Now, there are probably not many readers on whose conviction

this defence has operated, and who have not felt that Maturin’s

distinctions, as a contemporary critic[133] put it, ‘between his

own convents and those of old are rather fanciful than real.’ The

defence can, at the utmost, be applied to the first part of Alonzo’s

stay in the convent, although even there we find, among the ‘petty

torments,’ instances of monks being flogged to death; and it must also

be admitted that this part is the most original. According as the

torments grow decidedly serious, the points of contact with Godwin and

Lewis become more conspicuous. As for the latter part of the story,

it is unquestionably a perfect ‘romance of horror,’ with the horrors

introduced solely for their own sake, only so much more powerful in

execution than its forerunners, that one might be tempted to think

it was Maturin’s wish to show how such a book ought to be written.

In the art of suggestion, so important in tales of this character,

Maturin here, as in _Montorio_, stands between Mrs. Radcliffe and

Lewis, avoiding the excesses of both. His grasp on the subject-matter

is always stronger than that of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose gentleness

sometimes reduces her work to ‘a timid trifling with the world of

phantoms and nameless terrors;’[134] while he seldom or never copies

the coarseness of Lewis who, in fact, knows nothing of the art in

question. This is particularly noticeable in Maturin’s treatment of

the (very limited) supernatural element in _Melmoth_. He tells, no

doubt, many frightful things and calls them by their names, but then

there are also a great many circumstances which are said to be too

horrible and unhallowed to relate. With sure artistic instinct Maturin

forbears ever to expound the ‘incommunicable condition’ of Melmoth,

whereas the surrender of their souls to the devil, made by Ambrosio

and Matilda in _The Monk_, is laid down with a clearness and accuracy

leaving nothing to be guessed. Another detail worthy of notice is the

circumstance that the partly supernatural personality of the Wanderer

makes an indelible impression upon those coming into contact with him,

and marks them for life. Stanton, it will be remembered, knows no

rest after having encountered Melmoth; his remaining days are spent in

an indefatigable pursuit of him, the cause of which he could not even

explain to himself; and a similar wish, it must be presumed, eventually

drives Monçada to Ireland. Here may, indeed, be an influence from Mrs.

Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ (1818), where the hero, in never-allayed

anxiety, pursues the monster which he has created from one end of the

world to the other, in order to prevent him from doing more mischief--:

the artistic effect is, at all events, incomparably greater than

that attained in _The Monk_, where the ghosts and spooks are treated

with ease and familiarity, and where a Spanish nobleman relates that

he has encountered the Wandering Jew, with a burning cross on his

forehead, almost as nonchalantly as he would tell that he has met his

brother. With this general difference in style and execution, many

external motives from _The Monk_ are utilized in the Spaniard’s tale,

as they were in _Montorio_. The most conspicuous here, again, is the

introduction of ecclesiastical cruelty and monastical oppression; the

case of Ildefonsa in _Montorio_ which, as we have seen, was suggested

by the story of Agnes de Medina in _The Monk_, is here applied to

Alonzo, with a power leaving both those romances far behind. The Domina

of Lewis and the Superior of Maturin represent the same type: both are

narrow-minded, hypocritical and revengeful, and pride themselves on the

strict order and discipline maintained in their convents. Both are,

on important occasions, surrounded by four satellites, who obey their

every sign, and who are employed to drag recalcitrant monks and nuns

to the subterranean dungeons, which, in both tales, are swarming with

nauseous reptiles. A reminiscence of very unpleasant character, from

Lewis, is also the dismal end of the parricide; in _The Monk_ the same

fate overtakes the Domina, when her cruelty to the young nun becomes

known. She, too, is about to take part in a religious procession, when

suddenly she is made an object of the rage of the people. As in the

case of the parricide, neither the solemnity of the occasion, nor the

respect for the priests present, nor fear of the soldiers can protect

the victim from the populace, which presses on like a storm and never

rests until its vengeance is fulfilled. In _The Monk_ the Domina tries

to make some sort of resistance, but ‘at length a flint, aimed by some

well-directing hand, struck her full upon the temple. She sank upon the

ground bathed in blood, and in a few minutes terminated her miserable

existence;’ Maturin tells that the man does not cease to howl for mercy

‘till a stone, aimed by some pitying hand, struck him down. He fell,

trodden in one moment into sanguine and discoloured mud by a thousand

feet.’ It is but just to Mrs. Radcliffe to observe that she never would

have described scenes like these.

The latter part of the story, containing the scenes in and after the

Inquisition, is clearly influenced by Godwin. Of the examinations and

official proceedings very little is told. Monçada, like St. Leon, is

bound by an oath which he considers sacred, not to reveal what takes

place under the roof of the Holy Office--an oath rather convenient

to the author. St. Leon is, in his cell, visited by a creature of

the Inquisition--a similar figure appears in _The Italian_ of Mrs.

Radcliffe--who tries to ensnare him in his own answers, the like of

whom Alonzo supposes Melmoth to be. Both are finally condemned to

flames, from which they escape in manners so closely alike, that

the incident itself must be considered one of Maturing most obvious

borrowings, although his execution, here again, is so much superior to

his model, that it well-nigh recalls Shakespeare’s way of treating his

‘loans.’ When St. Leon is marching in the procession of the autodafé,

some confusion arises from a horse rearing violently. This irritates

the other horses, and the bustle becomes such that St. Leon succeeds

in absconding and, like Alonzo, rushes down a narrow lane. All this

is told in a few lines. In Melmoth the confusion is caused by a

fire--an expedient less original but more acceptable--of which there

is a description long and truly magnificent. In the end of the lane

St. Leon, like Alonzo, forces his entrance into the habitation of a

Jew, whom he terrifies to become his involuntary host and concealer.

But while there are, in Godwin, no very interesting _intérieurs_ from

the Jewish community, the corresponding passages in _Melmoth_, though

fantastic, are depicted with a lively minuteness, and the sudden

appearance of Alonzo even with humour, of which refreshing quality

there is but this short flash in the Spaniard’s tale. The Jew, it has

been mentioned, is on the point of converting his son, who has been

brought up a Catholic, all implements being ready and the cock to be

sacrificed on the occasion fastened at the leg of a table:

There was something at once fearful and ludicrous in the scene that

followed. Rebekah, an old Jewish woman, came at his call; but,

seeing a third person, retreated in terror, while her master, in

his confusion, called her in vain by her _Christian_ name of Maria.

Obliged to remove the table alone, he overthrew it, and broke the leg

of the unfortunate animal fastened to it, who, not to be without his

share in the tumult, uttered the most shrill and intolerable screams,

while the Jew, snatching up the sacrificial knife, repeated eagerly,

“Statim mactat gallum,” put the wretched bird out of its pain; then,

trembling at this open avowal of his Judaism, he sat down amid the

ruins of the overthrown table, the fragments of the broken vessels,

and the remains of the martyred cock. He gazed at me with a look of

stupified and ludicrous inanity, and demanded in delirious tones,

what “my lords the Inquisitors had pleased to visit his humble but

highly-honoured mansion for?” I was scarce less deranged than he

was; and, though we both spoke the same language, and were forced by

circumstances into the same strange and desperate confidence with

each other, we really needed, for the first half-hour, a rational

interpreter of our exclamations, starts of fear, and bursts of

disclosure. At last our mutual terror acted honestly between us, and

we understood each other.

