiracy against the government, from which his attachment to

Lucy Ashton urges him to withdraw. Both love-stories finally end in a

tragic way, the heroines being first, by fraud, brought to the point

of union with another.--With all these likenesses, it is of interest

to note how differently the two novelists work up the subject-matter

they have in common. Maturin, as usual, is for the extreme, making

the conditions of his hero desperate from the first, and the contrast

between the two families as striking as possible. Connal lives in

the remote and unknown West of Ireland, hated and despised by the

new lord--relatives as they are--and supported only by a handful of

peasants. All paths are practically closed to him; he is, as it were,

predestined to his fate. In _The Bride of Lammermoor_, constructed

with the temperate and easy skill of Scott, no such contrarieties are

felt. Edgar Ravenswood is acknowledged and entertained by Sir William

Ashton, he possesses powerful friends, and would, no doubt, advance far

in the world but for his fatal love for Lucy. The course of events,

here, runs smoother but is, at the same time, more varied and less

easy to guess beforehand; compared with _The Milesian Chief_, the

book seems to contain almost an infinite variety of characters and

episodes. Ravenswood himself is rather a solitary figure in Scott,

being destitute of the light-heartedness and sunny good-humour of his

youthful heroes in general. Yet he has his faults, and in comparison

with Connal, seems almost real. But if Scott was more successful with

the male characters, Maturin was more so with the feminine. There is

no denying that Armida is far more interesting than Lucy. The latter

is, in fact, nothing but the weak and passive type from the preceding

century, merely ennobled by the hand of Scott, and would never be

able, like Armida, to support the central part of a story. That the

emotional element in _The Milesian Chief_ outweighs the ruggedness of

the construction and the poverty of the action may be ascribed to the

skilful characterization of Armida; and a chapter like the twentieth

in _The Bride of Lammermoor_ seems quite tame and colourless after the

fiery love-scenes described by Maturin.

To how high a degree the resemblance of the one romance to the other

is a result of direct influence and intentional imitation, it would

be purposeless to discuss. It may even be quite accidental, for in

a country with the history of Scotland and Ireland, a theme like

this must have been both natural and lent itself profitably to the

novelist. That the outlines were furnished by actual life is made

more than probable by their continued appearance in Irish literature.

They are made use of, as late as 1845, in Charles Lever’s story of

_The O’Donoghue_. During nine hundred years, the heads of this family

have been kings of that part of Ireland where their castle stands.

Towards the end of the 18:th century they fall into a state of decay

and are compelled to part with their castle and their estates, which

are sold to a wealthy English baronet who has a beautiful daughter.

The old O’Donoghue, with his two sons, is reduced to the state almost

of peasants. The elder of these sons is, like Connal O’Morven, a

proud and impetuous character, whom a deep sense of his own and his

country’s wrongs prompts to embrace the insurrection of ’98; the

younger, a counterpart of Desmond, turns Protestant and enters Trinity

College. Otherwise the tales of Maturin and Lever contain no elements

in common--the elder O’Donoghue succeeds in escaping to France, the

younger finally marries the baronet’s daughter--and thus imitation is

entirely out of the question. But from an intended preface to _The

O’Donoghue_, where Lever tells[58] how the story occurred to him while

on a tour in the South of Ireland, it appears how conspicuous these

impoverished descendants of noble families were in Irish society:

Between the great families--the old houses of the land and the present

race of proprietors--there lay a couple of generations of men who,

with all the traditions and many of the pretensions of birth and

fortune, had really become in ideas, modes of life, and habits, very

little above the peasantry about them. They inhabited, it is true,

the “great house,” and they were in name the owners of the soil,

but, crippled by debt and overborne by mortgages, they subsisted in

a shifty conflict with their creditors, rack-renting their miserable

tenants to maintain it. Survivors of everything but pride of family,

they stood there like stumps, blackened and charred, the last remnants

of a burnt forest, their proportions attesting the noble growth that

preceded them.

What would the descendants of these men prove when, destitute of

fortune and helpless, they were thrown upon a world that actually

regarded them as blamable for the unhappy condition of Ireland? Would

they stand by “their order” in so far as to adhere to the cause of

the gentry? Or would they share the feelings of the peasant to whose

lot they had been reduced, and charging on the Saxons the reverses of

their fortune, stand forth as rebels to England?

