_Women_ is, in conception as well as in execution, the most original

of Maturin’s novels. What literary reminiscences there may be

discerned--and these are but of a superficial character--lead, for

the most part, back to his own work. It has already been said that

his second book, _The Wild Irish Boy_, contains scenes and personages

that anticipate certain things in the present work. The hero there was

not unlike De Courcy; his affections would hover between a brilliant

mother and a pale and delicate daughter; his friend Hammond was a very

distinct prototype of Montgomery. Hammond approves of Lady Montrevor

as little as Montgomery does of Zaira, and he also is anxious to

detect something condemnable in the opinions and conversation of the

remarkable woman who has bewitched his friend. The imperfectly sketched

characters and the clumsy composition of _The Wild Irish Boy_ are of

little interest in themselves, but they clearly show the enormous

advance of Maturin’s powers after the success of _Bertram_. In Zaira

critics were inclined to see an imitation--hostile reviewers said a

caricature--of M:me de Staël’s Corinne. Scott writes: ‘We have -- --

-- -- hinted at some of the author’s errors; and we must now, in all

candour and respect, mention one of considerable importance, which the

reader has perhaps anticipated. It respects the resemblance betwixt

the character and fate of Zaira and Corinne--a coincidence so near,

as certainly to deprive Mr. Maturin of all claim to originality, so

far as this brilliant and well-painted character is concerned. In

her accomplishments, in her beauty, in her talents, in her falling a

victim to the passion of a fickle lover, Zaira closely resembles her

distinguished prototype.’ All this is true, yet the most essential

point of contact between the two characters is left unmentioned. The

type was one that had occupied Maturin’s imagination long before he

wrote _Women_; it might with as much reason be asserted that the

accomplishments and outward appearance of Armida in _The Milesian

Chief_ were borrowed from _Corinne_ (1807). But one trait in Zaira,

which, in all probability, was directly influenced by M:me de Staël,

is her sweetness of temper and lack of pride--a quality which excludes

from the descriptions of her suffering the ‘frenetical’ element

Maturin’s earlier writings were noted for. Otherwise the figure of

Corinne, though depicted in a calmer style, is much more exaggerated

than Zaira: the latter is only a celebrated actress--and a very learned

woman certainly; while Corinne is, in addition to this, a gifted

painter, an eminent poetess, and a national heroine. Of the external

circumstances of Corinne’s destiny several can be pointed out which,

no doubt, have their analogies in _Women_--the mystery that covers her

early life before she rises to the height of fame; the unhappy issue

of her attachment to a man unworthy of her, and the final loss of her

great talents. What, however, there is most remarkable in the history

of Zaira, the minute analysis of the progress of her sufferings, that,

in short, which Watts holds forth so eloquently, has no parallel in

the book of M:me de Staël who is content only to state the result of

the mental struggles her heroine undergoes. _Corinne_ is not a novel

in the same sense as _Women_; its weight lies neither in incident nor

psychology, but in its broad-minded _raisonnement_ about life and

literature in the European countries of the time. The characters are

subjected to a quite conventional treatment, and it is curious to see

how closely the death of Corinne resembles the death of Eva, though

nobody ever thought of accusing Maturin of imitation in this respect.

The observation which Maturin makes with reference to Zaira, M:me de

Staël applies to Corinne: ‘Quand une personne de génie est douée d’une

sensibilité véritable, ses chagrins se multiplient par ses facultés

mêmes: elle fait des découvertes dans sa propre peine comme dans le

reste de la nature; et, le malheur du coeur étant inépuisable, plus on

a d’idées, mieux on le sent;’--but nevertheless she succeeds in finding

the harmony of mind which is the natural inheritance of Eva. She fixes

her thoughts on religion alone, and, decidedly refusing to see her

lover or answer his letters, declares her only wish to be to die in

peace:--‘au moment de mourir Dieu m’a fait la grâce de retrouver du

calme, et je sens que la vue d’Oswald remplirait mon âme de sentiments

qui ne s’accordent point avec les angoisses de la mort. La religion

seule a des secrets pour ce terrible passage.’ Maturin, on the other

hand, does not shrink from drawing the extreme conclusions from his

definition, and shows with a merciless consistency that she who was

born a Zaira can never become an Eva.

The originality of yet another personage in _Women_ was disputed, in

so far as some critics maintained Zaira’s mother to be a copy of Meg

Merrilies in _Guy Mannering_ (1815). This romantic creation of Scott--a

spinner of intrigues in the shape of an old hag of wild manners and

questionable sanity--variations of which reappear in several of the

_Waverley_ novels, was very likely to attract a novelist of Maturin’s

temperament and may have had some share in the origin of the old

Irishwoman. There is, however, this great difference, that Meg is

more of a type, the Irishwoman more of an individual. The former, who

admirably succeeds in her plans, is a schemer by profession, a gipsy

and the leader of a whole tribe; the latter has become what she is

through a series of personal calamities, and completely fails in the

fantastic aim which she is pursuing: she dies in misery without having

converted any of her descendants.--Zaira’s mother is the only person in

the book who is demonstratively Irish, a representative of the lower

classes. The description of her appearance is impressive, even terrible:

She was a frightful and almost supernatural object; her figure was

low, and she was evidently very old, but her muscular strength and

activity were so great, that, combined with the fantastic wildness of

her motions, it gave them the appearance of the gambols of a hideous

fairy. She was in rags, yet their arrangement had something of a

picturesque effect. Her short tattered petticoats, of all colours,

and of various lengths, depending of angular shreds, her red cloak

hanging on her back, and displaying her bare bony arms, with hands

whose veins were like ropes, and fingers like talons; her naked feet,

with which, when she moved, she stamped, jumped, and beat the earth

like an Indian squaw in a war-dance; her face _tattooed_ with the

deepest indentings of time, want, wretchedness, and evil passions;

her wrinkles, that looked like channels of streams long flowed away;

the eager motion with which she shook back her long matted hair, that

looked like strings of the grey bark of the ash tree, while eyes

flashed through them whose light seemed the posthumous offspring of

deceased humanity,--her whole appearance, gestures, voice, and dress,

made De Courcy’s blood run cold within him.

A certain ‘picturesque effect,’ intended as a token of her nationality,

is carefully preserved in all her sayings and doings, but never

emphasized so as to make her attractive in any way. Maturin, as has

been seen, was not fond of idealizing the Irish people, and the

street-types occurring in _Women_ form no exception to the rule.

Otherwise _Women_ is a psychological novel without any national

tendency, notwithstanding a few patriotic sentences and political

allusions to the unfortunate state of the country. Nor is there

anything peculiarly Irish in the principal events of the book, except

in Zaira’s early history, which gives a glimpse of the primitive and

unregulated life led on a remote Irish estate at that period. As this

part, however, supplies the groundwork for the whole fabric, Allan

Cunningham[108] is not entirely wrong in calling _Women_ ‘an Irish

story, wild, wonderful, and savage, with many redeeming touches of

pathos and beauty.’--Amidst all the realism of the book, an incident

with something of a supernatural import is unexpectedly introduced;

whether this be a characteristically Irish trait or no, a study of

Maturin must take account of it. It is told that on a pleasure-party,

at the time when the intimacy between Zaira and De Courcy is ripening

into love, he twice sees the apparition of Eva, which remains unseen

by others; and Eva, on the same afternoon, in a dream imagines herself

in exactly the same situation in which she appears to De Courcy. This

incident, mentioned in a few words but with a remarkable seriousness,

caused Scott, in his critique on _Women_, to refer to and quote the

suppressed passages of _Bertram_.--

Scott’s benevolent review is one of the most pleasant specimens of his

literary criticism. Cordial praise from the man whom he considered the

greatest writer of the age, must have occasioned much satisfaction to

Maturin, so much the more as the two other critiques which _Women_

directly gave rise to were to a very different purpose. Anything more

unintelligent than an article in the _Monthly Review_[109] it would be

difficult to find. The writer ever probes for the moral reasons of the

author’s describing this or that, and of Maturin’s treatment of the

Methodists he comes to this wonderful conclusion:

To expose the repellent and unsocial manners of this sect, who are

called in derision, levelled at their own presumption, ‘evangelical,’

seems the main moral object of the writer; and we grant that his

design, had it been executed judiciously, and fairly, would have

been praiseworthy: but it is obvious that, to attain this purpose of

discountenancing spiritual pride and gloomy superstition, the author

must not on the one hand grossly overcharge the picture which he

wishes to hold up to reprobation; nor, on the other, must he omit to

present a rational and amiable contrast, in the person of at least

_one_ specimen of pure and social Christianity. In both these points,

Mr. Maturin has entirely failed.

Of what the writer so strongly feels the loss of, Maturin has, in fact,

given not one but three instances: what is there of spiritual pride in

Eva? or what of gloomy superstition in Montgomery and Mrs. Wentworth?

Still more stupid is another charge against the author’s fairness,

which the writer tries to make much of. De Courcy receives, while in

Paris, a letter from his guardian--an old and conservative clergyman

who, in principle, disapproves of dramatic art and those who practise

it--in which he eagerly dissuades De Courcy from marrying an actress.

This letter, the reviewer says, he has read ‘with equal surprise and

displeasure,’ and continues: ‘We cannot conceive how Mr. Maturin, as

the countryman of Miss O’Neil, whose virtues are the groundwork and

the glory of her talents, can have brought himself to pronounce such

a sweeping condemnation of the characters of actresses. If he should

say, “These are only arguments in the mouth of an advocate against an

imprudent marriage,” he who has been so unusually connected with the

stage should have taken some opportunity to counteract, or to modify,

the unmitigated censure.’ But is not the whole _life_ of Zaira a

modification of any censure? and is it not shown at almost every page

to what a moral superiority and greatness of soul an actress is capable

of rising? Unjust as this critique is, it is nothing to the savage

attack delivered upon the book in the _Quarterly Review_.[110] At this

time the famous literary warfare between Croker and Lady Morgan was

at its hottest, and Maturin’s friendship with the authoress--she is

admiringly spoken of even in _Women_--had, no doubt, its share in the

extraordinary venomousness of the article, which there is no difficulty

in recognizing as a production of Croker himself. He treats the book

as an intentional parody on novels in general; but the satirical tone

is often broken by bursts of great vehemence, and ignoble allusions to

Maturin’s profession are by no means spared:

Parodies, as we once before said, should be short--Mr. Maturin’s,

though admirably sustained, is too long, and we may venture to say

also that the mask is never sufficiently removed--_we_ know that the

reverend author means to be merry at the expense of novel writers and

portfolio pedants, but we regret to say that we have heard that some

persons, mistaking his book for a serious production, have censured

it as degrading, by its folly, its ignorant pedantry, its constant

fustian, and its occasional blasphemy, the character of a clerical

author; while others, equally well disposed, but more simple, have

looked upon it not only as serious but as meritorious, and have

praised it as having all the qualities of an excellent novel.

That Maturin’s _Women_ has never been reprinted cannot but be regarded

as one of the curiosities in the history of the English novel.