The description of the subterranean abode is still more successful and

entirely Maturin’s own. The old sage is indeed like a ghost of the

past, where he sits among dusty manuscripts and the skeletons of his

family, deceased a generation ago; and the atmosphere in which the new

tale commence is extremely suggestive:

It was a night of storms in the world above us; and, far below

the surface of the earth as we were, the murmur of the winds,

sighing through the passages, came on my ear like the voices of the

departed,--like the pleadings of the dead. Involuntarily I fixed my

eye on the manuscript I was to copy, and never withdrew till I had

finished its extraordinary contents.--

Even the person and character of the Wanderer, such as he appears in

this tale, is less original than elsewhere in the book. His discussions

in Alonzo’s cell, which are rather overloaded with historical

information, may have been suggested by a passage in _The Monk_, where

it is said of the Wandering Jew, that ‘he named people who had ceased

to exist for many centuries and yet with whom he appeared to have

been personally acquainted.’ Alonzo is struck by the same peculiarity

in Melmoth, who relates anecdotes which happened during the reign

of monarchs belonging to by-gone ages: ‘These circumstances were

trifling, and might be told by any one, but there was a minuteness

and circumstantiality in his details, that perpetually forced on

the mind the idea that he had himself seen what he described, and

been conversant with the personages he spoke of.’ To the reader,

unfortunately, some of these anecdotes appear not only trifling but

ridiculous, and the mysterious grandeur in which Melmoth ought to be

veiled, is here not quite successfully sustained. His rôle during the

fire is more impressive, and presents a parallel to the apparition seen

by John Melmoth the night when the Spanish vessel is wrecked:

At this moment, while standing amid the groupe of prisoners, my eyes

were struck by an extraordinary spectacle. Perhaps it is amid the

moments of despair, that imagination has most power, and they who

have suffered, can best describe and feel. In the burning light, the

steeple of the Dominican church was as visible as at noon-day. It

was close to the prison of the Inquisition. The night was intensely

dark, but so strong was the light of the conflagration, that I could

see the spire blazing, from the reflected lustre, like a meteor. The

hands of the clock were as visible as if a torch was held before

them; and this calm and silent progress of time, amid the tumultuous

confusion of midnight horrors,--this scene of the physical and mental

world in an agony of fruitless and incessant motion, might have

suggested a profound and singular image, had not my whole attention

been rivetted to a human figure placed on a pinnacle of the spire, and

surveying the scene in perfect tranquillity. It was a figure not to be

mistaken--it was the figure of him who had visited me in the cells of

the Inquisition.--

A perfect ‘Gothic Romance’ as the Spaniard’s tale is in form, it is,

fundamentally, a treatise against the omnipotence of the Catholic

church, from which omnipotence all the evils and miseries directly

arise. It is a protest against ‘a power whose influence is unlimited,

indefinable, and unknown, even to those who exercise it, as there are

mansions so vast, that their inmates, to their last hour, have never

visited all the apartments;--a power whose operation is like its

motto,--one and indivisible’--as it is a defence of another philosophy

which values freedom, enjoyment of existence and natural affection. In

this fight between theories the development of characters is, perhaps

necessarily, neglected. Alonzo is but a vehicle by which the author

gives vent to his own views; in himself he is impossible. It has

already been pointed out that all the heroes of Maturin are very young,

but the youth of Alonzo is a downright absurdity: he is not thirteen

when his combat against monasticism commences; and even a precocious

Spaniard could hardly, at that age, have conceived the idea of an

improved Catholicism which he outlines on several occasions. For in all

his vicissitudes he never ceases to be a good and sincere Catholic;

it is not the religion, but its abuses, which Maturin--somewhat _post

festum_, in 1820--is castigating.

* * * * *

The manuscript read by Monçada in the vault of the Jew commences with

a narrative called the _Tale of the Indians_. In this tale--and only

here--the Wanderer is the real hero and it is, so far, the central and

most important part of the book. It has also been the most generally

appreciated of all the tales in _Melmoth_ and contains, indeed,

passages of exquisite beauty, although as a composition it is broken

and somewhat irregular. By way of contrast it is cleverly placed

immediately after the Spaniard’s tale; the scene of action is removed

from subterranean recesses and noxious vapours far away amid flowers

and sunshine.

A small island in the Indian sea, where there has formerly stood a

temple erected to the terrible goddess Seeva, has, after a series of

earthquakes, become depopulated and totally deserted by the inhabitants

of the mainland. Yet after some time it again has obtained the

reputation of being the seat of a goddess, of an unknown and gentler

character. Rumours of a vision seen there, lovely beyond description,

spread among the natives, and young people get into the habit of

offering fruits and flowers to the new goddess, who is supposed to be

particularly well-disposed towards lovers. And inhabited the island

really is. A small child, a girl, the sole survivor of the wreck of a

Spanish vessel, has found refuge there and grows up a wild daughter of

nature, as innocent as she is beautiful, as good as she is lovely. The

flowers and birds are her friends; the shells are her toys; and the

sense of fear is utterly unknown to her, there being nothing in her

island which bears a hostile appearance. Until the great catastrophe

there is not a cloud to disturb her paradisiacal existence. The

catastrophe arrives in the person of Melmoth the Wanderer, who once

chances to visit the deserted island and there finds Immalee--this is

the name the natives have given their goddess. The few reminiscences of

the Spanish language which she still retains are revived and developed

in her intercourse with him, while her sentiments towards her visitor,

at the same time, grow to an ardent attachment. When aware of this,

Melmoth, with a generosity that does honour to an agent of the enemy,

tears himself away and never revisits the island, nor do they meet

again until Immalee has been discovered and taken back to her family in

Spain.--

The idea of making the fanciful Indians worship Immalee as a deity

was poetical enough, and it is finely told how two young lovers, who

separately set out to the island with their offerings, find each other

in the presence of the goddess, and return, happy, in the same canoe.

The two are so fortunate as to get a sight of the mystical being:

The form was that of a female, but such as they had never before

beheld, for her skin was perfectly white, (at least in their eyes,

who had never seen any but the dark-red tint of the natives of the

Bengalese islands). Her drapery (as well as they could see) consisted

only of flowers, whose rich colours and fantastic grouping harmonized

well with the peacock’s feathers twined among them, and altogether

composed a feathery fan of wild drapery, which, in truth, beseemed an

“island goddess.” Her long hair, of a colour they had never beheld

before, pale auburn, flowed to her feet, and was fantastically

entwined with the flowers and the feathers that formed her dress. On

her head was a coronal of shells, of hue and lustre unknown except

in the Indian seas--the purple and the green vied with the amethyst,

and the emerald. On her white bare shoulder a loxia was perched,

and round her neck was hung a string of their pearl-like eggs, so

pure and pellucid, that the first sovereign in Europe might have

exchanged his richest necklace of pearls for them. Her arms and feet

were perfectly bare, and her step had a goddess-like rapidity and

lightness, that affected the imagination of the Indians as much as

the extraordinary colour of her skin and hair. The young lovers sunk

in awe before this vision as it passed before their eyes. While they

prostrated themselves, a delicious sound trembled on their ears. The

beautiful vision spoke to them, but it was in a language they did not

understand; and this confirming their belief that it was the language

of the gods, they prostrated themselves to her again.