Now in the preface to _The Milesian Chief_ Maturin had promised to

apply his powers to scenes of actual life. The actual life of the

class of society he was choosing for his subject had, according to the

sentence of Lever, also a sordid and prosaic side, nor could they all

be regarded as martyrs for their country without any fault of their

own. As Maturin’s peculiar powers were, above all, in ‘painting life

in extremes,’ he described not so much what is, as what would be,

under given circumstances, exceptional indeed, but not impossible; and

even in so doing he was, as has been pointed out, most attracted by

the phenomena in the ‘recesses of the human heart.’ Thus the promise

of actual life, in the usual sense of the word, is but imperfectly

fulfilled. Yet beneath the delineations of human passions of general

applicability, there is, however, a perceptible glimpse of a certain

aspect of unmistakable Irish life--in the absence of which Mangan[59]

would hardly have called _The Milesian Chief_ the most intensely Irish

story he knew of.

* * * * *

Of Maturin’s third book, any more than of his second, no contemporary

reviews are extant, but its immediate success--at least where the

author was known--seems to have been considerable. The writer in the

_New Monthly Magazine_ 1827 tells us that the book ‘received encomiums

from many of the leading critics,’ and that ‘several individuals,

inspired perhaps by the highly-wrought and poetical feeling of “The

Milesian,” composed sundry “complimentary verses” upon it.’ Yet a

second edition never appeared, and that Maturin’s circumstances

continued to be distressing, all biographers agree.[60] His delicacy in

concealing himself behind a pseudonym was of no avail to him regarding

his chances of religious preferment; according to the aforesaid writer

these were completely destroyed by the publication of his novels. So

far, however, from abandoning the Muses, Maturin turned his poetical

inspiration in another direction, still more contradictory to his

profession. He became a dramatist, probably encouraged by the success

bestowed upon a new play of no very remarkable merit. In 1813 Richard

Lalor Sheil, the celebrated Irish barrister, produced a tragedy called

_Adelaide, or the Emigrants_, written for the highly talented Miss

O’Neill, who, after many hardships in obscure provincial theatres, had

been engaged at the Old Crow-Street Street Theatre in Dublin. The

decided success of Sheil--who also had composed his play in order to

defray some necessary expenses--incited Maturin to follow his example.

He sat down to write a drama in good earnest, as in his juvenile years

he had often done for amusement. Already in the latter part of the

year he was able to send in his _Bertram_, but the management of the

theatre, for some reason or other, thought it advisable to reject it.

Nearly a year afterwards Maturin hit upon it among his manuscripts,

and, on the advice of a friend, sent it over for the perusal of his

literary correspondent Walter Scott. The kindness of Scott was never

appealed to in vain; he read the play and warmly recommended it to

John Kemble, as he relates[61] in a letter to Daniel Terry, dated Nov.

10:th 1814, observing that _Bertram_ is ‘one of those things which

will either succeed greatly, or be damned gloriously, for its merits

are marked, deep, and striking, and its faults of a nature obnoxious

to ridicule.’ With every allowance for Scott’s desire to help Maturin,

it seems unquestionable that he was really impressed by the play.

After a few critical remarks upon the last act, he concludes his

letter to Terry: ‘With all this, which I should say had I written the

thing myself, it is grand and powerful: the language most animated and

poetical; and the characters sketched with a masterly enthusiasm.’

Notwithstanding these eulogies Kemble refused the play, and its

fate seemed as doubtful as ever. Fortunately for Maturin, however,

the committee of management of the Drury Lane Theatre were, in the

following year, wanting something new for their repertory. The members

of that body were, in 1815, men of high literary aspirations; the

procurement of plays devolved on Lord Byron, who states[62] that the

number he was supplied with amounted to five hundred, not one of which

he could think of accepting. His attempts to exact a new play from

some of the foremost writers of the day remained without effect, but

Scott, to whom he also addressed himself, faithfully referred him

to Maturin. A correspondence ensued, in consequence of which, Byron

says,[63] ‘Maturin sent his _Bertram_ and a letter _without_ his

address, so that at first I could give him no answer. When I at last

hit upon his residence, I sent him a favourable answer and something

more substantial. His play succeeded; but I was at that time absent

from England.’