* * * * *

In the February number of the _British Review_ 1818 appeared an

article, by Maturin, on Miss Edgeworth’s tales of _Harrington_ and

_Ormond_. It was originally intended for the _Quarterly Review_; in his

letter to Murray from Sept. 27, 1817, Maturin says that his article is

ready, and only waits an order for transmission. His first contribution

to the _Quarterly_, the critique of Sheil’s _Apostate_, which had not

met with a favourable reception, was, however, to be also his last. In

another letter, dated Nov. 17, Maturin writes: ‘I can easily comprehend

a truth which your politeness would conceal, that the inferiority and

not the lateness of my article was the cause of its rejection. I am

extremely obliged by your kindness in suggesting an application to

the British Review; I have availed myself of it and must entreat your

pardon for the trouble it imposes on you.’ At that time Maturin was

still anxious to have a place in the _Quarterly_, little as his own

production harmonized with the views advocated by the literary staff

of that periodical--though the exceedingly inimical criticism which

both _Women_ and _Melmoth_ afterwards received there, probably made

an end of his desire to have any connection with it. Whatever might

have been the cause of the rejection of the article, it appears that

Murray later mediated in Maturin’s behalf with the _British Review_,

which was induced to accept it. The article is composed after the same

pattern as the critique on Sheil--though it is far more interesting--:

the development and history of the novel is traced from its earliest

beginnings up to the new stories of Miss Edgeworth. Several quotations

have been made, in the foregoing pages, from this typical essay of

Maturin, where the Gothic Romance is happily and enthusiastically

characterized, and the great novelists of the 18:th century mentioned

with an astonishing lack of appreciation. Miss Edgeworth, however, is

highly panegyrized; but it is quite evident that Maturin’s opinion of

his celebrated countrywoman is more akin to respect and esteem than to

ardent and genuine admiration. He cannot conceal that she is deficient

in those romantic qualities of passion and feeling for nature, which to

him mean the highest pitch of inspiration:

Such is Miss Edgeworth’s sacred horror of any thing like exaggerated

feeling, or tumid language; such her anxiety for reducing her

characters, where they are not meant to be heroes, to the level of

ordinary feelings and occupations, and lowering the intoxications

of romance to a “sober certainty of waking bliss,” that she appears

as averse from the enthusiasm of nature as from the enthusiasm of

passion. -- -- -- We do “grievously suspect” that Miss Edgeworth is

one of those who would have joined with Johnson in his laugh against

the pastoral prosers who “babble of green fields;” and we rather fear

that she speaks her own sentiments in the person of Lord Glenthorne in

Ennui, when he gives all the “Beauties of Killarney to the devil.”

Maturin’s criticism of the two particular, tales now under discussion

is very severe, of _Ormond_ decidedly too much so. This well-known

Irish story being the very antipode of the patriotic novels produced

by Lady Morgan and Maturin, it is no wonder it did not appeal to him.

There are no soul-stirring adventures, no breath of romance, and the

ancient glory of Ireland is not even alluded to.--

* * * * *

Romantic, in the highest degree, is Maturin’s next work, his tragedy

of _Fredolfo_, which was written in the course of the year 1818.

The economic success of _Women_ had bettered his circumstances, and

the alluring prospect of a successful drama once more began to loom

before his fancy. As early as January 28:th Maturin communicates

to Murray that he has been made ‘a very liberal offer to write a

tragedy for Covent Garden;’ _Fredolfo_, in all probability, was the

fruit of this offer, though it was not acted there until April 1819.

Maturin’s correspondence with Murray--that part, at least, which is

extant--breaks off in August 1818, and there is little to tell of his

life until the appearance of _Fredolfo_, except that he was fortunate

enough to form another of those literary friendships he always desired.

Alaric Watts became, at that time, editor of the _New Monthly Magazine

or Universal Register_, where he published his admiring article on

Maturin. This article, according to some autobiographical notes of

Watts,[111] brought him the acquaintance of the novelist:

I have no distinct recollection of the occasion of my introduction

to this remarkable man; but I have little doubt that it originated

in my having written a memoir of him in the first series of the _New

Monthly Magazine_, to accompany a fantastic-looking portrait of him

in that periodical. He was at that time in the zenith of his fame.

At all events, I was solicited by him, in 1819, to superintend the

production, at Covent Garden Theatre, of a tragedy from his pen,

entitled “Fredolpho.”

The tragedy turned out a failure as complete as it was undeserved:

_Fredolfo_ is not only the best of Maturin’s dramatic compositions, but

a work of considerable poetic value.

* * * * *

The scene in _Fredolfo_ is laid in Switzerland, which country had,

through Byron, become as popular with the romantic writers as Sicily

and Spain had been during the bloom of the Gothic Romance. Fredolfo the

hero is an ancient and respected Swiss lord, who has gallantly pleaded

his country’s cause against the tyranny of Austria:

He was his country’s idol--Switzerland,

Through all her rescued cantons, blessed her champion;

For, when he sat in council, from his head

Sprang Liberty, a living goddess arm’d!

Nor lack’d his hand the thunder to defend her.--

Yet he is not happy, for a crime weighs upon his mind. Once, years

ago, his solitary castle on St. Gothard had been, during his absence,

visited by the Austrian governor Wallenberg, who on the same occasion

seduced his wife. Shortly after Fredolfo’s return Wallenberg was

murdered near the castle; the deed was done by Fredolfo, with the

assistance of one single attendant, a fiendish and deformed dwarf

called Berthold. The cries of Wallenberg, however, attracted the

attention of a young Swiss peasant, Adelmar, who was wandering in the

mountains. He rushed to the place offering his help to the assailed

party, but was himself left there, severely wounded, without having

recognized any of the fighters. This unexpected witness to the scene

now became an object of Fredolfo’s pursuit; he had him secretly carried

away from Switzerland and compelled him to live in a foreign country.

Here he was allowed every comfort he could desire, but his longing

for his native land was too strong for him, and at last he made his

way back to Switzerland. Knowing Fredolfo to be his pursuer he still

established himself in the vicinity of the castle, and even succeeded

in winning the love of Fredolfo’s only daughter, Urilda.

The play opens in the castle whither, while a violent storm is raging,

Fredolfo and his daughter are expected to return from Altdorf. Urilda,

committed to the care of Berthold, is travelling in advance; but

Berthold arrives at the castle alone, with the intelligence that

Urilda’s horse has been frightened and carried away by a flood,

together with its burden. After a while, however, Urilda is brought

home. She has been saved by a stranger in whom she, on recovering,

recognizes Adelmar, the object of her love and her father’s hatred.

Their tête-à-tête is interrupted by the news that Fredolfo, too, is

perishing in the storm. Moved by Urilda’s despair Adelmar departs to

save her father, and successfully helps him out of a chasm among the

mountains. He then wishes to depart without revealing himself, but as

Fredolfo insists on seeing his face, he at last flings back his mantle.

Fredolfo, on discovering by whom he has been rescued, is seized with

fury, and when they are joined by his attendants, he commands Adelmar

to be secured and conveyed to the dungeon of the castle; only the

intervention of Urilda, who comes out to meet them, saves the life of

her lover. Fredolfo observes with intense agitation the tender relation

between Urilda and Adelmar. Now Berthold, who has been casting his eyes

upon Urilda and hates Adelmar as a rival, eagerly advises Fredolfo

to put him to death. Fredolfo, however, sets Adelmar at liberty, and

from that moment Berthold is his implacable enemy. Soon indeed an

opportunity for vengeance arises. Wallenberg, the present Austrian

governor and son of the murdered one, makes his unexpected appearance

at the castle. He has been the cause of Fredolfo’s bringing her

daughter away from Altdorf; he freely confesses to have ‘gazed upon the

maid with lawless love,’ but now he indicates that he will honourably

claim her hand from her father. Fredolfo summons her daughter to answer

for herself, and her answer is proudly rejective. Wallenberg departs

in rage, and Berthold offers to bear him company, casting a look upon

Fredolfo from which he understands that he is now a lost man.

The first two acts, which comprise what is related above, are, in

every respect, the best part of the play. They have the character of

an introduction containing the necessary premisses for the catastrophe

that follows, but they are well conceived and full of stirring life.

In the very first scene the tragedy of Fredolfo is alluded to by

an old attendant of his in a conversation with a minstrel, and the

spectator thus becomes aware that a gloom is cast over the life of

the hero. At the arrival of Berthold it becomes clear that he is the

evil genius of the drama; he is received by the inmates of the castle

with curses and maledictions, and when Urilda recovers from her swoon

she shows equal horror and disgust at the sight of him. Berthold has

been regarding her with indications of love, but now it is seen how

his love is changed into hatred, and thoughts of vengeance already

begin to fill his mind. From the beautiful dialogue between Urilda

and Adelmar it appears that he is the object of Fredolfo’s dislike,

which explains the agitation of Fredolfo on recognizing his preserver.

Then the scenes of the rupture between Berthold and his master, and of

Wallenberg’s visit and departure, follow each other in well-balanced

succession. The release of Adalmar from his prison is, indeed, somewhat

undramatically executed, in so far as Fredolfo simply sends Berthold

to open the door for him, and he disappears without any further ado;

but this act of generosity marks the stage which the mental progress of

Fredolfo has now reached. He is weary of his long struggle against the

fate that nevertheless is approaching; he feels that his crime, however

defensible, is drawing near its punishment, and he can do no more than

resignedly give himself up to whatever is to come. The mutual relations

of Fredolfo and Adelmar are essentially the same as those of Falkland

and Caleb in Godwin’s _Caleb Williams_, another phase of which Maturin

had utilized in _Montorio_. Falkland, too, has been driven to commit

a murder under exceptional circumstances; Caleb alone is acquainted

with the deed, and he pursues him with relentless vigour until his own

strength is wasted. The difference is that Fredolfo is already at the

beginning of the drama reduced to that state of exhaustion in which all

resistance ends, and that his crime is known, besides to Adelmar--who,

indeed, is not quite certain whether Fredolfo was one of the nocturnal

combatants--to an enemy much more dangerous. Fredolfo shares the

general abhorrence of Berthold, but dares not dismiss him. Berthold

follows him like an evil conscience, embittering every moment of his

existence, and now endeavours to prompt him to do away with Adelmar:

_Fred._ -- -- --

What scowl’st thou on, with thy portentous smile,

Passing like lightning, o’er thy stormy visage?

It is some evil, or thou could’st not smile!

_Bert._ (_with bitter irony._)

I mark with awe the patriot’s private moments;

These are thy triumphs, Virtue, view, and boast them!

(_suddenly changing._)

Oh! what a fool is the brute multitude,

To shout “a God!” before this hollow image!

Ha! ha! ha! things are well balanced here;--

The evening’s groan repays the morning’s boast.

Vice were too humble, but for scenes like these,

And hopeless Villainy, lacking such solace,

Would turn an anchorite for very sadness!

_Fred._ Thou tool of wrath, which, while I grasp, I shudder,

Though one wild moment’s sudden agony

Made me a fiend, I am a man again.--

I would not harm that youth for many worlds;

Go, and release the prisoner.

_Bert._ (_Drawing his dagger, and pointing to it with a significant

gesture._)

Thus, perchance?--

_Fred._ (_giving him a key._)

No, villain, thus--bid him be free, and live!

Bid, him, if possible, forget--if not,

Let him revenge--I’m weary of the struggle!--

When Berthold hints at his feelings towards Urilda, Fredolfo loses all

self-command, and only the sudden arrival of Wallenberg saves Berthold

from immediate destruction. He has, however, now made up his mind to

desert his master.

In the next act Wallenberg reappears at the castle, attended by

Berthold and his guard, and accuses Fredolfo of the murder of his

father. Fredolfo is thereupon taken to the prison of Altdorf, and

Urilda suffers herself to be dragged away with her father. Adelmar has

also journeyed to Altdorf, where he engages himself in preparing a

rising among the citizens for the rescue of Fredolfo. Here he is seen

by Berthold, who invents a ruse in order to secure him. Wallenberg

enters the prison where Urilda is tending her father, and pretends to

have forgiven him and determined to set him at liberty; only for the

sake of appearances the place should be stormed by the people, led by

some youth ‘of bold and enterprising arm,’ for which time Wallenberg

promises to dismiss the guards. Urilda at once remembers Adelmar and

finds opportunity of sending word to him. The following night Adelmar

and his band then rush in, but are met by Wallenberg and his soldiers,

who have been lying in wait for them. While the battle is raging,

Wallenberg re-enters the prison and, revelling in the agony of Urilda,

pronounces Fredolfo’s death-warrant. The forces of Adelmar, however,

appear to be stronger then has been expected, and Fredolfo is really

liberated, though Adelmar himself is disarmed and captured and remains,

together with Urilda, in Wallenberg’s power.--Fredolfo is carried to a

cavern in the mountains, where he observes, with horror, that Urilda is

not with him. He implores his followers to go back and save her, when

Berthold arrives to inform him that if he refuses to suffer his death

sentence, his daughter is to suffer it instead. Fredolfo instantly

prepares to go, but at the same time they are joined by Adelmar, who

has escaped from the prison; he has placed Urilda by the altar of a

shrine and comes now to re-gather his band. In the meantime Wallenberg

and his attendants, in vain opposed by a prior, break into the church.

As Fredolfo and his party enter it shortly afterwards, Wallenberg

snatches Urilda up to the altar and, drawing his dagger, points it to

her breast. Fredolfo, understanding her danger, dismisses his band.