This same idea, however, gave rise to some other passages which sadly

jar against the idyllic tone, besides being very unnecessary. The

worship of Immalee, it is told, is chiefly practised by the younger

generation, by whom the ferocious rites of the old religion are,

accordingly, forgotten, which circumstance does not fail to excite

much anger and disapproval among the old devotees, who are aroused to

opposition against the new order of things. This it would have been

quite sufficient briefly to state; but the fact that there exist, or

have existed, revolting and inhuman forms of religious exercise, seems

to have been a cancer constantly preying on Maturin’s mind, nor could

he ever say enough on the subject. The satire levelled in _Women_ at

the rigid and bigoted Calvinism was, no doubt, well in its place, and

the indignation with which monasticism and Inquisition are treated in

the present work, can yet be understood; but the idea of pursuing,

with bitter irony, the old Indian religion prescribing lacerations

and human sacrifices, the loathsome character of which nobody would

have dreamt of defending, is nothing short of ridiculous. The Indian

idyll, beautiful as it is, might have afforded some surprise to those

acquainted with Maturin’s views in general. The never-ending conflict

between the fantastical novelist and the clergyman of the established

church asserts itself very curiously in the whole conception of Immalee

and her life in the island. Maturin had, more than once, strongly

expressed his opinion, that a mode of life away from the benefits of

civilization cannot but have a brutalizing effect upon human nature; in

one of his sermons there is the following passage:

Let us ask ourselves what is human life? The question, my brethren,

is of some importance--we must view man under three characters--as a

savage--as a being whose _intellectual_ faculties are cultivated--and

lastly as acquainted with the blessedness of religion. What happiness

do the former class know? The happiness of brutality--horrible

felicity! if it be felicity--the happiness that may be shared with

brutes: though some writers even of this age have struggled hard to

prove that this is the best state of man. I would not notice them from

this place but to notice the monstrous falsehood, which lies against

God, and nature, and truth. The life of a brute was never intended

to be the life of man. Yet there are writers, and some of those whom

I address are acquainted with those writers, who would teach us that

man in his natural state is most perfect, and that the heir of

immortality is formed not to be above the beasts that perish.

Shortly after delivering this (not very brilliant) effusion, Maturin

was himself one of ‘those writers.’ It is true that the story of

Immalee is a work of pure imagination and that he does not exactly try

to prove anything by it or to lay the case down as a doctrine; but all

the same the fact remains that here a being, while living far from

civilization and in absolute ignorance of religion, is represented as

angelically good and deliciously happy, and that, after her entrance

into a society where religion, may be in a corrupted form, pervades

life in all its phases, she becomes most wretchedly miserable. Maturin,

like most imaginative writers of the time, could not help once, at

least, paying his tribute to the great ideal of a return to nature,

so vigorously and eloquently put forth in the latter part of the

previous century. Who the writers alluded to are it is, of course,

not difficult to point out. Immalee’s spiritual parent is Rousseau,

through the mediation of Bernardin de St. Pierre; she is a belated

sister of Virginie who, before her, played with birds and flowers in

exotic, Indian surroundings, depicted in glowing colours. Yet there can

be no question of direct imitation. Immalee is original and romantic,

she belongs as distinctly to the 19:th century as her prototype does

to the 18:th. Maturin, as was his wont, made the case an extreme

one; his heroine lives wholly by herself, taught and nurtured by

nature alone, without a parent or philosopher to point out to her the

benefits of such an education. And the character of Immalee, in all its

fantasticalness, has infinitely more of ‘nature’ in it than there is

in the tedious conventionalism of Virginie; nor is, after all, the one

impossibility more improbable than the other. As Maturin did not create

Immalee to advocate any theories, he was freer to endow her with those

qualities that spring from _das ewig weibliche_. Her first encounter

with the Wanderer--which takes place in the year of grace 1680--is most

charmingly described:

The stranger approached, and the beautiful vision approached also, but

not like an European female with low and graceful bendings, still less

like an Indian girl with her low salams, but like a young fawn, all

animation, timidity, confidence, and cowardice, expressed in almost

a single action. She sprung from the sands--ran to her favourite

tree;--returned again with her guard of peacocks, who expanded their

superb trains with a kind of instinctive motion, as if they felt the

danger that menaced their protectress, and clapping her hands with

exultation, seemed to invite them to share in the delight she felt in

gazing at the _new flower that had grown in the sand_.

With true feminine talkativeness she at once begins, in her imperfect

language, to tell her visitor of her solitary life, her companions, and

her innocent amusements. She tells that she is older than the moon, and

never changes, although the roses fade; that she has often tried in

vain to catch stars and moonbeams, and that she has a friend whose face

meets hers in the stream when the sky is clear.

On this _tabula rasa_, then, is Melmoth to impress his peculiar views

of the world and its conditions. It is stated that he regards her

with compassion, which feeling he experiences for the first time in

his life. His soul becomes the prey of contending passions, in the

course of which is displayed what a critic[135] finely terms as ‘the

naturalness and supernaturalness of it, the repulsion and attraction

of it, the sublimity and devilry of it--not obviously balanced each

to enhance each other, but as it were _fused_ in the white heat of

Maturin’s imagination;’ and as his human nature finally carries off

the victory, the conviction is brought home to the reader that Melmoth

himself deserves something of the compassion he bestows on Immalee. At

first, indeed, he appears as a tempter, endeavouring to corrupt her

mind and, above all, to incite in her a contempt for religion. He has

a telescope by him which enables her distinctly to see the adjacent

coast of India. She reviews some of the rites of the natives, the

repulsiveness of which she does not understand. There is also a Turkish

mosque which does not much appeal to her, but at last she perceives a

half-hidden Christian church, whose meaning and tenets he is forced

reluctantly to explain, whereupon she exclaims in exultation: ‘Christ

shall be my God, and I will be a Christian!’ Understanding that her

nature is incorruptible, Melmoth gives up regarding her as a victim.

He leaves metaphysics alone and confines his discussions solely to

the phenomena of this world. The European vessels that pass by the

island furnish him with the opportunity of describing the effects of

European civilization, and the kind of life led in European countries.

The description is bitter, cynical and pessimistic; the darker sides

of modern life--war, oppression, unjust laws, religious contests,

unequal distribution of wealth--all is laid down in a language truly

appalling, and wound up with the remark that, among human beings, the

sole kind parents are those ‘who murder their children at the hour of

their birth, or, by medical art dismiss them before they have seen

the light; and, in so doing, they give the only creditable evidence

of parental affection.’ By enfolding this sombre picture he tries to

terrify her from wishing ever to see the world, and thus to keep her

for himself, for in her society alone can he hope to forget his misery.