The answer must indeed have been a favourable one, for, to judge from a

letter from John Murray[64] to Scott, dated Dec. 25:th 1815, _Bertram_

created quite a sensation in the committee:

I was with Lord Byron yesterday. He enquired after you, and bid

me say how much he was indebted to your introduction of your poor

Irish friend Maturin, who had sent him a tragedy, which Lord Byron

received late in the evening, and read through without being able to

stop. He was so delighted with it that he sent it immediately to his

fellow-manager, the Hon. George Lamb, who, late as it came to him,

could not go to bed without finishing it. The result is that they have

laid it before the rest of the Committee; they, or rather Lord Byron,

feels it his duty to the author to offer it himself to the managers of

the Covent Garden. The poor fellow says in his letter that his hope of

subsistence for his family for the next year rests upon what he can

get for this play. I expressed a desire of doing something, and Lord

Byron then confessed that he had sent him fifty guineas.

In a letter to Moore, written from Venice in 1817, Byron again

expresses[65] his satisfaction at having been able to promote the

‘first and well-merited success’ of this ‘very clever fellow.’ There

is no reason to doubt that Byron’s admiration was genuine. The high

opinion he entertained of _Bertram_ may, of course, have been biassed

by his regard for Scott, like that of Scott by motives of friendship;

but there is that in Maturin’s tragedy which reflects the spirit of the

time with peculiar distinctness; from many of its wild effusions speaks

the very _Zeitgeist_ of romanticism, which was sure to find response

with the best of the age as well as with the general public.

Before the play could be finally accepted, the approval of Kean had

to be obtained. Kean had spent the greater part of 1815 on a tour

extended to Dublin, where he appeared at the Crow-Street Theatre as

Richard II, Othello, and Hamlet. In the beginning of 1816 the great

man returned to London, and _Bertram_ was submitted to his judgment.

Kean did not share the enthusiasm of the committee; according to

his biographer[66] he pronounced the play to be ‘all sound and fury

signifying nothing,’ yet offering a welcome relief after the characters

of Shakespeare. His principal reason, however, for undertaking to

perform the part of the hero was the conviction that it would ‘serve

to increase his reputation.’ After a few rehearsals he came to realize

that the part of Bertram was but a secondary one; but there being, as

he said, no Mrs. Siddons to eclipse him in the part of the heroine,

he resolved to do his best to eclipse Miss Somerville. In this he

succeeded so well that _Bertram_, by all accounts, really did much to

increase his reputation as the leading tragedian of the time.--

Between the production and first performance of _Bertram_ there was a

lapse of more than two years, during which the monotony of Maturin’s

existence was but seldom broken by occurrences worthy of notice. An

instance of his poetical carelessness in practical matters is thus

related in the _Irish Quarterly Review_ 1852:

Whilst he was composing Bertram, and living amidst a confused sea of

difficulties, a clergyman, high in the church, had called upon him in

York-street for the purpose of making him an offer of preferment; he

was requested to wait for a few minutes, and after the lapse of half

an hour, Maturin entered, his hair in dishevelled masses, wrapped in

a flowing morning gown, and bearing in one hand a pen, in the other a

portion of the manuscript of Bertram, from which he was repeating some

highly wrought sentence just completed; he threw himself on the sofa

beside his starched visitor, who very soon retreated, leaving the poet

to cultivate the muse, in poverty and at leisure.