Adelmar also is induced to give up his sword to Wallenberg: whereupon

Wallenberg stabs him with the selfsame weapon and then releases Urilda.

Fredolfo now recovers himself, rushes upon Wallenberg and mortally

wounds him. Urilda expires upon the body of her lover, and Fredolfo

alone is left alive.--

The last three acts are not, considered as drama, quite abreast

of the introduction. The development of the action is, upon the

whole, made too dependent on the caprices of Wallenberg; the purely

horrible elements of the play are dilated upon with too remarkable a

predilection, especially the demonstrations of the diabolic natures of

Wallenberg and Berthold sometimes take undue space. Before Adelmar’s

attack upon the prison, for instance, there is a long scene filled

with enticements on the part of Berthold to get Urilda to sign a paper

in the belief that it contains an order of liberation for her father,

but which paper really is the death sentence of Adelmar. Apart from

the unnaturalness of this proceeding, it has no connection with the

events that follow: Adelmar makes his escape, and the death warrant

is no more alluded to; the sole purpose of the scene is to bring out

the excruciating pain felt by Urilda when she is thus kept hovering

between hope and fear, and the extraordinary wickedness of Berthold.

Yet notwithstanding this and certain other awkwardnesses of a similar

kind, it is undeniable that the construction is firmer and far better

regulated than in Maturin’s earlier plays, and the place of the hero

as the central figure is well sustained by means of the skill and

moderation with which the characterization is executed. The reader has,

in fact, some misgivings that he is to share the fate of Manuel, go mad

and start raving; but Fredolfo retains his reason to the end, and the

weary resignation that has hold of his mind lends him a dignity and a

calmness very different from the fury of his enemies.

What, however, raises the first two acts so far above the rest, is the

romantic glamour shed over the persons and events, much of which fades

away as the play advances. The figure of Adelmar is an exceedingly

poetic one. He does not--like Bertram--belong to the typically

‘Byronic’ heroes; there is nothing demoniac or criminal about him.

Yet he is not bloodless or commonplace; he has an air of romance and

mystery of his own, and his speech is pervaded, as it were, by an echo

from his native Alps. He never assumes any _pose_, for he can afford to

do without one. His dialogue with Urilda, in the first act, contains

the best things Maturin ever wrote in verse.

_Uril._ -- -- -- --

He comes! oh, God! it cannot, cannot be!--

And does he dare amid these walls to seek me?

For me he trembled--for himself he fears not.

(_Rushing up to him._)

Away! away! thou must not enter here!

There is a voice from out these walls forbids thee!--

My father hates thee, tracks thy hunted steps--

(_Relaxing from fear into tenderness, and falling into his arms._)

Adelmar, art thou here?--and was it thou?

_Adel._ Yes; Adelmar, the unowned, the wanderer.

The stranger--almost to himself unknown;

He, o’er whom midnight murder darkly watches,

He, who on unseen daggers plants his steps,

And tramples them to clasp thee:--Yes, I follow’d thee

O’er the dark mountains--through the night I follow’d;--

The spirits of the tempest raised their arms

To snatch thee, and I grappled with their might,--

Wrestled with them in darkness, and o’ercame them.

Bright star, emerging sole on my fate’s blackness,

Shed thy last light on me! (_kneeling_) ’twill be the last!

-- -- -- -- --

-- -- -- -- --

_Adel._ (_solemnly._) I am the child of woe,

Of persecution, and of mystery;

Fredolfo’s name--the name his country worships--

Rung in my infant dreams.--I was a boy,

Wild and imaginative, full of thoughts

That mountain-spirits to their children whisper,

I might have been a hero!

_Uril._ Might have been! Thou art!

_Adel._ I should have been, but for thy father!

A peasant child, amid the mountain steeps,

St. Gothard’s heights I wander’d--the storm’s shrieks

I heard, and echoed in wild fearless mirth,

Like children, who in awful ignorance sport;--

There came another shriek,--a shriek of murder!

(_Urilda shudders._)

_Uril._ (_starting and agitated._)

Murder! but, then, my father was not there,--

Or was there--but to save?

_Adel._ I will not speak--

Dark thoughts come thronging with that night’s remembrance.

Twice, twice, with horrible strength the voice shrieked murder!

I flew in madness there.--Amid the night

Darkly I grappled with two shadowy forms,

Beneath whose gripe a struggling warrior heaved,

Then lay a corse.--I had no arms.--

-- -- -- -- -- --

-- -- -- -- -- --

_Adel._ Time pass’d as in dream, and oft I thought

That the dead warrior in his mountain grave

Slept unremember’d--then, by ruffian hands

Dragg’d from my hut, all tremblingly I follow’d--

Far in a sea-toss’d bark the ruffians bore me;--

A voice was in the wind, that swell’d the sails,--

That charm’d them ne’er to let their freight return!

_Uril._ A voice!--what voice?

_Adel._ I know not;--but I cried,

Who tears a freeman from his mountain-home?

Who rends the child his country cannot spare

From her spread arms? The answer was,--Fredolfo!

_Uril._ (_shrieking with amazement._) Impossible!

_Adel._ _I_ cried, ‘impossible.’

Years, mournful years, in a strange land were wasted,

Wasted to me--the land was beautiful--

Fair rose the spires, and gay the buildings were,

And rich the plains, like dreams of blessed isles;

But, when I heard my country’s music breathe,

I sigh’d to be among her wilds again!

I climb’d a bark’s tall side--an arm grasp’d mine--

Struggling, I turn’d, and ask’d who dared withhold me?

A dark-eyed ruffian answer’d,--’twas Fredolfo!

-- -- -- -- --

In the latter part of the play Adelmar, though a moving force in the

action, appears only by glimpses, so that the impression he leaves is

the most uniformly favourable of all the personages, being free from

the general decline of characterization towards the end. Urilda is

altogether more conventional than Adelmar, and does but seldom, by any

action of her own, make good the very fine things said about her. In

the second act Wallenberg says, seeing her approach:

She comes with all that shrinking bashfulness,

The eloquence of motion, mute, but felt.

The air around her breathes of purity;

And, as she moves, her equal tread’s fine impulse

Falls on the ear like harmony;--the light

That gleams on her fair locks and slender form

Crowns them with hallowed glory, like some vision

To saintly eyes reveal’d!--She is a thing

To knee and worship. Beauty hath no lustre,

Save when it gleameth through the crystal web

That Purity’s fine fingers weave for it;

And then it shows like Venus from the wave,

The fresh drops clinging to her beauty still!--

In the figures of Wallenberg and Berthold, Maturin’s unrestrained

imagination within the field of the horrible carried him to a length to

which the failure of the play has been ascribed. Talfourd,[112] while

admitting that it contains ‘passages of a soft and mournful beauty,

breathing a tender air of romance,’ says, with reference to these two

personages: ‘In “Fredolfo,” the author, as though he had resolved to

sting the public into a sense of his power, crowded together characters

of such matchless depravity, sentiments of such demoniac cast, and

events of such gratuitous horror, that the moral taste of the audience,

injured as it had been by the success of similar works, felt the

insult, and rose up indignantly against it.’ The same opinion has been

expressed by a later critic:[113] ‘The wickedness of Berthold the dwarf

and Wallenberg surpasses all bounds of reason. Neither is a human

being at all.’ Less depravity, no doubt, would be sufficient, yet the

question is not so much of the amount as of an unskilful display of it;

in the first two acts neither character is unnatural, nor are they

much worse than many famous villains in literature. Wallenberg appears

as a subtly drawn tyrant of unbridled passions, accustomed blindly to

follow all his freaks; his attachment to Urilda is hardly more than a

passing caprice. His proposal for her hand is characteristically worded:

Fredolfo, hear me!--Friend, or foe, I reck not--

Spite of the pride that burns upon my cheek.

Spite of the blood, whose cold recoiling drops

Refuse to flow ere they would mix with thine;

Spite of our nations, natures, hearts averse,

Of all that makes me shudder while I sue,--

I claim thy daughter’s hand!

A love like this is never very far from hatred, and, when disappointed,

it is naturally turned into a furious thirst for revenge which spares

neither its object nor its cherisher:

I could rend out the veins that throb for her;--

I could on mine own heart fix suicide’s fangs,

So they defaced that form it dares to cherish!

Upon these sentiments he acts, and his ‘wickedness’ is not without

consistency, only it is spread out so as to affect the symmetry of

the composition. The same is still more true of Berthold, who, in the

beginning, appears to be not only sinning, but sinned against. It

is not quite clear how he has, previous to the events of the play,

deserved the detestation of all his neighbours; to a great extent it

seems to be inspired by his bodily deformity. His love to Urilda is

tender enough; leaning over her, when she is lying senseless, he speaks

this beautiful monologue:

Oh! it renews the heart to gaze oh thee!

Thou thing of power, that hast not life, but givest it:--

Thou beautous even in death--making death beautous!

Those softly closed lids, in whose rich veil

The unseen light dwells lovely,--the wan cheek,

Amid whose pallid bower death weds with beauty;

The faintly-falling arms, the woe-bent head--

Oh! still be thus! Oh, yes, be ever thus!--

While thus I see thee calm, I deem thee kind.

Those eyes will ope--to turn their light from me;

Those arms will wave, to chide me with their softness;

And, oh! that lip,--that rubied cup of bliss,

That flows with joy for all, pour hate on me!

Of a creature who can speak like this it can hardly be said that he is

no human being at all. As for the prophecy expressed in the last lines,

it is verified the moment Urilda revives; and as Berthold then resolves

upon his vengeance it is not difficult to understand that a being with

his wild and primitive standpoint shuns no means in order to effect

it. The part was considered an important one by Maturin, who wished

particular care to be bestowed upon it. In his letter to Watts[114]

about the performance of _Fredolfo_ he says: ‘I must revert to the part

of Berthold, which is sufficiently eccentric and extravagant. Don’t let

him, on my account, appear a ludicrous figure. Perhaps his deformity

may be best expressed by a certain savage picturesqueness of costume,

which I could sketch were I upon the spot, but which I readily submit

to your taste in my absence; but don’t let him be ludicrous, that must

be the ruin of the play. No one could bear a _kitchen Richard_. Much

depends on Berthold.’--A certain resemblance of Berthold to Richard III

is indeed obvious. Their criminal instincts are excited by bitterness

arising from a sense of their personal disadvantages. Some reflections

of Berthold:

I could, such is my heart’s o’erflowing spleen

To all that loved, and lovely are--methinks,

I could, even with a look,--as thus--dart through him

The basilisk’s eye-fang--dying on the throe,

lead (_mutatis mutandis_) back to the opening monologue of Richard III:

I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;--

-- -- -- -- --

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain -- -- -- --

Something of a ‘kitchen Richard’ Berthold, however, is, inwardly if

not outwardly: he is a Richard without genius or grandeur. The same

difference is noticeable in the case of another literary figure that

presumably influenced the character of Berthold--Rashleigh Osbaldistone

in Scott’s _Rob Roy_ which appeared in 1818, just at the time when

Maturin was composing _Fredolfo_. The ‘wickedness’ of Rashleigh is by

no means incomparable to that of Berthold, but he is in possession of

an intellectual power and mental superiority which makes him the most

prominent figure in the environment in which he is depicted. Berthold,

though neither ludicrous nor unnatural, is not sufficiently interesting

to support the important part assigned to him, having nothing to

counterbalance his ‘matchless depravity.’

* * * * *

The principal rôles of _Fredolfo_ were in the best hands at Covent

Garden: Fredolfo was played by Young, Adelmar by Charles Kemble,

Berthold by Yates, Wallenberg by Macready and Urilda by Miss O’Neill.

Maturin expected success in a kind of hopeful anxiety. His letter to

Watts of April 17, alluded to above, displays his usual overflowing

gratitude to those who took an interest in his productions, and his

inclination to speak, on such occasions, slightingly of them himself:

“My inestimable friend,” he begins, “I never deplored my want of

_l’eloquence de billet_ before; but if I possessed all the eloquence

I do not possess, it must fail under the task of expressing my

obligations to you. How much do I not owe you, and how much am I not

proud to owe you! I have implicitly followed your advice and written

to Young. Your suggestions as to curtailment I adopt unhesitatingly;

reject and retain what you like. Present, I beg you, my best

acknowledgments to Mr. Young for his friendly zeal for a part but

little worthy of his great abilities; and in your kindness, apologise

to Mr. Charles Kemble, Mr. Macready, and the other gentlemen, for my

not having had the pleasure of witnessing their talents, and thus of

qualifying myself for writing parts more worthy of their acceptance

than the wild and crude sketches of Adelmar and Wallenberg.”