She is the only oasis in the desert of his existence, the only human

being on earth who does not instinctively shrink from him, and who is

not frightened by the lustre of his eyes:

While he sat near her on the flowers she had collected for him,--while

he looked on those timid and rosy lips that waited his signal to

speak, like buds that did not dare to blow till the sun shone on

them,--while he heard accents issue from those lips which he felt

it would be as impossible to pervert as it would be to teach the

nightingale blasphemy,--he sunk down beside her, passed his hand

over his livid brow and wiping off some cold drops, thought for a

moment he was not the Cain of the moral world, and that the brand was

effaced,--at least for a moment.

Yet the impression made upon Immalee by the conversations of Melmoth

is very different from what he intended. She sheds tears and suffers

with the sufferers, but nevertheless she is seized with a longing

towards the world. She has tasted from the tree of knowledge, and her

peace of mind is gone. At the same time she feels that the society of

the stranger is far more to her than that of her mute companions; every

time he leaves her she implores him to return, and he, on his part,

cannot resist the temptation although he sees he is destroying her

happiness. She loves; and the more he terrifies her with his wild laugh

and impetuous speech which is incomprehensible to her, the stronger

grows her love. Her idyll is at an end, and her former occupations

interest her no longer. Now she begins to prefer ‘the rocks and the

ocean, the thunder of the wave, and the sterility of the sands.’ This

change fills Melmoth with rage, as the society of Immalee thus loses

the character of a calm refuge where he may snatch a moment of rest,

and one stormy night he even contemplates her again in the light of a

victim. Yet the innocent belief of Immalee that she is sheltered when

he is near her, once more appeals to his better feelings: he frightens

her, indeed, into a state of unconsciousness, but then, with a supreme

effort, leaves the island for ever.

These are the bare outlines of this singular courtship in the Indian

island. In point of language it contains the most magnificent passages

in Maturin’s production, and the characterization also stands very

high. Powerful as is the picture of the passions and emotions of

Melmoth, it is surpassed by the art with which Immalee’s development

from a wild and thoughtless girl into a woman who loves, and suffers

for her love, is traced. The delineation of feminine psychology, in

which Maturin always excelled, is here as masterly as it was in the

case of Eva in _Women_, and there is, in Immalee, an inner truth

quite independent of her fantastical circumstances. The very idea of

dissimulation being foreign to her, she does not think of concealing

her feelings, and amid the effusions of Melmoth--which sometimes come

to the verge of the melodramatic--she is all simplicity and nature.

As she has never seen any other human being, she can not understand or

even surmise the exceptional character of Melmoth, nor know that he is

not, and cannot be, a lover in the ordinary sense of the word. She only

feels that she is ready for any sacrifice for him, and her attachment

appears unaltered when they next meet in Spain.--

To the passages in which Melmoth describes to Immalee the state of the

world and the conditions of human life, there is this marginal note:

As by a mode of criticism equally false and unjust, the worst

sentiments of my worst characters, (from the ravings of Bertram to

the blasphemies of Cardonneau), have been represented as _my own_, I

must here trespass so far on the patience of the reader as to assure

him, that the sentiments ascribed to the stranger are diametrically

opposite to mine, and that I have purposely put them into the mouth of

an agent of the enemy of mankind.[136]

That Maturin had suffered much from this mode of criticism there is no

doubt, and it was certainly a cautious thing to do to fix a note of

this kind to a sentence like the following:

“These people,” he said, “have made unto themselves kings, that is,

beings whom they voluntarily invest with the privilege of draining,

by taxation, whatever wealth their vices have left to the rich, and

whatever means of subsistence their want has left to the poor, till

their extortion is cursed from the castle to the cottage--and this

to support a few pampered favourites, who are harnassed by silken

reins to the car, which they drag over the prostrate bodies of the

multitude.”

Yet this note cannot be taken quite literally, any more than those

prefaces of Maturin where he depreciates his works. The discussions of

Melmoth are introduced with the remark that ‘there was a mixture of

fiendish acrimony, biting irony, and fearful truth, in his wild sketch,

which was often interrupted by the cries of astonishment, grief, and

terror, from his hearer.’ What there, accordingly, is of ‘fearful

truth’ would, at least, seem to represent Maturin’s own views; and

what Melmoth, for instance, says about religious wars, Maturin would

doubtless have subscribed to at any time. The tone of latent conviction

in many of these passages has been pointed out by a critic,[137] with

the supposition that they were dictated by the disappointments and

bitter experiences Maturin had met with in his life, and this may

well be the case. From the literary point of view, however, the whole

discourse is but an echo of the school of Rousseau, which Maturin was

in the habit of condemning, but under whose influence the first part

of the _Tale of the Indians_ was written.[138] Sentences from the

conversation of the old hermit in _Paul et Virginie_, like:

Le meilleur des livres, qui ne prêche que l’égalité, l’amitié,

l’humilité et la concorde, l’Evangile, a servi pendant des siècles de

prétexte aux fureurs des Européens,

are distinctly recalled:

Intent on their settled purpose of discovering misery wherever it

could be traced, and inventing it where it could not, they have found,

even in the pure pages of that book, which, they presume to say,

contains their title to peace on earth, and happiness hereafter, a

right to hate, plunder, and murder each other.

Apart from this, however, the tale is remarkably original as well as

typically Maturineian. Among slight literary influences, a reminiscence

from Ossian can be traced in a wild song of Immalee, after she has lost

her peace:

The night is growing dark--but what is that to the darkness that his

absence has cast on my soul? The lightnings are glancing round me--but

what are they to the gleam of his eye when he parted from me in anger?

-- -- --

Roar on, terrible ocean! thy waves, which I cannot count, can never

wash his image from my soul,--thou dashest a thousand waves against

a rock, but the rock is unmoved--and so would be my heart amid the

calamities of the world with which he threatens me,--whose dangers I

never would have known but for him, and whose dangers for him I will

encounter.

* * * * *

Three years having elapsed, two persons in Madrid are, at the same

time, exciting much interest and curiosity. One of them is a stranger

of whom fearful rumours are abroad, although there is nothing

extraordinary about him except the appalling lustre in his eyes; the

other is a most beautiful female, who has recently turned up in Madrid

as the new-found daughter of the merchant Aliaga and who lives in her

father’s villa near the town. Once these two persons accidentally meet

in the street, which accident is to have fatal consequences to all the

members of the merchant’s family.

The household of Aliaga, who himself is absent on a voyage in the

Indies, consists of his wife Donna Clara, his son Don Fernan, and

the family confessor Fra Jose. Of these none is capable in the least

of understanding Immalee--or Isidora, as she is now called--and she

feels deeply unhappy in her new surroundings. Her unrestrained freedom

of yore has been replaced by the strictest etiquette prescribing her

duties to be ‘perfect obedience, profound submission, and unbroken

silence, except when addressed to;’ and her warm and generous feelings

are chilled by the cold and rigid Catholicism, very different from her

own notions of religion. These latter are, indeed, considered to denote

sheer madness after she once expresses the hope ‘that the heretics in

the train of the English ambassador might not be everlastingly damned.’