An anecdote like this, whether true or invented, affords, no doubt,

a glimpse of Maturin as he really was, and has a deeply tragical as

well as a comical side. It marks the perpetual conflict between what

he was inclined to do and what he, in the opinion of the world, ought

to have been doing; and when the fit of inspiration had subsided, the

bitterness of seeing his family imperfectly provided for was always

there. That Maturin repeatedly received assistance from liberal

friends is seen from the correspondence of Byron, yet at the same

time there are recorded certain actions of Maturin himself, which

display uncommon generosity towards others, at least in one in his

position. He was prevailed upon to become security for a relation, who

subsequently had recourse to the act of insolvency, leaving Maturin

burthened with a heavy debt for many years to come. This new disaster

possibly caused him again to take up his rejected drama. The fact of

Maturin’s being acceptable as security for a considerable sum, however,

would go to show that his circumstances were not all times absolutely

desperate--which also might be inferred from the story of an alleged

literary production of his, connected with the latter part of 1815. A

poetical competition had been announced by Trinity College in order to

celebrate the Battle of Waterloo. Here, according to the _New Monthly

Magazine_ 1827, Maturin easily carried off the prize with a poem which

he, ‘in a most handsome manner,’ presented to a pupil of his called

Shea[67] and declined all profit from the publication of it. The poem

was printed in January 1816, when _Bertram_ already had been accepted

to Drury Lane and Maturin, no doubt, was full of sanguine expectations.

This Mr. Shea was a pupil of Maturin’s to whom he appears to have been

greatly attached; one of his letters to Murray, dated July 6:th 1816,

ends with the following plea for him:

Like all Irishmen, I reserve the most important part of my letter for

the last. Mr. Shea, my pupil, of whom you have heard me talk so highly

and justly while in London, has produced a poem on the marriage of the

princess, I want you to publish it--I am satisfied of its merits and

the certainty of its success.--

His friends are numerous and wealthy, and the work would have a most

rapid sale. I am sure you will not decline encouraging this young

Muse, when I make her introduction through you a matter of personal

and particular obligation to--Yours most truly C. Rob. Maturin.

There is, indeed, no positive proof of Maturin’s being the author of

_Lines on the Battle of Waterloo_, except the categorical statement in

the _New Monthly Magazine_, besides the circumstance that the name of

Shea, despite the wealthy and numerous friends, was destined never to

adorn the history of English poetry. The poem is, however, furnished

with a few notes written in a half-playful tone, where the author makes

a reservation to eventual accusations of plagiarism, which notes, on

account of the style alone, must be concluded to flow from the pen of

Maturin. Of a passage like this, a student of Maturin can hardly doubt

the authorship:

A Poem written by one who owed nothing to communication with other

minds, would be original in every sense of the word--but the paucity

of its materials would probably ill atone for the novelty of the

structure; it would be perhaps like the Indian love-song mentioned I

think in Ashe’s travels, where all the varieties of sentiment, and

modulations of language, that the passion might be supposed capable

of inspiring, are compressed into three short sentences, strongly

resembling the monotonous chirp of their native birds--I love you--I

love you dearly--I love you all day long.

The value of the poem itself is very moderate. Though endowed with a

highly poetical temperament, Maturin was not a poet in the strictest

sense of the word. Rhyme was an instrument of which he never became

a master; the writer in the _New Monthly Magazine_ says that he had

‘a natural distaste to the constant return of sound arising from

the restraints it threw upon his luxuriant fancy.’ He mentions the

_Waterloo_ as a singular example of Maturin’s being able to overcome

his rooted aversion to the labours of versification, and cites two or

three instances where he strove in vain to conquer the insurmountable

difficulties it used to cause him. In 1821, when Ireland had the

doubtful honour to receive a visit from George IV, Maturin, among

many others, thought the occasion to demand a versified homage to

the monarch. After the laborious production of three lines, however,

he destroyed the paper ‘in a transport of rage.’ From _Montorio_,

which abounds with indifferent poetry, it was already seen which way

Maturin’s powers lay. His poetical prose is always fine and rhythmical

in form, and very often original in ideas, whereas his rhymes are

trivial, and usually make the thoughts so. The poem on Waterloo treats,

in an obscure and bombastical style, less of the battle itself than of

the glory of those who won it; the opening lines are, perhaps, the most

worthy of quotation:

’Tis night, her dim and dusky veil

Falls o’er creation’s aspect pale,

In deep repose lie town and tower,

Embattled steep, and foliaged bower--

The stilly forms of things unseen

Waver in twilight’s dubious screen,--

And mount, and vale, and earth, and sky

In grey confusion mock the eye,

Like features of some absent face,

That anguished Memory pains in vain to trace.

What Maturin was capable of achieving in blank verse, remains next to

be seen.

III.

1816-1817.

’Tis true, said I, not void of hopes I came,

For who so fond as youthful bards of fame?