The fact was, however, that only Yates appeared to be satisfied with

his rôle. The failure of the play was, as Watts proceeds to say,[115]

due to this indisposition of the principal actors, to the blunders of

the minor ones, and, in the public opinion, to the last outburst of the

unchivalrousness of Wallenberg:

Miss O’Neill was cast for the principal part, but displayed little

interest in it, and did not hesitate, some three weeks before the play

was produced, to prophesy its failure. -- -- -- The immediate cause

of its damnation was the exquisitely ridiculous manner in which one

of the inferior actors advanced upon the stage, with the deliberation

of an undertaker, and apprised the audience, with the most stoical

calmness, that his master was at that moment perishing in a snowstorm

on the mountains. The stolidity of this gentleman ... and the

sedateness with which he delivered himself of the following harrowing

ejaculation--

“My Lord! my Lord! the storm! He perishes!”

precipitated the audience into a fit of merriment from which it was

found impossible to recover them, until a gallant young officer,

having delivered up his sword to his more successful antagonist,

is slaughtered with it on the spot. This thoroughly un-English

incident so revolted the audience as to convert their merriment

into indignation, and to not another word would they listen. I had

presented to Maturin’s notice the danger of this situation; but

neither Harris, the manager, nor Macready, who took the part of the

assassin, appeared to think much of the objection. With the exception

of Yates, who made an extremely effective part of Berthold, and

Macready, always conscientious and thorough, little effort was made

for the play, and its failure was irremediable.

The merriment was unfortunately roused as early as in the first act,

and the many impressive scenes of the introduction passed by unheeded.

As to the offending mode of Adelmar’s death, it takes place in the

very end, after which there is not much more to listen to, nor is it

probable that it would have been sufficient to damn the play, if the

whole had been favourably received. Now, however, _Fredolfo_ was

silently dropped, without even any critiques being visible; Maturin’s

career as a dramatist was practically at an end. Watts dismisses his

melancholy story with the remark that--‘Maturin, the most impulsive

and eccentric of Irishmen--and that is saying a great deal--bore his

disappointment with some philosophy.’

A positive result of this philosophy was that Maturin returned to

novel-writing and produced _Melmoth the Wanderer_, his most famous

romance. Before coming to that, however, a few other things remain

to be noted. About the same time as _Fredolfo_ was acted, there

appeared[116] some unpublished scenes from _Manuel_. In a letter to

Henry Colburn, dated March 15, Maturin says of the extracts:--‘Detached

from the tragedy they seem to me very feeble and I would advice

you to consult a literary friend before you venture to insert them

in your Magazine--should you publish them pray let it be in your

poetical department, they are not of importance enough to appear

in any other.’--The scenes treat of the dread of De Zelos lest his

crime should be discovered, and of Manuel in the castle where he is

banished; they are indeed of little importance, rising in no way

above the average level of this the feeblest of Maturin’s poetical

productions.--In the course of 1819 Maturin published, further, a

collection of _Sermons_. Popular as he is said to have been as a

preacher, the volume did not prove a success; it was marked by the

disadvantages of Maturin’s double vocation. ‘His sermons, too,’

says his biographer,[117] ‘betrayed the struggles of a poetical

mind endeavouring to adapt itself to the prevailing austerity of a

particular class of religionists: and, between the party which rejected

his book because it was not evangelical, and those who would not read

it because it was not a romance, it was his fate to please neither, and

fail.’ A benevolent critic in a contemporary[118] points out a certain

want of any ‘order of arrangement’ and adds that ‘though these Sermons,

if well delivered, must have had great effect from the pulpit, the

impression, at the same time, could scarcely be anything else than

transient.’

* * * * *

That _Melmoth the Wanderer_ is nowadays considered the work by that

which its author stands or falls,[119] sufficiently explains why

Maturin is only mentioned in connection with the school of terror. The

‘terrific’ elements in _Melmoth_ are, it is true, strong enough to

render it the greatest novel of that school in the English language.

All the same, it is much too complex to be confined within the limits

of one single school, while its general purport connects it with some

of the greatest works of European literature in its period. As for

the production of Melmoth, that was carried on under circumstances

distressing and even dismal; Maturin’s short period of opulence had

passed for ever, and it was only the silent hours of night he was able

to devote to his literary labours. His mode of composing, at that time,

has been impressively described by a friend:[120]

Returning late in the evening, it was then after a slight refreshment

that his literary task commenced, and I have remained with him

repeatedly, looking over some of his loose manuscripts, till three in

the morning, while he was composing his wild romance of “Melmoth.”

Moderate, and indeed abstemious in his appetites, human nature, and

the over-busy and worked intellect, required support and stimulus,

and brandy-and-water supplied to him the excitement that opium yields

to others; but it had no intoxicating effect on him: its action was,

if possible, more strange, and indeed terrible to witness. His mind

travelling in the dark regions of romance, seemed altogether to have

deserted the body, and left behind a mere physical organism, his long

pale face acquired the appearance of a cast taken from the face of a

dead body; and his large prominent eyes took a glassy look; so that

when, at that witching hour, he suddenly, without speaking, raised

himself, and extended a thin and bony hand, to grasp the silver branch

with which he lighted me down stairs, I have often started, and gazed

on him as a spectral illusion of his own creation.

_Melmoth the Wanderer_ appeared in autumn 1820 and was, by permission,

inscribed to the ‘most noble the Marchioness of Abercorn.’ A

preface[121] explains the genesis of the book:

The hint of this Romance (or tale) was taken from a passage in one of

my Sermons, which (as it is to be presumed very few have read) I shall

here take the liberty to quote. The passage is this.

“At this moment is there one of us present, however we may have

departed from the Lord, disobeyed His will, and disregarded His

word--is there one of us who would, at this moment, accept all

that man could bestow, or earth afford, to resign the hope of his

salvation? No, there is not one--not such a fool on earth, were the

enemy of mankind to traverse it with the offer!”

This passage suggested the idea of “Melmoth the Wanderer.” The Reader

will find that idea developed in the following pages, with what power

or success _he_ is to decide.

The preface ends with one of those apologies of an artist for creating

works of art, which Maturin thought proper to make every now and then,

but which do not strike one as being over-sincere:

I cannot again appear before the public in so unseemly a character

as that of a writer of romances, without regretting the necessity

that compels me to it. Did my profession furnish me with the means of

subsistence, I should hold myself culpable indeed in having recourse

to any other, but--am I allowed the choice?

* * * * *

The preface, as will be seen, really does not give more than a ‘hint,’

either of the story or of its hero. It is not the enemy himself

who is made to traverse mankind with the gloomy offer; Melmoth the

Wanderer is a poor mortal who has, driven by an insatiable thirst for

forbidden knowledge, bartered the hope of his own salvation for certain

privileges not allotted to common man. Among these is the quenching

of his soul’s thirst, a life prolonged by 150 years and the ability

of rapidly performing great distances and appearing where he pleases,

unhindered by lock or bolt. His contract with the evil one can be

cancelled only if he finds another mortal who is willing to change

destinies with him. Such mortal it soon becomes Melmoth’s sole wish to

encounter. His curiosity is perfectly satisfied; his partly superhuman

existence grows an intolerable burden to him, and he looks with terror

and anxiety towards the expiration of his term, when he will be lost

for all eternity. The greater part of his prolonged existence is

occupied in tracing out and visiting human beings in utmost misery and

wretchedness, and tempting them to buy their temporal salvation at the

cost of their eternal, but none, ‘to gain the world, will lose his own

soul,’ and when the term does expire, Satan inexorably claims his due.

Melmoth, as we are told towards the end of the story by a clergyman who

has known him in his youth, is originally an Irishman of good family,

of ‘various erudition, profound intellect, and intense appetency for

information.’ About the year 1650 he travels in Poland and there

becomes ‘irrevocably attached to the study of that art which is held

in just abomination by all who name the name of Christ.’ After some

years the clergyman, then residing in Germany, is summoned to a dying

friend who turns out to be Melmoth. He confesses that he has--without

explaining how--committed ‘the great angelic sin,’ and has but one

thing to ask of his friend: ‘I sent for you to exact your solemn

promise that you will conceal from every human being the fact of my

death--let no man know that I died, or when, or where.’ At an hour,

predicted by Melmoth with great exactitude, his strength begins to

fail, and he becomes perfectly cold, like a corpse. The friend then

leaves him, but afterwards, while travelling on the Continent, he is

continually haunted by rumours of Melmoth being still alive. It is,

accordingly, after his apparent death that Melmoth has been re-animated

into his new, weird existence, and that his hopeless wanderings

commence.

The idea of melting Faust and Mephistopheles into one person was

strikingly original, and the figure of Melmoth keeps, in the fiction

of the time, a place distinctly its own, even if a great many minor

traits, relative both to its human and its superhuman character, can

be traced to literary sources more or less obvious. There is Milton’s

Satan,[122] grand and awful in his fallen state; there is the legend

of the Wandering Jew,[123] who restlessly travels from land to land,

in hope of eventually being delivered of his curse--as does his

counterpart at sea, the Flying Dutchman; there is the Radcliffe hero,

tormented by secret crimes and mysteriously appearing and disappearing,

and his successor the Byronic hero with his large and gloomy eyes and

with his sardonic yet strangely fascinating smile; and finally the

Rosicrucians,[124] so common in the imaginative tales of the time:

all these can, in glimpses, be recognized in the Wanderer. From some

contemporary stories Maturin seems to have borrowed certain ingredients

directly appertaining to the wonderful change which Melmoth undergoes.

The incident of his apparent death recalls John William Polidori’s

story of _The Vampyre_ (1819).[125] The hero, who turns out to be a

vampyre living on the blood of men--or preferably of women--is mortally

wounded while travelling with a friend in Greece, and his greatest

care, like Melmoth’s, is to conceal his death:

“Swear!” cried the dying man, raising himself with exultant violence,

“Swear by all your soul reveres, by all your nature fears, swear that

for a year and a day you will not impart your knowledge of my crimes

or death to any living being in any way, whatever may happen, or

whatever you may see.”

Afterwards the vampyre re-appears in society and, thanks to the oath

of his friend, succeeds in making his sister one of his victims. Of

greater importance, however, are the impulses Maturin received from

Godwin’s _St. Leon_. Here an old man, under circumstances mysterious

and but imperfectly described, communicates to Reginald de St. Leon the

secret of everlasting youth and inexhaustible wealth. The hero joyfully

consents to relieve the old man of what seems to be a burden to him;

but almost at the very moment the bargain is made, he becomes deeply

unhappy:

Methought the race of mankind looked too insignificant in my eyes.

I felt a degree of uneasiness at the immeasurable distance that was

put between me and the rest of my species. I found myself alone in

the world. Must I for ever live without a companion, a friend, any

one with whom I can associate upon equal terms, with whom I can have

a community of sensations, and feelings, and hopes, and desires, and

fears?

This must be indicated as one of the fundamental ideas in _Melmoth the

Wanderer_, also.

* * * * *

Maturin’s romance belongs to the stories of the supernatural only in so

far as the personality of Melmoth is concerned; otherwise, the ‘Gothic

elements’ contained in it consist of the usual external apparatus,

calculated to appeal to the reader’s sense of ‘fear arising from

objects of invisible terror,’ as stated in the preface to _Montorio_.