Donna Clara is a woman of rigid mind and mediocrity of intellect,

chiefly occupied in religious meditations of the narrowest kind. Her

son is a selfish and brutal character from whom no kindness is to

be expected. Isidora’s best friend is the priest, who, in contrast

to his counterpart in the Spaniard’s tale, is described as a good

and well-meaning person. Yet for the power of the church he, too, is

prepared to sacrifice everything. Thus he, taking for pretext some

superstitious rumours concerning the early life of Isidora, insists on

her taking the veil, which scheme is indignantly opposed by Don Fernan,

who calculates that the extraordinary beauty of his sister will be the

means of the family forming, by marriage, a connection with the highest

nobility of Spain. Before, however, either project has been realized,

her meeting with Melmoth takes place, and he begins nightly to visit

her under her casement.

These nocturnal meetings, which form the principal contents of the

story, are quite worthy of the corresponding scenes in the first part.

The present desolate state of Isidora is as convincingly described

as her longing for the Indian island, to dream of which is her only

happiness. The image of Melmoth is united to all that is dear to her,

and she loves him as she loves the memories of bygone days:

“You were the first human being I ever saw who could teach me language

and who taught me feeling. Your image is for ever before me, present

or absent, sleeping or waking. I have seen fairer forms,--I have

listened to softer voices, I might have met gentler hearts,--but the

first, the indelible image, is written on mine, and its characters

will never be effaced till that heart is a clod of the valley. I

loved you not for comeliness,--I loved you not for gay deportment,

or fond language, or all that is said to be lovely in the eye of a

woman,--I loved you because you were my _first_,--the sole connecting

link between the human world and my heart,--the being who brought

me acquainted with that wondrous instrument that lay unknown and

untouched within me, and whose chords, as long as they vibrate, will

disdain to obey any touch but that of their first mover,--because

your image is mixed in my imagination with all the glories of

nature,--because your voice, when I heard it first, was something in

accordance with the murmur of the ocean, and the music of the stars.”

In her artlessness she understands him as little as ever. At the

renewal of their intercourse she feels an innocent desire--Maturin

was too acute a psychologist to omit this circumstance--do dazzle him

with her newly-acquired accomplishments, without being aware that

the more unlike she is to everybody else, the more attractive she

must be to him--that her sole attraction, in fact, lies in her being

something new even in his worldwide experience. Seeing, however, that

her accomplishments do not please him, she gives up every thought of

herself:

She now had concentrated all her hopes, and all her heart, no longer

in the ambition _to be_ beloved, but in the sole wish _to_ love.

She no longer alluded to the enlargement of her faculties, the

acquisition of new powers, and the expansion and cultivation of her

taste. She ceased to speak--she sought only to listen--then her wish

subsided into that quiet listening for his form alone, which seemed to

transfer the office of hearing into the eyes, or rather, to identify

both. She saw him long before he appeared,--and heard him though he

did not speak. They have been in each other’s presence for the short

hours of a Spanish summer’s night,--Isidora’s eyes alternately fixed

on the sun-like moon, and on her mysterious lover,--while he, without

uttering a word, leaned against the pillars of her balcony, or the

trunk of the giant myrtle-tree, which cast the shade he loved, even

by night, over his portentous expression,--and they never uttered a

word to each other, till the waving of Isidora’s hand, as the dawn

appeared, was the tacit signal for their parting.

The mental process which Melmoth undergoes is much the same as

before. He approaches her with withering sarcasm and torments her

with his diabolical laugh and terrible allusions, which she bears

with gentleness and patience. She is still the only being who does

not _understand_ that he is to be feared, and in whose society--as

described in the fine passage quoted above--he can obtain some rest and

oblivion; and in these moments his human nature is again appealed to,

and his better feelings prompt him once more to leave her. The only

thing Isidora ever asks of him--from a sense of inborn dignity rather

than acquired conventionality--is to discontinue his clandestine visits

and appear before her family as her wooer. Once united to him by the

rites of the Catholic church, she promises to follow him wherever it

shall be. On one of these occasions Melmoth finds strength to take the

decisive step:

“Would you then consent to unite your destiny with mine? Would you

indeed be mine amid mystery and sorrow? Would you follow me from

land to sea, and from sea to land,--a restless, homeless, devoted

being,--with the brand on your brow, and the curse on your name?

Would you indeed _be mine_? my own--my only Immalee?”--“I would--I

will!”--“Then,” answered Melmoth, “on this spot receive the proof of

my eternal gratitude. On this spot I renounce your sight!--I disannul

your engagement!--I fly from you for ever!” And as he spoke, he

disappeared.

Some time, however, after this disappearance of Melmoth, unexpected

events again throw these ill-fated lovers together. Donna Clara

receives a letter from her husband, who has landed in Spain and is

slowly making his way homewards, to the effect that he intends to bring

with him the destined bridegroom of Isidora, a Spanish nobleman called

Montilla. Isidora learns this piece of news with great despair--but

the same night Melmoth reappears beneath her balcony. Isidora assures

him that she will be the bride of the grave rather than of Montilla,

and that her love is unaltered; whereupon Melmoth, ‘bringing out the

words with difficulty,’ proposes that she should be ready to wed him

the following night. She consents, and the scheme is carried out in a

scene which has been called one of the greatest in the book[139] and

which indeed is saturated with the keenest suspense. The episode is

typically ‘Gothic;’ it is like a ballad of _Lenore_ in prose. In the

darkness they set out and travel with supernatural rapidity towards a

neighbouring mountain where, Melmoth informs Isidora, a holy hermit

is dwelling near a ruinous monastery. Arriving at a mountain river

they hear foot-steps pursuing them, and a figure is indistinctly seen

approaching. After a short struggle the pursuer, whom Isidora, by his

voice, recognizes to be an ancient domestic of the family, is flung

into the river. The lovers continue their way and Isidora is dragged

up into the ruins, where a hand places hers into that of Melmoth.

Almost unconscious as she is from terror, she feels the hand to be

cold as death; and afterwards it is discovered that the hermit really

had died the previous night. This is one of the few supernatural

incidents in the story that does not directly relate to the personality

of Melmoth.--The same night Donna Clara and the priest sit brooding

over a new letter from Aliaga, in which he hints at some terrible and

mysterious tidings he has learned--it appears later that he has met

Melmoth, who, beset by pangs of conscience, has warned him that his

daughter is in danger. They are roused by a noise in the house, and

discover that Isidora’s casement is open and her room empty. Her mother

passes the night in frantic anxiety, but in the morning Isidora is

found sleeping heavily in her bed. What has happened to her nothing

can induce her to disclose, and Donna Clara and the priest prudently

determine also to keep the matter secret. It takes Aliaga rather a

long time to get home, in spite of the warning he has received. In the

meantime Melmoth keeps on visiting his wife, but cannot be prevailed

upon to appear before the family. Otherwise his tenderness towards

Isidora increases, as there is evidence of her becoming a mother. The

night before the event is expected to take place, Melmoth has the news

that her father and Montilla will arrive that very day, and in the

evening a great masquerade is to be held in honour of the betrothed.

Melmoth promises to be there at midnight to take her away. The news

appears to be true, and Isidora is forced to take part in the feast.