But few, alas! the casual blessing boast,

So hard to gain, so easy to be lost.

Pope.

On the 9:th of May 1816 Maturin’s _Bertram, or the Castle of St.

Aldobrand_ had its first performance at Drury Lane and ran, under

general acclamation, for twenty two nights in succession.

With similar distinctions, however, were then received a great many

other plays, nowadays equally unknown and obscure. The disproportion

between the enduring merits of a literary production and the admiration

lavished upon it by its contemporaries was, at the time in question,

most conspicuous in the field of the drama. The history of the whole

18:th century drama in England is, with a few brilliant exceptions,

a history of decay. From the shock that the drama had suffered at

the triumph of Puritanism in the preceding century it recovered but

slowly, and in the meantime the cultivated public was strongly decided

in favour of the novel; while an undreamed revival was taking place

within the last-named branch of literature, the theatre long remained

a meeting-place of ordinary pleasure-hunters. Even the advance of the

actor was injurious to the drama, the excellence of the acting offering

ample excuse for the inferiority of what was acted.[68] Yet the English

drama of the latter 18:th century, viewed in broad outlines, followed

the fiction. The spectator is taken into scenes of domestic life where

the absence of the grander elements of tragedy is compensated with

tender and always well-bred sentimentality. Out of this _milieu_,

but under the freshening influence of classical comedy, there arose

the dramatic masterpieces of the age, the comedies of Sheridan and

Goldsmith.

The romantic drama which came after the sentimental, displays a

spectacle still more unexhilarating. The fascination exercised

by Shakespeare upon the young romantic movement bore fruit in

the interpretations of great actors and, a little later, in the

enthusiastic comments of eminent critics; but the playwrights could do

nothing with a model that admitted neither approach nor imitation. This

was realized by some of the dramatists themselves. Maturin wrote,[69]

with reference to the sorry state of the English drama, which he calls

a phenomenon unparalleled in the history of literature:

While in every other department of literature, all means have been

employed to excite and to satiate the appetite for novelty; while

history, philosophy, and theology have contributed to enrich and

diversify poetry, while it has sought to interest us not only by

painting man in every situation in which he has yet been discovered,

but in situations in which the vivid creations of fancy alone could

give a habitation and a name, while the passions have been depicted

not only in their visible operation on life, but in the silent and

unwitnessed workings of the heart, the drama still rests her claim on

the merit of her earliest productions, and the efforts of competitors

or of imitators have only served to establish the triumphs of

Shakspeare.

At the same time there came an influence from very different quarters.

If it was not possible to enter into competition with the Elizabethans,

there was no difficulty in imitating writers like Kotzebue, who left

his mark upon much in the English drama of the time. Yet nothing

remains even of those who aspired higher. Joanna Baillie was the most

admired of them; Maturin quotes her often and calls her the greatest

dramatist of the age; but in our days ‘no man reads her unless he

must.’[70] Until the appearance of _The Cenci_ (1819), the early 19:th

century romanticism produced not a single drama worthy of the glorious

traditions.

Considering this desert-like state of the then English drama, the

_éclat_ roused by _Bertram_ is not surprising. Still it was less due to

any of its dramatical qualities than to its closeness to the poetical

standard in vogue just at the time of its performance; the point was

made by the admirers as well as by the slanderers of the play, that it

was conceived quite ‘in the taste of Lord Byron.’ If Maturin’s first

romance had appeared a little too late, with regard to the style in

which it was written, his first drama thus appeared at the right moment

and met with the right interpretation. Whatever the opinion of Kean may

have been of the play, he certainly realized the intentions of the poet

with a skill that left nothing more to be desired. In an account of the

first night we read:[71]

-- -- -- it will be observed that the part of Bertram is peculiarly

adapted to the powers of Mr. Kean, by whom it is represented with

extraordinary energy and effect. He is a mixture of ambition, pride

and revenge; a character ashamed of the feelings of ordinary men, who

has little in common with them, but his passion for a lovely woman,

and in whose sorrows ordinary men of course cannot sympathize--in

short, a character who like Milton’s Satan is “himself alone.”