The book consists of six different tales with nothing in common except

the appearance, at the critical moment, of Melmoth the Wanderer. The

whole is extraordinarily involved, and the only means of analysis is to

treat each tale separately.[126]

When the story begins, in 1816, a young man of the name of John Melmoth

is summoned from Dublin to the county of Wicklow, to attend a dying

uncle. John is the orphan son of a younger brother and has passed his

joyless life alternately in an humble attic in Dublin, and on the

estate of this same uncle, an old miser, who has scarcely allowed his

young visitor food enough; he has, however, been taught to consider

himself his uncle’s heir apparent, and, consequently, to treat him with

the utmost deference. On arriving at the country-house John finds it in

a most desolate and neglected state, as well as the miser himself, who

lies on his death-bed attended by an old village Sybil whom he employs

to avoid the expense of a doctor, and sundry menials impatiently

waiting for the death of their master to enable them to celebrate a

wake with more food and drink than they are wont to see during a whole

year. The miser is well aware of these genial expectations, which by

no means contribute to the sweetening of his last moments. The arrival

however of John somewhat enlivens him; he even commissions his nephew

to bring him a glass of liquor from a small closet, which John well

remembers nobody but his uncle has ever been allowed to enter. Once

in the closet, he sees on the wall the portrait of a man in middle

age, whose eyes appear to him to shed an unearthly lustre from the

old canvas; on the border of the picture he reads: Jhn. Melmoth, anno

1646. The picture detains him in the closet a few moments more than

necessary, whence his uncle concludes that he has been examining it.

With terrible exertion he whisperingly communicates to John that the

original of the picture is still alive and that he himself is--on that

account--dying of fright. The same night old Melmoth expires, and

John, to his horror, sees the door opened by a stranger who distinctly

resembles the portrait in the closet.

From the miser’s will it appears that he has made John his sole

heir. He has, moreover, added a memorandum to the will, in which

he enjoins his nephew to destroy the portrait alluded to, as well

as an old manuscript which he will also find in the closet. John’s

curiosity is roused about the mystery connected with his family, the

more so as he gathers that his uncle has, during his last years, been

constantly hanging over a manuscript which he always concealed if any

one entered the room. From the old Sybil John learns what tradition

has kept alive of the secrets of the family. She states that the elder

brother of the Melmoth who first settled in Ireland as a follower of

Cromwell, was a great traveller and seldom visited his family; once

when he appeared all were surprised to see that he had undergone no

external change whatever, although he ought to have been, at that

time, a very old man. His visit was but short, and at his departure he

left his portrait behind him. Some years afterwards a person arrived

who appeared to be most anxious to know as much as possible about

Melmoth the traveller; but the family being unable--or unwilling--to

communicate anything of importance, he departed and, in his turn, left

behind him a manuscript. As to the traveller, the hag concludes, he is

generally believed to be alive and to make his appearance on the death

of such members of the family as have something weighing upon their

conscience.--After having burnt the portrait, John devotes himself

to read the old, discoloured, mutilated manuscript as well as he is

able. The writing is interrupted by many illegible lines; sometimes

whole pages are missing. What he makes out is that the writer, an

Englishman called Stanton, was travelling in Spain in 1676 and there

saw a countryman of his who excited much superstitious horror among the

populace, and, as it seemed, not quite without cause. Stanton himself

had heard him break into a demoniac laughter on seeing two persons

blighted by lightning, and shortly afterwards heard a story still more

terrible. At a fashionable wedding-feast he had frightened all by the

unearthly glare of his eyes, and even killed a priest who was going

to utter a prayer, by merely staring at him. The wedding had ended by

the bride being found dead in the arms of the bridegroom, who had lost

his reason on the same occasion; and this tragic event also had been

attributed to the machinations of the stranger--Melmoth the traveller.

Stanton, tormented by an inexplicable longing to see and hear more of

his mysterious countryman, had returned to England and spent several

years in fruitless attempts to get sight of him. At length he had met

him outside a theatre, and Melmoth had uttered a horrible prophecy of

their meeting soon again in a madhouse. And he was right; Stanton was

confined at a hospital through the means of a designing relative, and

when the horrors of his situation had well-nigh spent him, Melmoth

had appeared in his cell, spoken much to him and finally offered to

bring about his liberation, on certain conditions. The pages where

these conditions are expounded are illegible in the manuscript John

is examining, but it appears that Stanton had rejected them in great

rage, whereupon Melmoth had departed. When Stanton finally gained his

liberty he had resumed his restless pursuit of Melmoth. He had also

visited Ireland, and left there the manuscript containing a narrative

of his adventures.

So the manuscript ends; but John is soon to learn more of his

interesting ancestor. One night, in a violent storm, a vessel is

wrecked and lost on the coast. All the neighbourhood gather on the

shore and, under John’s command, do their best to save the crew, but

their efforts are ineffectual. In the midst of his toil John perceives

a man standing tranquilly upon a rock somewhat out of the way, and

suddenly a terrible laugh is heard. Remembering the manuscript John

rushes towards him, stumbles on his way and falls down into the sea.

The only one of the shipwrecked who has succeeded in reaching the coast

gets hold of him and clings to him until both are thrown on the shore

by a huge wave. They are carried up to the manor-house, and after

some days their strength is restored. The stranger is found to be a

Spaniard; his first question is, whether John’s name is not Melmoth.

Receiving an answer in the affirmative he shows him a portrait, which

John instantly recognizes as a miniature of the one he has destroyed.

The Spaniard, apparently a man who has suffered much, then proceeds to

tell the story of his life.

* * * * *

The narrative related above, lengthy as it is, serves as a sort of

introduction to all that follows, affording the first imperfect

glimpses of the Wanderer. The scenes which are enacted in the dreary,

half-decayed country-house before and after the miser’s death are

the best-written passages in _Melmoth_, representing, together with

certain chapters in _Women_, Maturin’s art on its very highest level;

and this art, it is as well to observe, is eminently realistic.

Little as the abode of old Melmoth has in common with the household

of Mr. Wentworth, there is the same blending of intensely suggestive

‘atmosphere’ and minute truthfulness to nature about the descriptions.

The sorry state of the manor to which John Melmoth travels and which

recalls his gloomiest memories, is vividly painted thus:

As John slowly trod the miry road which had once been the approach,

he could discover, by the dim light of an autumnal evening, signs of

increasing desolation since he had last visited the spot,--signs that

penury had been aggravated and sharpened into downright misery. There

was not a fence or a hedge round the domain: an uncemented wall of

loose stones, whose numerous gaps were filled with furze or thorns,

supplied their place. There was not a tree or shrub on the lawn; the

lawn itself was turned into pasture-ground, and a few sheep were

picking their scanty food amid the pebble-stones, thistles, and hard

mould, through which a few blades of grass made their rare and squalid

appearance.

The house itself stood strongly defined even amid the darkness of the

evening sky; for there were neither wings, or offices, or shrubbery,

or tree, to shade or support it and soften its harsh outline. John,

after a melancholy gaze at the grass-grown steps and boarded windows,

“addressed himself” to knock at the door; but knocker there was

none: loose stones, however, there were in plenty; and John was

making vigorous application to the door with one of them, till the

furious barking of a mastiff, who threatened at every bound to break

his chain, and whose yell and growl, accompanied by “eyes that glow

and fangs that grin” savoured as much of hunger as of rage, made

the assailant raise the siege on the door, and betake himself to a

well-known passage that led to the kitchen. A light glimmered in the

window as he approached: he raised the latch with a doubtful hand;

but, when he saw the party within, he advanced with the step of a man

no longer doubtful of his welcome.

The party in question consists of old Melmoth’s servants and

‘followers.’ This was the last time Maturin depicted his countrymen,

the lower Irish, and never had he done so with more vigour and

penetration. They are described without even a semblance of

idealization; specifically Irish is only their instinctive deference

to persons of higher rank, and their endless circumlocutions of

speech, but there is no boisterous and overflowing humour about them,

still less a breath of soul-stirring romance; they simply are what

circumstances have made them, and that is, in this case at least, a

set to be both disliked and distrusted. Yet the picture does not lack

its brighter side. These people cannot, as a matter of course, be

expected to be exactly sorry at the approaching end of their master,

but John Melmoth has nothing to fear from them, and that there is much

in them that is naturally good and brave is seen in their spontaneous

efforts to save the sinking vessel. There is an old housekeeper who

is described with a kind of rough sympathy and not without strokes of

humour. John has always been an object of her tenderness--long ago,

when he was staying in the house and was sent hungry to bed, she had

often stolen up to him with something she had had much trouble to

save, and she still kindly insists on calling him her ‘whiteheaded

boy.’ To be sure, she avails herself of her knowledge how to get at

the store of spirits by a way unknown to old Melmoth, and so has made

ample preparations for his honour’s wake in good time; but she is, at

the same time, really anxious to think of his soul in his departing

hour, and conceives it to be her religious duty perforce to put upon

him a clean shirt when that solemn hour draws nigh.--The old Sybil, on

the other hand, is a decidedly unsympathetic figure, a humbug and an

impostor of the first order, a type not common in the fiction of the

time.

Old Melmoth is extremely well drawn; in the few pages treating of him

his character stands perfectly clear before the reader. Though always

of a niggardly turn, he has once been a gentleman, and has, in fact,

never committed actual wrongs in the course of accumulating his wealth.

‘He was,’ says the housekeeper, ‘of a hard hand, and a hard heart,

but he was as jealous of another’s right as of his own. He would have

starved all the world, but he would not have wronged it of a farthing.’

He is, towards the end of his life, tormented by fear as much as by

the passion of avarice. His days are passed in the revolting but

irresistible task of studying the manuscript, and he firmly believes

that he has seen his mysterious ancestor in his own house. In the

superstitious horror that never leaves him he clings, as it were, all

the more eagerly to something real and concrete, and, having nought

else, he cherishes his worldly goods until he sits in the kitchen to

save a fire in his own room and expresses, as his last, the desire

to be buried in a parish coffin. A fragment of his conversation best

illustrates the character of old Melmoth:

--“What made you burn sixes in the kitchen, you extravagant jade? How

many years have you lived in this house?” “I don’t know, your honour.”

“Did you ever see any extravagance or waste in it?” “Oh never, never,

your honour.” “Was any thing but a farthing candle ever burned in

the kitchen?” “Never, never, your honour.” “Were not you kept as

tight as hand and head and heart could keep you, were you not? answer

me that.” “Oh yes, sure, your honour; every _sowl_ about us knows

that,--every one does your honour justice, that you kept the closest

house and closest hand in the country,--your honour was always a good

warrant for it.” “And how dare you unlock my hold before death has

unlocked it,” said the dying miser, shaking his meagre hand at her.

“I smelt meat in the house,--I heard voices in the house,--I heard

the key turn in the door over and over. Oh that I was up,” he added,

rolling in impatient agony in his bed, “oh that I was up, to see the

waste and ruin that is going on. But it would kill me,” he continued,

sinking back on the bolster, for he never allowed himself a pillow;

“it would kill me,--the very thought of it is killing me now.” The

women, discomfited and defeated, after sundry winks and whispers, were

huddling out of the room, till recalled by the sharp eager tones of

old Melmoth.--“Where are ye trooping to now? back to the kitchen to

gormandize and guzzle? Won’t one of ye stay and listen while there’s a

prayer read for me? Ye may want it one day for yourselves, ye hags.”

Awed by this expostulation and menace the train silently returned,

and placed themselves round the bed, while the housekeeper, though a

Catholic, asked if his honour would not have a clergyman to give him

_the rights_ (rites) of his church. The eyes of the dying man sparkled

with vexation at the proposal. “What for,--just to have him expect a

scarf and hat-band at the funeral. Read the prayers yourself, you old

----; that will save something.”--

With these scenes of strong and sordid realism is mingled the

supernatural fear felt for the traveller; but sparingly and skilfully

as this supernatural element is used, it does not disturb the general

style of the narrative. It only serves to heighten the gloominess of

the atmosphere and to excite the reader’s curiosity. This curiosity

is admirably kept alive throughout the whole. It increases gradually,

being never satisfied. When John asks the old hag to tell him all she

knows about his ancestor, it is stated that she leaves him excited

with a story, wild, improbable, actually incredible. The story is not

at once related to the reader; he is left in suspense about it, while

John Melmoth immediately proceeds to gather more information from the

manuscript. It appears, however, that candles there are none in the

house, and until such are procured from a neighbouring village, he

sits alone in the dreary room, while night falls upon him and the sky

is overcast with dark clouds promising a long continuance of gloom and

rain. Now he in his thoughts recapitulates the story he has just heard,

the one with reference to the traveller and his portrait. The messenger

sent to the village then returning, John seeks out the manuscript and

begins, by the ghastly light of a couple of candles, to decipher a

story much wilder than that which he has from the hag. It is easy to

perceive that the increase of interest is greater with this succession,

than if the calmer passage about the preparations for studying the

manuscript were placed between the two stories.--As for the fragmentary

manuscript itself, it of course always breaks off at the most thrilling

moment.