The costume of the time fortunately conceals her altered figure, as the

mask covers her pale and haggard countenance. When the clock strikes

twelve Melmoth is beside her. They prepare to leave the assembly, but

are detected by Don Fernan, who steps into their way. A fight ensues

which ends with the death of Don Fernan, whereat the dreaded figure

of Melmoth the Wanderer is disclosed to all the guests, some of whom

recognize him with a terror unspeakable. Isidora throws herself upon

the corpse of her brother, and Melmoth departs alone and unmolested,

nobody daring to lift a hand against him. The house is rapidly

deserted and its horrified inmates left alone. The same night Isidora

is delivered of a daughter, and, on admitting that she is married to

Melmoth, conveyed into the prison of the Inquisition. Her parents

shortly afterwards die of grief, but the good priest is allowed to

visit her, and to him she makes a full confession of her marriage. The

Holy Office condemns her to lifelong imprisonment, but she dies, after

having strangled her child when the officials have come to take it

from her. Before expiring she yet confesses to Fra Jose that Melmoth

has been with her in the prison and offered to effect her liberation

on a fearful and unutterable condition. With her last strength she has

rejected it, although her love for him is unabated.--

The end of the _Tale of the Indians_ calls for a few remarks from a

logical point of view--if logic is to be applied to a composition like

this. It never becomes quite clear why Melmoth brings Isidora back to

her home after their wedding, all the world being open to him; nor it

is easy to understand why he should delay the second elopement until

the house is full of guests and the disappearance of Isidora most

difficult to bring about. As he, after the failure of this enterprise,

completely loses his human character and only appears in that of the

tempter, it might be inferred that Isidora’s last calamity is of his

own contrivance; but this, again, is contradicted by what he says after

the duel with Don Fernan: ‘Would that breathless fool had yielded to my

bidding, not to my sword--there was but one human chord that vibrated

in my heart--it is broken to-night, and for ever!’ Those critics that

derided the clumsiness with which the schemes of Melmoth are, in

general, executed, were not entirely wrong in this instance; the lack

of plausibility in these incidents--the supernatural power of Melmoth

once taken for granted--is here of a character injurious to the tale as

a work of art.--In the descriptions of everyday life in Aliaga’s house

Maturin does not give of his best, in spite of his having recourse to

his humorous vein. The personages themselves are depicted in rather a

conventional fashion, and the stupidity and narrow-mindedness of Donna

Clara, and the confessor’s excessive fondness for food and drink, can

bear no comparison with the humorous passages in _Women_. Only the

characterization of Isidora is carried out with the same unfailing

power to the very last.

The end of the _Tale of the Indians_, especially the unravelling of

the plot, contains, no doubt, some hints from Goethe’s _Faust_.[140]

The parallels are but details of secondary importance, yet too distinct

to be quite overlooked. Margarete and Isidora are equally anxious about

their respective lovers’ relations to church and religion, and propose

the same questions to them. Margarete:

Nun sag, wie hast du’s mit der Religion?

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

Du ehrst auch nicht die heil’gen Sacramente.

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

Zur Messe, zur Beichte bist du lange nicht gegangen.

Isidora expresses her fear that Melmoth does not believe in what the

Holy Church requires, and asks, further: ‘Do you ever visit the church?

-- -- Do you ever receive the Holy Sacrament?’--Faust fights a duel

with Margarete’s brother under similar circumstances and with the

same consequence as Melmoth with Don Fernan; Margareta, like Isidora,

dies in prison, after having put her child to death in a state of

partial insanity, and both refuse to follow their lovers out of the

prison.--With Mephistopheles, Melmoth has in common the power of

arresting, with a look, the hands raised to seize him.

* * * * *

The _Tale of the Indians_ is once interrupted by two other tales of

considerable length. While Aliaga is travelling homeward he passes a

night at a wretched inn, where a fellow-traveller reads to him the

_Tale of Guzman’s Family_, to the following effect.

Guzman is an old merchant of Seville, who has made an enormous fortune

out of nothing, and risen from an obscure birth to a position of

respect. As he lives alone, the question of his eventual heirs excites

much curiosity; his circumstances are carefully investigated, and

it is discovered that he has a sister in life. This sister has, in

early youth, married a German musician of the name of Walberg, turned

a Protestant, been rejected by her brother, and since then lived

in Germany. This appears to be true; for once when Guzman is seized

with a dangerous illness and even given over by his physicians, he

remembers his sister and sends for the family of Walberg, that he

might be reconciled to his only relatives. At the same time he alters

his will in favour of the family. Contrary to all expectation, he

recovers before they arrive, yet the will remains as he has fixed it,

in spite of the efforts of the priests to have it cancelled.[141]

The only point in which Guzman accedes to their representations, is

that he determines to refrain from all personal intercourse with his

heretical relations. This intelligence is brought to the family, at

their arrival in Seville, by Guzman’s confessor, who acts as his agent

and afterwards proves to be a man of kindness and honour. The family

consists of Walberg, his wife Ines, and four children; later they are

joined by Walberg’s aged parents, whom he has summoned from Germany

to pass the remainder of their life with them. Sinister forebodings

fill the mind of Ines when she learns her brother’s resolution never

to see her or any member of the family. As they are, however, amply

provided for and generally considered the sole heirs of Guzman, the

displeasing resolution makes but a slight impression on Walberg, who

will not listen to his wife’s advice that the children should be

taught some profession. So they live on in ease and comfort, until

Guzman dies--and then it is announced that he has left everything to

the church. This a blow that completely changes the conditions of the

family; their fine house is sold, and they move into a humble abode

in the suburbs, where Ines and her daughter once more resume the

domestic duties. The good priest, who feels certain that a fraud has

been committed, does everything in his power to help them. Through

his means the matter is brought to legal arbitration, but though the

best advocates are resorted to, Walberg loses the case. The family is

gradually plunged deeper and deeper into misery, and soon hovers on the

brink of starvation. Being strangers and heretics they can obtain no

work, but are solely reduced to what the children can get together by

begging. The eldest son, Everhard, hits upon the expedient of selling

some of his blood to a surgeon, and well-nigh expires; the daughters

are beginning to be accosted by strangers in the street; the old

grandmother dies for want of food, and the grandfather loses his reason

from the same cause. When the family has been reduced to this stage of

wretchedness, Walberg, every night he goes out to supplicate relief

from passers-by, is addressed by a stranger,

a middle-aged man, of a serious and staid demeanour, and with nothing

remarkable in his aspect except the light of two burning eyes, whose

lustre is almost intolerable. He fixes them on me sometimes, and

I feel as if there was fascination in their glare. Every night he

besets me, and few like me could have resisted his seductions. He

has offered, and proved to me, that it is in his power to bestow all

that human cupidity could thirst for, on the condition that--I cannot

utter! It is one so full of horror and impiety, that even to listen to

it, is scarce less a crime than to comply with it!