Such is count Bertram when presented to the spectator. Once he has been

of wholly different character, while living in the kingdom of Sicily as

The darling of his liege and of his land,

The army’s idol, and the counsil’s head--

Whose smile was fortune, and whose will was law--

When his power, however, has become too great, and his plans turned out

to be too ambitious for the safety of the state, Lord Aldobrand has

contrived to overthrow him. Deprived of name and fortune he has only

saved his life by flight; and the admired and accomplished courtier

has subsequently been changed into a captain of a gang of robbers, of

uncommon ferocity. In the meantime his betrothed bride, Imogine, a lady

of comparatively humble birth, has been induced to give her hand to the

selfsame Aldobrand, for the (not very original) purpose of saving an

aged parent from ruin.--

By the coast of Sicily, then, in the vicinity of the castle of St.

Aldobrand, the brotherhood of a convent are, at the opening of the

play, roused from their sleep by a violent storm. At a short distance

a vessel, to which they are unable to render assistance, is seen to

go to pieces. One wild-looking and incoherently-speaking man alone is

rescued and conducted to the prior in a state of utter exhaustion.--At

the castle, too, the inmates are disturbed by the rage of the elements.

Lord Aldobrand himself appears to be absent, and his lady is sitting

in her apartment, contemplating a miniature picture of Bertram. She

is joined by one of her maidens, to whom she now discloses the story

of her life, assuring her that her heart still belongs to Bertram.

The conversation is interrupted by the entrance of a monk, coming to

request that the shipwrecked of whom, contrary to all expectation,

many have been saved, might have, according to the wonted hospitality

of Lord Aldobrand, free access to the castle. Upon Imogine answering

that they are welcome, the whole band take up their residence at

the castle; before that, however, Bertram--the stranger who was

first saved--reveals his identity to the prior and vows vengeance

on Aldobrand, the originator of his misfortunes. At the castle the

majestic form and stern demeanour of Bertram attract the notice of

Imogine, and she summons him to her presence. A scene of recognition

takes place. Imogine explains her reasons for becoming the wife of

Aldobrand; Bertram breaks out into furious accusations, but at last,

when Imogine’s little boy runs in, he relents and kisses the child.

These are the contents of the first two acts. In the third Imogine

arrives to the convent to confess to the prior that she has yielded to

the temptation offered by the unexpected appearance of Bertram, and

clandestinely met him several times. The prior--who, in the foregoing

scene, has been exhorting Bertram to give up his companions and leave

the country--is much horrified and recommends the most severe penances.

While still at the convent, Imogine encounters Bertram and is made to

promise him one further interview, after which he is to disappear from

her life. The act is again closed by the entrance of the child, who

comes to inform his mother that Lord Aldobrand has returned.

At the meeting intended to be their last, Bertram then appears to

have taken advantage of Imogine’s weakness in a manner which even he

is ashamed to recollect. Before he has time to execute his design of

departing, he is informed by one of his gang that his being in Sicily

has become known and that Lord Aldobrand holds a commission from the

king to seek his life throughout the country. Bertram is again filled

with inexorable rage towards his enemy, and remembers his determination

to have revenge upon him.--In the meantime Aldobrand arrives at his

castle where Imogine receives him in an agitated manner which he in

vain endeavours to fathom. On her declaring that she has some penance

to do, he leaves her alone; after a while Bertram enters, and she

understands, with horror, that he is resolved to destroy her husband.

Aldobrand has, indeed, just been summoned to the convent to share

a feast in celebration of St. Anselm, but, owing to a flood which

obstructs his way, he is compelled to turn back. On his return he is

attacked by Bertram, and dies at the feet of Imogine.

In the fifth act the tidings of the murder of Aldobrand are brought

to the convent by Imogine, who, in a frantic state of mind, rushes in

which her child. The monks and the knights of St. Anselm hasten to the

castle. Bertram has locked himself up in a chamber where he has passed

all the night with the dead body; at the summons of the prior, however,

he opens the door and suffers himself to be arrested.--The last scene

is laid in a dark wood where Imogine, who has lost her reason, is

lingering in a cavern. The way which leads Bertram to the place of

execution passes by the cavern, and he, who has up till now shown no

repentance, sinks down when he hears the piercing shrieks of Imogine.