By the opening chapters of _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin’s first

romance of _Montorio_ is called to mind in a way clearly showing the

disadvantages of the Radcliffe style and the general inferiority in the

construction of stories of that school. The figure of Schemoli--which,

as has been shown, is a typically Radcliffeian hero--is here, in many

respects, a prototype of Melmoth: the obscurity in which his person

is veiled as well as his sudden and unimpeded entrances where he is

not expected, are traits which have descended to the Wanderer; but

the supernaturalness of the latter is real and need not be explained

as some utterly incredible, merely human attainments. In one of the

half-ruinous apartments of the castle of Muralto where Annibal is so

fond of rambling, there is an old portrait, the eyes of which are, by

the tricks of Schemoli, made to appear to him as living. The impression

made on John Melmoth by the portrait in the miser’s secret closet is

a result of that same preternatural quality in the original, which,

once accepted, defies all ‘natural’ elucidations and is not followed by

the disappointment necessarily appertaining to such. Thus the artistic

effect of these scenes is of a permanent kind and preserves its charm

even at re-perusal, which is never the case with the puerile tricks of

the Radcliffe stories. Yet notwithstanding this slight supernatural

import, the incidents taking place in the house of old Melmoth cannot

be ranked among the actual ‘Gothic’ stories. These incidents are

not fantastical or violent enough, and the style is too strikingly

realistic; nor does the ‘passion of supernatural fear’ here seem to be

the ultimate object of the author. The tale of Stanton, on the other

hand, is typically a production of the school of terror. To begin with,

the introduction of a story by the discovery of an old, half-moulding

manuscript was a favourite one with most of the writers of this school,

and the manuscript studied by John Melmoth affords all the usual

requisites: Spanish environs, with ruins both Moorish and Roman, amid

thunder and lightning; wedding-feasts in great houses with dead bride

and insane bridegroom; religious intolerance, Inquisition, and fear of

the devil. These passages are rather rhapsodical--as indeed they are

meant to be--and less interesting than Stanton’s subsequent experiences

in England; the madhouse where Stanton is confined is described more

horribly than any prisons of the Inquisition in any romance of terror.

The time of action is that of Charles II: a period in which Maturin

was deeply versed and which had a strange fascination for him. In his

pursuit of Melmoth, Stanton is said often to visit places of public

amusement, and it is at a theatre he at last discovers him. This

gives Maturin occasion to insert a brilliant study of the theatrical

performances of that time, most evidently written _con amore_, in spite

of the strong emphasis laid upon the loose morals of these amusements.

After one performance, during which a great commotion is caused by

the attempt of an actress to stab her rival in good earnest, Stanton

meets Melmoth in the deserted street, where he has been waiting for

him. Stanton being, at first, at a loss what to say, Melmoth quietly

announces that they will soon meet again:--‘the place shall be the bare

walls of a madhouse, where you shall rise rattling in your chains, and

rustling from your straw, to greet me,--yet still you shall have the

_curse of sanity_, and of memory. -- -- _I never desert my friends

in misfortune._ When they are plunged in the lowest abyss of human

calamity, they are sure to be visited by me.’

Here, for the first time, is given the clue to Melmoth’s personality

and the purpose of his wanderings; from the tale of Stanton it can also

be concluded that Melmoth has the power of contributing to, as well

as predicting, the destiny of his victims. The prophecy is fulfilled.

Stanton’s eccentric mode of living and incessant talk of Melmoth,

whom nobody else has ever seen, rouses the belief in his madness.

Of this belief his nearest relative and heir, an unscrupulous man,

resolves to avail himself. He procures a place in a madhouse which

he easily induces the careless and absent-minded Stanton to visit,

and there he is forced to remain. The picture which Maturin draws of

this place is frightful in the extreme, yet doubtless historically

true, in as much as lunatics at that time were treated exactly like

criminals, chains and whip being the only medicine resorted to by the

keepers, many of whom were most inhuman ruffians. But this picture is

also in other respects pervaded by the spirit of the time. About the

Restoration insanity raged in England more than at any other period

before or since, and the fanaticism, both religious and political, of

the preceding decades, has amply furnished the madhouses with wretched

inmates. As Stanton’s next neighbours there are a puritan weaver, who

has lost his reason after listening to one of the celebrated preachers

of the day, and a loyalist tailor, who has been ruined by too liberal

a credit to the cavaliers; and these two pass the nights in desperate

controversies which make the very walls ring. Further, there is a woman

who has lost her husband and all her children in the great London

fire--this, too, a topic of the day. Once a week, the night of her

disaster, she recapitulates the horrors which have befallen her:

The maniac marked the destruction of the spot where she thought she

stood by one desperate bound, accompanied by a wild shriek, and

then calmly gazed on her infants as they rolled over the scorching

fragments, and sunk into the abyss of fire below. “There they

go--one--two--three--all!” and her voice sunk into low mutterings, and

her convulsions into faint, cold shudderings, like the sobbings of a

spent storm, as she imagined herself to “stand in safety and despair,”

amid the thousand houseless wretches assembled in the suburbs of

London on the dreadful night after the fire; without food, roof, or

raiment, all gazing on the burning ruins of their dwellings and their

property. She seemed to listen to their complaints, and even repeated

some of them very affectingly, but invariably answered them with the

same words, “But I have lost all my children--all!” It was remarkable,

that when this sufferer began to rave, all the others became silent.

The cry of nature hushed every other cry,--she was the only patient

in the house who was not mad from politics, religion, inebriety, or

some perverted passion; and terrifying as the out-break of her frenzy

always was, Stanton used to await it as a kind of relief from the

dissonant, melancholy, and ludicrous ravings of the others.

It is clear that Stanton well-nigh loses his own reason in this

neighbourhood. At first he tries to effect his liberation by observing

a calm and sane behaviour, but seeing that his sanity is interpreted

as the refined cunning of a madman, he gradually gives up all hope.

He grows careless and neglects himself; at last he never rises from

his wretched bed, and when Melmoth, according to his promise, appears

in his cell, he is indeed ‘in the lowest abyss of human calamity.’ To

judge from some indistinct lines in the manuscript, Stanton from the

first receives him with distrust; for on the following pages Melmoth

exerts all his terrible eloquence to induce Stanton to listen to him.

He holds out to him the prospect of his soon losing his reason, or,

still more dreadful, of his fear of losing it becoming a hope--nay,

even to the life to come Melmoth extends his gloomy anticipations. He

points out that as there is not a crime which madmen are not prepared

to commit, the soul of a madman is not likely to be favourably judged,

but, on the contrary, destroyed along with the reason, the loss of

which, accordingly, implies the loss of immortality. Thus even his

eternal welfare will depend upon his consenting to be liberated by

Melmoth. The conditions for this are illegible in the manuscript, but

it appears that Stanton indignantly rejects them. He does not, however,

reap very great benefits by his steadfastness, for, being finally

liberated, his life is to pass in the same restless anxiety as before,

and in the same fruitless efforts to see his tormentor once more.--

The manuscript being finished the story turns back to John Melmoth and

the shipwrecked Spaniard. The description of the storm is fine and

animated enough, although this mode of introducing the stranger was

none of the newest, even if somewhat better in its place here than

in _Bertram_. Here the Spaniard only is saved, and he now becomes

the hero, Melmoth the Wanderer disappearing for a considerable time.

The happenings in the house of old Melmoth, with the tale of Stanton

inserted, form the first great section of the book, being still

of an introductory character. The general effect is an excellent

one. The desolated country-house is a very appropriate back-ground

to the fantastical incidents read in the ancient manuscript; and

different as are the styles of the two narratives, the contrast is not

inartistic. This introduction to _Melmoth_ is evidently reflected in

some fantastic productions of later time. The idea of the Wanderer’s

marvellous portrait has been supposed[127] to reappear in _The

Picture of Dorian Gray_ (1890)--Wilde, whose mother was a niece of

Maturin, was well acquainted with his great-uncle’s romance; it will

be remembered that he lived his last years in Paris under the name of

Sebastien Melmoth. In one of the most famous English ghost-stories,

Bulwer-Lytton’s _The Haunted and the Haunters_ (1859), the mysterious

being is first introduced by means of a miniature portrait, bearing a

strange, never-to-be-forgotten expression. He has much in common with

Melmoth the Wanderer. His existence is prolonged for centuries--not,

indeed, by any pact with the devil, but by the extremely developed

‘energetic faculty that we call _will_.’ He turns up in various

countries and in various guise, arranging, at his departures, a mock

celebration of his own obsequies. He has the same unlimited knowledge

as Melmoth, and it seems to interest him as little; and though his

supernatural life is traced to a scientific source, it is even hinted

that a power like his, however malignant, cannot injure the good and

the brave.

Owing, probably, to the great length and extraordinary contents of

_Melmoth_, this introduction seems to have been passed by with but

little notice on the part of the critics. There are some lines on it in

a contemporary review,[128] interesting in so far as they show that the

first chapters, exaggerated as they were accused of being, were at once

felt to differ from the rest, and have little to do with the obsolete

school of _unnatural_ terrors:

The opening of the book is natural and simple, relating the dependence

of a poor lad, John Melmoth, on an old miser of an uncle, and his

sudden call from college to attend his uncle on his death-bed. -- --

-- We shall not inflict upon our readers the horrors attending the

miser’s death-bed, or the manner in which his neighbours and servants

enjoyed the scene of his departure; though there are some features of

the description very natural, and others, we doubt not, very national:

but then our author never stops in the right place. Over doing,

_Anglice_, exaggeration, seems a passion with him.

The ‘natural and simple’ was what people were beginning to have an

appetite for; _Melmoth_, like _Montorio_, came into the world just a

little too late to be exactly what the public wanted.

* * * * *

In the _Tale of the Spaniard_ the stranger relates to John Melmoth a

part of his life which has been passed amid extraordinary hardships

and sufferings, in desperate attempts to escape from a convent in

Madrid, and subsequently in the prisons of the Inquisition. He is a

descendant of the ducal house of Monçada; his mother is of a rank far

inferior, and Alonzo (the hero) is born before his parents are united

in marriage, for which reason he is educated in strict seclusion. The

marriage, however, is at last acknowledged by the old duke, Alonzo’s

grandfather, but Alonzo, before his birth, has already been devoted

to God and destined to become a minister of religion, in expiation of

his mother’s crime. Inspired by her Director she fanatically insists

on Alonzo’s entering a convent of ex-Jesuits, and as this is much

against the inclinations of Alonzo, the contention grows very acute.