The same night Walberg relates this to his wife, he is seized with a

fit of insanity and proceeds to kill his children, when, at the last

moment, the priest enters with the news that the right will is found

and the family once more the heirs of Guzman. In a short time they are

restored to health--even the grandfather recovers his reason before he

dies--and the tale ends happily:

The family then set out for Germany, where they reside in prosperous

felicity;--but to this hour Walberg shudders with horror when he

recalls the fearful temptations of the stranger, whom he met in the

nightly wanderings in the hour of his adversity, and the horror of

this visitation appears to oppress his recollection more than even the

images of his family perishing with want.--

That Godwin’s _St. Leon_ makes itself remembered also in connection

with the _Tale of Guzman’s Family_, is chiefly due to its being, upon

the whole, the book which _Melmoth_ probably is most indebted to. St.

Leon is, no doubt, several times plunged into great poverty which

he tries to bear as best he can, with the assistance of a brave and

faithful wife and good and amiable children; but a detailed comparison

would show little else than that these scenes, in Godwin, are dull

and powerless, whereas Maturin’s story is just the reverse. So far

from considering the _Tale of Guzman’s Family_ an imitation, one

would rather be inclined to imagine that it has sprung from personal

recollections. Both in his father’s home and his own, Maturin had

seen ease and affluence replaced by penury and want. The situation

into which the family of Walberg is reduced--which leads to death

and insanity--was, of course, extreme beyond anything in Maturin’s

experience, and a product of furious and unrestrained imagination;

but the first intimations of disappearing wealth are brought forth

with a force and accuracy quite convincing, and among the best pages

in the tale are those treating of the horrible suspense in which the

family lives from the moment of Guzman’s death till the publication

of his will. Yet another circumstance would go to show that the _Tale

of Guzman’s Family_ had no need of literary models. In the preface to

_Melmoth the Wanderer_ Maturin states that ‘the original from which the

wife of Walberg is imperfectly sketched is a living woman, and _long

may she live_;’ whence it is not unnatural to infer that it is his own

wife he is describing. So the phrase seems to have been understood by

the critic in the _London Magazine_ 1821, who adds that he would be

inclined to drop his pen and ‘weep over the misfortunes of a man of

genius, instead of scrutinizing his errors.’ The picture which Maturin

draws of the wife of Walberg is beautiful indeed. She is the good

genius of her family, as prudent as she is gentle. She is secretly

saving when her husband only thinks of spending; when he is seized with

despair, she heroically tries to encourage him. She starves gladly

herself, as long as there is a morsel left for her children and for the

aged parents of her husband; and when he is beset by the tempter, she

exerts her last energy to support him. The wife of Walberg is one of

the incarnations of the idea of the superior moral strength of woman,

so often recurring in Maturin’s works, and there is no reason to doubt

that this idea originated in the partner of his life.--Another figure

worthy of particular notice is the priest, with whom Maturin makes full

amends for the attacks he delivers, in _Melmoth_, upon the dignitaries

of the Catholic church. The confessor in the _Tale of the Indians_ is

too much of a buffoon to be taken seriously, but here, at last, is

a Catholic prelate to whom the interests of humanity are more than

those of the church, and who is ready to expose the crimes of his own

colleagues in order to save the life of a heretical family.

The style of writing, in this tale, is hardly so fine as in the next

one, although there are passages extremely characteristic of Maturin.

He was the only one of the ‘terrific’ writers of the time capable of

purely aesthetical enjoyment, almost perverse, from scenes of bodily

suffering. The description of the boy who has been selling his blood to

a surgeon could have been made by no one else:

The moonlight fell strongly through the unshuttered windows on the

wretched closet that just contained the bed. Its furniture was

sufficiently scanty, and in his spasms Everhard had thrown off the

sheet. So he lay, as Ines approached his bed, in a kind of corse-like

beauty, to which the light of the moon gave an effect that would have

rendered the figure worthy of the pencil of a Murillo, a Rosa, or any

of those painters, who, inspired by the genius of suffering, delight

in representing the most exquisite of human forms in the extremity of

human agony. A St. Bartholomew flayed, with his skin hanging about

him in graceful drapery--a St. Laurence, broiled on a gridiron, and

exhibiting his finely-formed anatomy on its bars, while naked slaves

are blowing the coals beneath it,--even this were inferior to the form

half-veiled, half-disclosed by the moonlight as it lay. The snow-white

limbs of Everhard were extended as if for the inspection of a

sculptor, and moveless, as if they were indeed what they resembled, in

hue and symmetry, those of a marble statue. His arms were tossed above

his head and the blood was trickling fast from the opened veins of

both,--his bright and curled hair was clotted with the red stream that

flowed from his arms,--his lips were blue, and a faint and fainter

moan issued from them as his mother hung over him.

All the personages actually appearing in the _Tale of Guzman’s Family_

are good and noble; there is no display of revolting crimes or depraved

characters, and horrible and even disgusting as are the sufferings of

the family, the tale has little to do with the school of terror. The

fact, moreover, of its being the only one that is brought to a happy

ending, probably made it a favourite with readers. An admiring critic

in _Blackwood’s Magazine_[142] says that this tale, before all others,

shows ‘what Mr. Maturin is capable of doing in his best moments of

inspiration.’

* * * * *

Shortly after the stranger has read to Aliaga the tale related

above, Melmoth himself appears at the inn. He causes--in a way

unexplained--the death of the stranger who has dared to investigate

into his achievements, and the next day associates himself with Aliaga.

The merchant is not at all charmed with his obtrusive companion, but

cannot well get rid of him; and as they slowly ride onward, Melmoth

narrates what is called _The Lovers’ Tale_.[143]

This time Spain is left behind, and the reader is conducted to the

England of the Restoration. The tale opens with a short chronicle of

the fortunes of the Mortimer family, one of the oldest and noblest

in the kingdom. At the time of Charles the First the then head of

the house, Sir Roger Mortimer, ‘a man lofty alike in pride and in

principle,’ distinguishes himself as one of the most fervent supporters

of the royal cause. After the defeat of the monarch he is subjected to

the reprisals, in form of fines and sequestrations, of the victorious

rebels, in addition to which his domestic felicity is completely

destroyed. His eldest son has fallen for his king at the battle of

Newbury, while his second son has embraced the Puritan cause, married

accordingly, and finally died, having ‘fought all day at the head of

his regiment, and preached and prayed to them all night.’ The only

daughter of the old loyalist also goes the wrong way and marries an

Independent preacher of the name of Sandal, whom she survives. The

daughter of the eldest son, Margaret, is made the heiress of the

castle, where she resides with her grandfather and his old sister, Mrs.

Ann Mortimer, who leads the household after the death of his brother’s

wife. The daughter of the apostate son, Elinor, is, after the death

of her mother, also received at the castle and educated there, though

without expectations. Young John Sandal, the son of the rejected

daughter, is recognized by his grandfather on the express condition of

henceforth fighting for the royal family; he has, at his own request,

been sent to sea at a very early age. At the return of Charles the

Second old Sir Roger dies of joy, but the sacrifices of the family in

the royal cause are amply compensated, and they are once again raised

among the foremost in the country. At that period the widow Sandal

takes up her residence in the neighbourhood of the castle and sometimes

visits it, although the relations between her and her aunt Mrs. Ann

never become very cordial. From her intrigues subsequently follows the

fall of the house of Mortimer.