She comes out and expires at the sight of him, whereupon Bertram

snatches the sword of one of the knights and stabs himself.

* * * * *

As a drama, _Bertram_ is not well constructed. The plot is curiously

void of consistency and inner logic; when the talk is interrupted by

action, it seems to happen more or less at random. The effect of the

shipwreck in the first act is destroyed by the sudden appearance of

all the banditti who are saved in a manner altogether inexplicable

and whose preservation, moreover, is quite unnecessary. They do not

in any way interfere in the events; Bertram kills Aldobrand with his

own hands, and when the deed is done, he receives no help from his

companions: they disappear from the play as mysteriously as they enter

it. The final determination of Bertram to take Aldobrand’s life is

very imperfectly accounted for. He must, surely, have been aware that

Aldobrand, if cognizant of his presence, would adopt vigorous measures

for his persecution, whence his sudden rage when informed of this is

rather surprizing. He exclaims, with reference to the calamity he has

brought over Imogine:

’Twas but e’en now, I would have knelt to him

With the prostration of a conscious villain;

I would have crouched beneath his spurning feet;

I would have felt their trampling tread, and blessed it--

For I had injured him--

but then he forgets that Aldobrand knows nothing of his relation to

Imogine, or his repentance, or even of the fact that he has promised

the prior to give up his trade and retire where the voice of man

is never heard. Here, however, it must be mentioned that in the

original manuscript of the play, Bertram is prompted to the committal

of his crimes by an evil spirit who dwells in the forest and whom

he insists on visiting. After his visit to the demon he seems so

altered, and the stamp of an intercourse with a supernatural being

is so visible upon him, that his own robbers shrink from him. These

passages Maturin expunged on the advice of Scott, and, accordingly,

made respective alterations in his play, though he consented to do

so with great reluctance. The scenes in question were afterwards

published by Scott in another connection;[72] he bestows high praise

on their poetical beauty and hints, by way of comparison, at the

effect produced upon Macbeth by the appearance of the witches. His

motive for recommending Maturin to suppress them was that they were,

in his opinion, unsuitable on the stage.[73] Generally speaking, a

psychological argumentation certainly is, in a drama, preferable to a

direct interference of a supernatural being who never appears himself;

but here this argumentation is so weak that there also is some truth

in the remark of another critic,[74] that without those scenes ‘the

change from the Bertram of the second act to the Bertram of the fourth

is inexplicable.’ Thus in either version the decisive point in the

action is unsatisfactorily motived. Nor is it difficult to detect other

implausibilities and makeshifts of a clumsy kind. The road of Aldobrand

to the convent, for instance, is stopped by a flood which he is unable

to cross even on horseback--because he must, some way or other, be

brought back to the castle; but the flood does not hinder Imogine, the

same night, from making the same journey on foot, carrying her child

to boot. The child is introduced into the play in order to make an

end of the second and third acts; what it has got to say sounds very

unnatural. All the finales are ineffective, not least that of the fifth

act. When Bertram has stabbed himself the prior rushes to him:

_Ber._ (_struggling with the agonies of death_)

I know thee holy Prior--I know ye, brethren.

Lift up your holy hands in charity.

(_With a burst of wild exultation_)

I died no felon death--

A warrior’s weapon freed a warrior’s soul--

It will be remembered that in _Montorio_ the last words of the hero

were an expression of joy at the fact that he did not perish on the

scaffold. Here the sentiment is repeated, but it is clearly not

fortunate to put it in the mouth of the hero himself; if there is any

relief brought about by his nobler mode of dying, the spectator ought

to feel it spontaneously.--

It has already been seen, more than once, that the merits of Maturin’s

works are not in their composition. The traces of his power which

there admittedly[75] are in _Bertram_, are to be sought in richness

of language and originality of style. Now and then, amid the ‘sound

and fury’ of the whole, passages stand out where Maturin’s blank verse

attains a sombre beauty of its own, while it expressively strikes

the note of the time, vibrating with a genuinely romantic sense of

loneliness, melancholy, and grandeur. Lines such as these, from the

first interview of the hero with the heroine, doubtless did much to

decide the partiality for _Bertram_ of critics like Byron and Scott:

_Imo._ Strange is thy form, but more thy words are strange--

Fearful it seems to hold this parley with thee.