Alonzo’s father is good-natured but weak; in his heart he commiserates

his son, but dare not oppose the menaces of the Director, who urges

the fulfilment of the vow solely to maintain and augment his own power

over the family. To overcome Alonzo’s resistance every means, fair

and foul, are resorted to, and finally a promise is extorted from him

to become a novice. These proceedings it is of interest to compare to

certain chapters in the great Italian novel _I promessi sposi_ (1827)

of Alessandro Manzoni--namely, to those in which Gertrude, the daughter

also of a duke, is, likewise for family reasons, forced to take the

veil. There is much resemblance between her fate and Alonzo’s. From

their earliest childhood their future vocation is spoken of as a thing

irrevocably decided, as well as perfectly agreeable to themselves, and

as they grow old enough to have an opinion of their own, allurement and

compulsion is alternately used to subdue it; during their noviciate

they are treated with peculiar indulgence on account of their birth and

high connections; and the demoralizing influence of coersion, which

shows itself in a repulsive hypocrisy, is strongly emphasized in both

cases. It would, of course, be too bold to assert that Manzoni had

received any impulses from _Melmoth_, although he is known to have been

a student of English literature, especially of Scott; but the parallel

unquestionably goes to show that this part of _Melmoth_ is not only a

work of anti-catholic imagination, without any relation to real life in

Catholic society. The mild and quiet style of Manzoni is, otherwise,

as far as far can be from the indignant rage that burns in every line

of the Spaniard’s tale. Maturin, as has been said, was convinced

that his own ancestors had been victims of Catholic intolerance, and

his antipathy to the darker sides of this religion, always keen, is

nowhere so strongly expressed as in the present story. He sees nothing

good in monastic life and refuses to find any redeeming features in a

system which favours it. Young as Alonzo is, he fully comprehends the

hypocrisy practised by the monks and novices, and immediately conceives

an invincible aversion for the convent. This aversion is, in fact,

shared by all its inmates; but those who themselves have lost all hope

of liberation are, out of envy, most anxious to retain others in the

same misery. Thus a frank, open word is never heard among them, and

when trying to address his comrades, Alonzo is invariably repelled by

the sanctimonious and untruthful air they assume towards him:

I said to them, “Are you, then, intended for the monastic life?” “We

hope so.” “Yet I have heard you, Oliva, _once_ (it was when you did

not think I overheard you) I heard you complain of the length and

tediousness of the homilies delivered on the eves of the saints.”--“I

was then under the influence of the evil spirit doubtless,” said

Oliva, who was a boy not older than myself. “Satan is sometimes

permitted to buffet those whose vocation is but commencing, and

whom he is therefore more afraid to lose.” “And I have heard you,

Balcastro, say you had not taste for music; and to me, I confess, that

of the choir appears least likely to inspire a taste for it.” “God

had touched my heart since,” replied the young hypocrite, crossing

himself; “and you know, friend of my soul, there is a promise, that

the ears of the deaf shall be opened.” “Where are those words?” “In

the Bible.” “The Bible?--But we are not permitted to read it.” “True,

dear Monçada, but we have the word of our Superior and the brethren

for it, and that is enough.” “Certainly; our spiritual guides must

take on themselves the whole responsibility of that state, whose

enjoyments and punishments they reserve in their own hands; but,

Balcastro, are you willing to take this life on their word, as well as

the next, and resign it before you have tried it?” “My dear friend,

you only speak to tempt me.” “_I do not speak to tempt_,” said I, and

was turning indignantly away -- -- --

When Alonzo, touched by the grief and despair of his mother, at

last consents to take the vow and finally to enter the monastery,

he is soon to see that hypocrisy is not the only vice thriving in

that fertile soil. The incidents related above present a subtle and

powerful picture of the influence of the Catholic church, but thus

far there has been nothing actually horrible in the Spaniard’s tale.

Now, however, the story becomes of rather a blood-curdling character.

There is a conversation which Alonzo holds with an old monk who lies

on his death-bed, which deserves to be quoted at some length, as it

strikes the key-note of all the miseries of monastic life. These were,

in Maturin’s opinion, the inevitable result of an existence stiffening

away in brutalizing monotony, and never yet had he depicted such an

existence in darker colours:

“But to me, and to all the community, you seemed to be resigned to

the monastic life.” “I seemed a lie--I lived a lie--I was a lie--I

ask pardon of my last moments for speaking the truth--I presume they

neither can refuse me, or discredit my words--I hated the monastic

life. Inflict pain on man, and his energies are roused--condemn him to

insanity, and he slumbers like animals that have been found inclosed

in wood and stone, torpid and content; but condemn him at once to pain

and insanity, as they do in convents, and you unite the sufferings of

hell and of annihilation. For sixty years I have cursed my existence.

I never woke to hope, for I had nothing to do or to expect. I never

lay down with consolation, mockeries of God, as exercises of

devotion. The moment life is put beyond the reach of your will, and

placed under the influence of mechanical operations, it becomes, to

thinking beings, a torment insupportable.

“I never ate with appetite, because I knew, that with or without it,

I must go to the refectory when the bell rung. I never lay down to

rest in peace, because I knew the bell was to summon me in defiance

of nature, whether I was disposed to prolong or shorten my repose. I

never prayed, for my prayers were dictated to me. I never hoped, for

my hopes were founded not on the truth of God, but on the promises and

threatenings of man. My salvation hovered on the breath of a being as

weak as myself, whose weakness I was nevertheless obliged to flatter,

and struggle to obtain a gleam of the grace of God, through the dark

distorted medium of the vices of man. _It never reached me_--I die

without light, hope, faith, or consolation.”

Under circumstances like these the most passionate contentions are

excited by the slightest causes, and the minutest deviations from

regularity are regarded as adventures of the most important gravity.

Yet the liveliness thus aroused naturally becomes morbid and distorted,

and degenerates into ‘spleen, malignity, curiosity.’ The soul is

stunted for ever, and the mind grows impervious to every great or

generous feeling; barbarous punishments are inflicted for the slightest

offences. Alonzo is, from his very entrance there, the black sheep

of this community. He is, indeed, most punctual in his religious

performances, but it is easy to see that he is not penetrated with the

spirit of the monastical life, and his exactness in the forms only

‘will not do’ for the monks. They can not excite his interest about

such matters as whether the hour for matins should be postponed ‘full

five minutes,’ and even a sham miracle is performed for his sake in

vain. Before long an unexpected incident gives them opportunity of

assuming towards him an attitude decidedly hostile. One night the

porter of the convent smuggles to Alonzo a scrap of paper, which turns

out to be a letter from his brother Juan, whom he has seen but once and

who is intent upon effecting his liberation from the convent.

Juan, the younger son of the duke Monçada, has been educated by the

Director and, from his earliest infancy, been taught to hate his

brother and regard him as a bastard and usurper of his rights. In this

the Director first succeeds, but then the impetuous and vehement nature

which he has tried to develop in Juan, is suddenly turned against

himself. To the monastical life Juan has an aversion as strong as that

of Alonzo himself, and when he learns that the latter is to be made a

monk, he cannot but think it an injustice, and begins to feel a strange

interest in his unfortunate brother. It is a fine and touching piece

of juvenile psychology Maturin gives in the short sketch of Juan. A

mind naturally generous, if ever so spoiled and distorted by improper

education, always wishes its enemy to be in a fighting condition; and

when Juan thinks of Alonzo as a monk, an object unfit for hate and

unable to defend himself, his feelings of hostility are replaced by a

passion exactly opposite, only stronger, as being conformable to his

natural instincts. He now finds out all the wrongs done to Alonzo, and

devotes his energies to his liberation. Alonzo, he learns, can reclaim

his vows, if he declares them to have been extorted from him by fraud

or terror; the business can be carried on in a civil court. Juan then

procures an able advocate and succeeds in bribing the porter of the

convent, through whom Alonzo is to send him a written memorial to be

used by the advocate.

Having received his brother’s communication Alonzo at once proceeds

to write the memorial, on the pretext of writing his confessions, and

safely dispatches it to Juan. His frequent demands for paper, however,

have excited the suspicions of the Superior, and Alonzo is accused of

having employed the paper granted to him in some purpose contrary to

the interests of the community. His cell and his person are searched

with a zeal showing that the monks have, at last, got something to do.

Nothing is found, but a few days later a copy of the memorial is sent

by the advocate to the Superior. Now Alonzo is subjected to severe

persecution on the part of the community, led by its brutal Superior.

First of all he is confined in a subterranean dungeon, where he passes

three days fighting with reptiles. Then he is removed to his cell,

as the Superior, on account of the publicity with which the suit is

carried on, dare not keep him actually imprisoned; still the community

seems to have resolved that if he is to quit the convent, he is not to

do so alive. He becomes the object of complete excommunication. He is

excluded from the matins and from the church in general, and publicly

pointed out as an object of the greatest abhorrence; he is never spoken

to, every one shrinking from him as from a polluted being. At meals a

mat is placed for him in the midst of the hall, where he is supplied

with offal from the kitchen. The crucifix, the rosary, the vessel for

holy water and everything else is removed from his cell so that at last

there is nothing left except the bare walls and a miserable bed. The

worst of all is that he is denied repose. One night he awakes to see

his cell in flames; hideous figures have been scrawled on the walls

with phosphorus. Another night he is aroused by a voice whispering

to him temptations and blasphemies until he almost believes he is

spoken to by the enemy of mankind. He cannot suppress a cry of horror;

immediately a monk rushes in asking why he disturbs him in his sleep.

Alonzo alleges turbulent dreams and the monk departs, but the following

night the scenes are renewed. The voice becomes more and more horrible,

uttering things which a good Catholic would shudder even to think of;

once the image of the mother of God is displayed to him, and the voice

exhorts him to spurn it and to spit upon it. Weak and delirious though

he is, Alonzo still has power to resist these invitations. He cannot,

consequently, be accused of obeying the temptations of Satan, but the

news of his being subjected to them spread rapidly through the convent.

Everybody believes, or pretends to believe it, and the general horror

towards Alonzo increases; he is now excluded from all devotions. One

night, when the voice again discusses the Madonna in an unutterable

connection, the measure flows over:

I could bear it no longer. I sprung from my bed, I ran through the

gallery like a maniac, knocking at the doors of the cells, and

exclaiming, “Brother such a one, pray for me,--pray for me, I beseech

you.” I roused the whole convent. Then I flew down to the church; it

was open, and I rushed in. I ran up the aisle, I precipitated myself

before the altar, I embraced the images, I clang to the crucifix with

loud and reiterated supplications. The monks, awakened by my outcries,

or perhaps on the watch for them, descended in a body to the church,

but, perceiving I was there, they would not enter,--they remained at

the doors, with lights in their hands, gazing on me. It was a singular

contrast between me, hurrying round the church almost in the dark

(for there were but a few lamps burning dimly), and the group at the

door, whose expression of horror was strongly marked by the light,

which appeared to have deserted me to concentrate itself among them.

The most impartial person on earth might have supposed me deranged,

or possessed, or both, from the state in which they saw me. Heaven

knows, too, what construction might have been put on my wild actions,

which the surrounding darkness exaggerated and distorted, or on the

prayers which I uttered, as I included in them the horrors of the

temptation against which I implored protection. Exhausted at length, I

fell to the ground, and remained there, without the power of moving,

but able to hear and observe every thing that passed. I heard them

debate whether they should leave me there or not, till the Superior

commanded them to remove that abomination from the sanctuary; and such

was the terror of me into which they had acted themselves, that he

had to repeat his orders before he could procure obedience to them.

They approached me at last, with the same caution that they would an

infected corse, and dragged me out by the habit, leaving me on the

paved floor before the door of the church. They then retired, and in

this state I actually fell asleep, and continued so till I was awoke

by the bell for matins. I recollected myself, and attempted to rise;

but my having slept on a damp floor, when in a fever from terror and

excitement, had so cramped my limbs, that I could not accomplish this

without the most exquisite pain. As the community passed in to matins,

I could not suppress a few cries of pain. They must have seen what was

the matter, but not one of them offered me assistance, nor did I dare

to implore it. By slow and painful efforts, I at last reached my cell;

but, shuddering at the sight of the bed, I threw myself on the floor

for repose.--

With these procedures, however, the monks at last overshoot the mark.

A closed community as the convent is, still the rumour is spread in

Madrid, that a monk there is every night sorely harassed by the devil.

This rumour also attracts the attention of the authorities, and the

bishop of the diocese arrives to investigate the matter. He is a man

calm, rigid, and passionless beyond measure, nor does he feel any

personal sympathies for Alonzo; but when he sees the state of Alonzo’s

cell and hears of the treatment he has been subjected to--which is

contrary to the established rules of the convent--he sternly commands

the Superior to restore everything to Alonzo and make him no longer an

exception in any respect. Thus far, then, his torments now come to an

end, but the greatest blow is yet to fall: intelligence reaches the

convent of the failure of his appeal.

Day follows day without Alonzo’s heeding them, until a new adventure

commences, more dreadful than all the previous, as Juan once more finds

means of smuggling a letter to him. He has been kept in the country

almost a prisoner, but has succeeded in escaping to Madrid and settling

everything for the escape of Alonzo, which is to be accomplished with

the help of one of the monks. This future companion of Alonzo is not

an agreeable character; he has entered the convent in order to escape

the punishment following parricide, and is a man who ‘envies Judas

the thirty pieces of silver for which the Redeemer of mankind was

sold.’ For money he has now undertaken to assist in the liberation of

Alonzo. In spite of Juan’s encouragements, Alonzo feels despondent and

disconsolate. He fully understands the difficulties of his enterprise;

even if he should manage to quit the convent in safety, where could a

runaway Spanish monk find refuge? Nevertheless he gets into contact

with the monk, who soon fixes the night for their escapade. He has

procured the key of a door leading to the vaults of the convent,

which have long been disused. From the vaults there is a trap-door

to a remote part of the garden, whence they are to climb the wall by

a ladder procured by Juan. Before they start it strikes Alonzo that

his companion cannot brave that risk merely on his account, and asks

how he is, in future, to provide for his own safety. The answer has a

peculiarity of its own, opening a prospect the like of which none of

the ‘terrific’ writers before Maturin had invented:

“No, we must escape together. Could you suppose I would have so

much anxiety about an event, in which I had no part but that of

an assistant? It was of my own danger I was thinking,--it was of

my own safety I was doubtful. Our situation has happened to unite

very opposite characters in the same adventure, but it is an union

inevitable and _inseparable_. Your destiny is now bound to mine by a

tie which no human force can break,--we part no more for ever. The

secret that each is in possession of, must be watched by the other.

Our lives are in each other’s hands, and a moment of absence might be

that of treachery. We must pass life in each watching every breath the

other draws, every glance the other gives,--in dreading sleep as an

involuntary betrayer, and watching the broken murmurs of each other’s

restless dreams. We may hate each other, (for hatred itself would be a

relief, compared to the tedium of our inseparability), but separate we

must never.”

With these bright prospects the pair commence their nocturnal wandering

in the subterranean vaults, one, no doubt, of the most frightful

wanderings ever described in literature. All difficulties which

possibly can be encountered in such enterprises are heaped upon them,

from their first ineffectual attempts to force the door with the

rusty key and with lacerated hands, till the moment they sink down,

exhausted, at the trap-door, after losing their way, after seeing their

lamps go out, and after stumbling all night in darkness amid terrors

real and imaginary, physical and psychical. Alonzo remembers old

superstitious tales of demons who seduce monks into the vaults of the

convent, and almost fancies he can hear the choir of their infernal

sabbath; he grows giddy and stupefied, his knees and hands are stript

of skin, and an intolerable thirst is produced by the unnatural

atmosphere. At last human nature can endure no more; they lay down

‘like two panting dogs’ in the darkness. When day draws nigh, a faint

stream of light makes itself observable above their heads: they have

arrived just at the trap-door they have been searching for. But even

this hope is turned to despair when it appears that morning is so far

advanced that people are already in the garden. They have to remain

another twenty-four hours where they are. Retiring into a recess which

the parricide seems to be acquainted with they fall asleep, but Alonzo

is soon roused by the most hideous screams and imprecations which the

other is uttering in his sleep. At last it becomes too much for Alonzo;

he awakens his companion with great exertions and wildly vows he is not

to sleep any more. The man obeys, but insists on telling a story which

has reference to the very recess they are in and which proves to be as

sinister as were his dreams.

When the parricide was admitted into the convent, he was appointed to

be the executioner whenever a severe punishment was to be inflicted.

This he accepted with delight; while hating, by nature, every human

being and especially those who seemed happier than himself, he found

his sole satisfaction in making others miserable. Opportunities were

seldom lacking, and to the _métier_ of executioner he united that of

a spy. Once he was desired to keep an eye upon a young monk whose

family had placed him in the convent in order to prevent him from

marrying a woman of inferior rank. There was, in the air of that monk,

something peculiarly hopeful which naturally excited suspicion. Shortly

afterwards a young novice entered the community, and the monk and he

immediately became inseparable. ‘They were for ever in the garden

together--they inhaled the odours of the flowers--they cultivated the

same cluster of carnations--they entwined themselves as they walked

together--when they were in the choir, their voices were like mixed

incense.’ The greater their happiness appeared, the more uneasiness

they gave the spy, who was on his watch night and day. Little by little

he drew the certain conclusion that the novice was a female, and one

night, to his inexpressible joy, he perceived the novice vanish in the

monk’s cell. He secured the door and rushed to his master; they broke

into the cell and the Superior saw what he had never even thought of

and never could understand. His rage was immense, and the punishment,

in the invention of which the spy had his ample share, was to be worthy

of the crime. The pair were conducted, under the delusion of effecting

their escape, to the place where Alonzo is sitting now, and allured

into a neighbouring recess which they never quitted alive. The spy kept

watch at the door and gradually heard their love turn to hatred in the

agonies of death. On the sixth day, when all was silent within, the

door was unnailed; the spy now, for the first time, distinctly saw the

features of the novice, and recognized those of his only sister.

This is the story which the parricide relates to Alonzo, sparing no

details. In the meantime evening comes, and they venture to ascend

through the trap-door, and breathe once more the air of heaven. They

hurry through the garden and climb the wall. Already Alonzo feels

himself supported by the arms of his brother and even enters the

carriage which is waiting for them, when Juan is stabbed from behind

and falls, bathing in his blood. Alonzo falls on his dead body, losing

consciousness; when it returns after a long time, he finds himself in

the prison of the Inquisition.--

The episode of the lovers who are immured alive was, of all the stories

contained in _Melmoth the Wanderer_, the one which was most disapproved

and which attracted the severest censure. The _Edinburgh Review_,[129]

while regretting Maturin’s taste for horrible and revolting subjects,

adds: ‘We thought we had supped full of this commodity; but it seems as

if the most ghastly and disgusting portion of the meal was reserved

for the present day, and its most hideous concoction for the writer

before us,--who is never so much in his favourite element as when he

can ‘on horror’s head horrors accumulate.’ Another critic[130] says,

with reference to the parricide’s conversation: ‘It is no apology for

this to say that it is the language of an atrocious villain--at war

with society--steeped to the lips in crime--upon whose brow parricide

is branded, and who, with a most profane license, is described by the

author to be “_beyond the redemption of a Saviour_!” Personages should

not be created by a novelist, whose deeds to be characteristic must be

criminal, and whose phrase to be consistent must be blasphemous.’ It is

not to be wondered at that the reviewers were shocked; the parricide

is the most atrocious of all the characters of Maturin and death by

starvation certainly a disgusting subject. Yet in their indignation

they failed to notice the extraordinary skill and power displayed

in this episode. Later it has been very differently judged, and, in

fact, remained one of the best-known passages in the book. In the

opinion of Planche[131] the death-scenes of the lovers form the most

beautiful pages in _Melmoth_; and a modern writer[132] also declares

the episode in question to stand artistically on a very high level

and to show, in the conception of cruelty, a refinement surpassing

even Poe’s in his tale of _The Cask of Amontillado_, which it slightly

recalls in the almost scientific exactness with which the sensations

of the victims are observed. The parricide gives this characteristic

reason for his voluntary watch at the prison-door: ‘You will call this

cruelty, I call it curiosity,--that curiosity that brings thousands

to witness a tragedy, and makes the most delicate female feast on

groans and agonies;’ and what interests him most is the moment when

their love, annihilated by the pangs of hunger, gives way to hostility

and rage. The man, he remarks, often accuses the woman as the cause

of his sufferings, while she never utters a word which might pain or

wound him: we see that the high opinion which Maturin entertained

of feminine character asserts itself even in this gloomy instance.

The episode of the lovers seems, upon the whole, to be but little

influenced by any previous writers. Only the detail of the novice

being recognized as the parricide’s sister is borrowed from the older

school of terror, where the destroying of near relations was well-nigh

indispensable.

The continuation of the Spaniard’s tale, on the other hand, is more

closely modelled on patterns easily discernible, and does not quite

come up to the beginning. When Alonzo has regained some strength he

is, in his new prison, visited by his former companion the parricide,

who informs him that he had stabbed Juan, which it was his business

to do, the whole escape being a comedy, undertaken with the consent

of the Superior, who wished to get rid of Alonzo by plunging him into

a worse place; the parricide, for his part, has become a spy and a

creature of the Holy Office. Things being now as bad as they can be, it

is, at last, time for Melmoth the Wanderer to interfere. Between his

examinations Alonzo is, every night, visited by a stranger who gives

himself out as a fellow-prisoner and entertains Alonzo with discussions

on various topics. There is, however, something strangely suspicious

in his behaviour, and Alonzo is frightened by the unearthly lustre of

his eyes. The suspicions of Alonzo gain strength when he is warned by

one of the officials to be on his guard against a person who has been

frequenting some of the cells and set at defiance all the vigilance

of the Inquisition. He makes a candid confession of the visits of the

stranger, hoping by this means to make a favourable impression upon

his judges, but in this he is totally disappointed. A prisoner whom

the devil is supposed to be so obstinate in visiting, can expect no

mercy from the tribunal. Before Alonzo’s last examination Melmoth then

discloses to him the ‘unutterable condition’ upon which his liberation

might be expected. Alonzo never thinks of accepting it, and hastens

to make a full confession to a priest, but his doom is sealed: he is

sentenced to be burnt in an autodafé. When the sentence is announced he

sees Melmoth sitting at one of the tables as secretary, and feels sure

that he has been made the dupe of the inquisitorial officials.

On the morning on which the ceremony is to take place a fire breaks

out within the walls of the Inquisition. Availing himself of the

confusion Alonzo rushes out and finds his way to a narrow apartment in

the end of a street. The apartment appears to belong to a Jew, known

in Madrid as a good Catholic, but secretly clinging to the religion of

his fathers. He is terrified almost to death at the sudden entrance

of Alonzo--being just engaged in the initiation of a young son of his

according to the Jewish rites--but they soon come to an understanding,

and Alonzo remains in the house. The Jew subsequently finds out that

Alonzo is generally believed to have perished in the fire. This piece

of news, however, makes him incautious, and one day, during the absence

of the Jew, he places himself in the window to watch a great religious

procession. Among the participants he sees his former companion from

the convent; at the moment he arrives beneath the window he is pointed

out by some one as a parricide and a criminal of the blackest dye;

the fury of the populace is roused, and the man is, after a fierce

struggle, torn to pieces before Alonzo’s eyes. Alonzo stands riveted

to the spot until the horrid spectacle is over; but the same night the

house is searched through by the inquisitorial officials, who maintain

that the soul of a deceased heretic has been seen hovering near it.

The Jew has just time to conceal Alonzo under one of the boards of

the floor, where a cavity of some dimensions seems to have been made

for the purpose. While the Jew is invoking all the prophets, Alonzo

plunges deeper in the recess and perceives a kind of passage running

out from it. The passage ends in a room whither he is guided by a

faint stream of light. In the room he finds a very old man, sitting

at a table covered with books and globes and surrounded by skeletons

and scientific instruments. Superstitious and inexperienced as he is,

Alonzo takes him for an evil spirit, but is reassured by a certain

calm dignity in the old man’s manner. He is, indeed, a Jewish sage who

has passed nearly a life-time in the subterraneous community. He has

even been expecting Alonzo, having learned the secret of his existence

from the other Jew and having requested Alonzo to be sent to him to

act as his ‘secretary.’ He places before Alonzo a manuscript, written

in Spanish with Greek characters, which he is to copy out. During

the interview Alonzo happens to mention that he has been tempted by

an agent of the enemy, and stood firm. This agent the Jew rightly

concludes to be Melmoth the Wanderer with whom, he hints, he has been

acquainted in his youth, much to his misfortune. And the manuscript

which he has compiled turns out to be a record of the achievements of

Melmoth, of which a new one now succeeds the _Tale of the Spaniard_.

* * * * *

That the story of Alonzo di Monçada is a Gothic Romance of the first

magnitude, has never been denied except by its author. In the preface

to _Melmoth the Wanderer_ Maturin says:

“The Spaniard’s Tale” has been censured by a friend to whom I read it,

as containing too much attempt at the revivification of the horrors of

Radcliffe-Romance, of the persecutions of convents, and the terrors of

the Inquisition.

I defended myself, by trying to point out to my friend, that I had

made the misery of conventual life depend less on the startling

adventures one meets with in romances, than on that irritating series

of petty torments which constitutes the misery of life in general,

and which, amid the tideless stagnation of monastic existence,

solitude gives its inmates leisure to invent, and power combined with

malignity, the full disposition to practise. I trust this defence will

operate more on the conviction of the Reader, than it did on that of

my friend.