Tell me thy race and country--

_Ber._ What avails it?

The wretched have no country: that dear name

Comprizes home, kind kindred, fostering friends,

Protecting laws, all that binds man to man--

But none of these are mine;--I have no country--

And for my race, the last dread trump shall wake

The sheeted relics of mine ancestry,

Ere trump of herald to the armed lists

In the bright blazon of their stainless coat,

Calls their lost child again.--

_Imo._ I shake to hear him--

There is an awful thrilling in his voice,--

The soul of other days comes rushing in them.--

If nor my bounty nor my tears can aid thee,

Stranger, farewell; and ’mid thy misery

Pray, when thou tell’st thy beads, for one more wretched.

The omitted passages relative to Bertram’s dealing with the fiend

of the forest are interesting for their novelty in Maturin. The

supernatural element is here conceived in a manner quite alien to the

Gothic Romance; it serves, in fact, to bring home a characteristic

difference between the last-named movement and romanticism. It was

the business of the ‘terrific’ school to trace the fear and horror

aroused by unearthly apparitions in ordinary men; while in romantic

poetry men of uncommon mould (like Byron’s Manfred) are, in consequence

of their intercourse with spirits, made to grow still more distant

from their neighbours and become themselves an object of awe in their

unapproachable grandeur. Such is the case with Bertram after his visit

to the demon, the description of which Scott found to be ‘executed in a

grand and magnificent strain of poetry:’

--How tower’d his proud form through the shrouding gloom,

How spoke the eloquent silence of its motion,

How through the barred vizor did his accents

Roll their rich thunder on the pausing soul!

And though his mailed hand did shun my grasp

And though his closed morion hid his feature,

Yea all resemblance to the face of man,

I felt the hollow whisper of his welcome,

I felt those unseen eyes were fix’d on mine,

If eyes indeed were there--

Forgotten thoughts of evil, still-born mischiefs,

Foul fertile seeds of passion and of crime,

That wither’d in my heart’s abortive core,

Rous’d their dark battle at his tempest-peal:

So sweeps the tempest o’er the slumbering desert,

Waking its myriad hosts of burning death:

So calls the last dread peal the wandering atoms

Of blood and bone and flesh and dust-worn fragments,

In dire array of ghastly unity,

To bid the eternal summons--

I am not what I was since I beheld him--

I was the slave of passion’s ebbing sway--

All is condensed, collected, callous now--

The groan, the burst, the fiery flash is o’er,

Down pours the dense and darkening lava-tide,

Arresting life and stilling all beneath it.

The achievements of Bertram, as represented on the stage, bear,

indeed, too much resemblance to the doings of a common ruffian, and

he stands, both morally and poetically, on a lower level than any of

Byron’s personages, though maintained, by reviewers,[76] to be ‘that

same mischievous compound of attractiveness and turpitude, of love and

crime, of chivalry and brutality, which in the poems of Lord Byron and

his imitators has been too long successful in captivating weak fancies

and outraging moral truth.’ Yet he undoubtedly is a hero; and though

Maturin later calls him one of his worst characters, he ought not, at

the time, to have been surprised at being accused[77] of ‘exciting

undue compassion for worthless characters, or unjust admiration of

fierce and unchristian qualities;’ It is, above all, in his capacity

of a fallen angel that Bertram had old-established claims upon the

interest and indulgence of the English public. Of his fall this account

is given by Imogine:

High glory lost he recked not what was saved--

With desperate men in desperate ways he dealt--

A change came o’er his nature and his heart

Till she that bore him had recoiled from him,

Nor know the alien visage of her child.

This dismal change is regarded in a very ‘Miltonic’ light especially by

the prior, who, himself represented as well-nigh a saint, could not but

be supposed to express the view of the author. The impression that the

hero makes upon the mind of the prior finds voice in eloquent outbursts:

High-hearted man, sublime even in thy guilt,

Whose passions are thy crimes, whose angel-sin

Is pride that rivals the star-bright apostate’s.--

Wild admiration thrills me to behold

An evil strength, so above earthly pitch--

Descending angels only could reclaim thee--