Through the re-acquired importance of the family a distinguished

position in the navy is procured for John Sandal, and during the Dutch

war he has the opportunity of showing that the spirit of his ancestors

is not dead within him. News of valorous deeds achieved by John reaches

even the remote castle, where the gentle Elinor, who remembers him with

feelings of love in early childhood, is, more than others, occupied

in thoughts of him. When the widow Sandal makes her appearance in

the vicinity, she calls on her every day to talk about her son, and

when John arrives to pay a visit to his mother, she is the first to

meet him. John Sandal turns out to be as good as he is brave, and his

friendship to his cousin Elinor swiftly ripens to love. Their betrothal

is greeted with joy by all except the widow, who determines to prevent

the union by any means. She has obtained a knowledge of Sir Roger’s

will, which is to the effect that if his granddaughter Margaret marries

John Sandal, all the immense estates are to fall to her, whereas

John, in case of his marrying Elinor, is entitled only to a small

fortune.--The wedding-day, however, is fixed; the church is filled with

guests from far and near and everything is ready, yet the bridegroom,

for some inexplicable reason, fails to appear. Tired and anxious at the

delay Elinor retires to the vestry, from the casement window of which

she sees a rider approaching at full speed. The rider, John Sandal,

gallops past the church, casts a look of horror upon Elinor, and

disappears.

After the frustration of her hopes Elinor quits the castle and takes up

her abode in Yorkshire, at the house of a strictly Puritan sister of

her late mother. Peace of mind, however, is denied her, and she lingers

on in a pitiable state, when, one day, she receives a letter from

Margaret, of surprising contents. Both old Mrs. Ann and Margaret have

assured that the faithless bridegroom shall never darken their doors

again; now Margaret announces to Elinor that John Sandal has returned

to the castle and invites her to join them, dropping some ‘mysterious

hints relative to the interruption of the marriage.’ With a vague hope

Elinor sets out to the castle and is tenderly received by both her

cousins; the manner of John, however, clearly evinces that there can be

no question of other sentiments than a calm friendship between them.

As the betrothal of Margaret and John is made public, her stay at the

castle becomes too painful to Elinor; she returns to Yorkshire where

she leads a life in utter seclusion, her Puritan aunt having died in

the meantime. Yet she is once more summoned to the castle by a message

from Margaret, who, now in confinement, implores Elinor’s presence

at her hour of danger. Elinor obeys, but the gloomy forebodings of

Margaret are fulfilled: twins are born dead, and a moment afterwards

the mother also expires. Amid general despair the widow Sandal now

makes a confession to her son, with the result that his reason is

extinguished for ever. Solicitous to secure for her son the family

estates, she had invented a story which she had imparted to him the

night before his intended nuptials with Elinor, according to which

he was not her son, but the offspring of an ‘illicit commerce of her

husband the preacher with the Puritan mother of Elinor’--and this story

she had bound her son by oath never to disclose to Elinor.

After this catastrophe the life of Elinor is devoted to the tending

of the patient, whom she never leaves. It then befalls that they

are, on one of their evening walks, approached by a stranger, who

introduces himself by showing them some slight attentions and speaking

on indifferent subjects. Their acquaintance continues some time,

till it suddenly ends by the stranger saying something that causes

Elinor wildly to rush to a neighbouring clergyman for assistance. The

clergyman happens to be the identical friend of Melmoth the Wanderer

who witnessed his apparent death in Germany, which strange event he

now discloses to Elinor; as for Melmoth, he departs on recognizing the

clergyman, and troubles Elinor no longer. Her time passes on in the

same occupation, until her ward dies, and, in his last moments knows

her, nor does she survive him long.

* * * * *

This beautiful story, though little noted by commentators, is inferior

to none in the book, except the opening chapters describing the death

of the old Irish miser; on the contrary, it seems rather the best of

all the longer tales. Maturing favourite period in English history was

sure to become to him a source of highest inspiration, whenever he

turned to it, and to his other good qualities is here added that of

an impartial historian. When Elinor, as a child, is taken up at the

castle, she is said to come to the conclusion ‘that there must be good

on both sides, however obscured or defaced by passion, where so much

intellectual power, and so much physical energy, had been displayed by

both;’ and in this spirit the controversies are treated throughout the

story. That the author’s sympathies rest with the cavaliers is evident

enough, but the errors of Puritanism--fortunately--do not irritate

him so much as to prevent him from speaking of them with calmness,

mingled with an almost imperceptible tinge of humour. And the peculiar

spirit of the period he catches by the forelock and never leaves hold

of it; Maturin had penetrated to the very soul of that wonderful

time, when furious contests, religious and political, splintered

family ties and shook the foundations of the empire, and when the last

remnants of ancient chivalry clashed against growing democracy and

sturdy Puritanism. Yet as the principal part of the tale takes place

_after_ the Restoration, when the wounds of the civil war are already

beginning slowly to heal, he contrives to make those turbulent events

felt through the pages as the after-rolls of a mighty storm. And as

the plot consists of the tragical downfall of a great and illustrious

house, there is, in the style, something like the glow of an autumnal

sun setting over a rich and glorious landscape. It is, in fact, in

autumn--the season Maturin loved best--that most of the incidents

occur, and the pages abound in magnificent descriptions of nature, like

the following:

Elinor took the path through the park, and, absorbed in new feelings,

was for the first time insensible of its woodland beauty, at once

gloomy and resplendent, mellowed by the tints of autumnal colouring,

and glorious with the light of an autumnal evening,--till she was

roused to attention by the exclamations of her companion, who appeared

rapt into delight at what he beheld. -- -- -- -- As they approached

the Castle, the scene became glorious beyond the imagination of a

painter, whose eye has dreamed of sunset in foreign climes. The vast

edifice lay buried in shade,--all its varied and strongly charactered

features of tower and pinnacle, bartizan and battlement, were melted

into one dense and sombrous mass. The distant hills with their conical

summits, were still clearly defined in the dark-blue heaven, and their

peaks still retained a hue of purple so brilliant and lovely, that

it seemed as if the light had loved to linger there, and, parting,

had left that tint as the promise of a glorious morning. The woods

that surrounded the Castle stood as dark, and apparently as solid as

itself. Sometimes a gleam like gold trembled over the tufted foliage

of their summits, and at length, through a glade which opened among

the dark and massive boles of the ancient trees, one last rich and

gorgeous flood of light burst in, turned every blade of grass it

touched into emerald for a moment,--passed on its lovely work--and

parted. The effect was so instantaneous, brilliant, and evanishing,

that Elinor had scarce time for a half uttered exclamation, as she

extended her arm in the direction where the light had fallen so

brightly and so briefly.

This style is sustained throughout the narrative, but instead of

rendering it monotonous, it only makes the ‘atmosphere’ intense

and harmonious in the extreme, which is the chief merit of _The

Lovers’ Tale_. The characters, if not exactly conventional, are less

originally conceived. Margaret and Elinor are a pair of heroines known

from countless romances of all ages: the former high-spirited and

vivacious, demanding homage and obtaining it at the same moment; the

latter tender, pale, soft and contemplative, yet not without traits

of distinct individuality. The characterization of John Sandal is not

successful--it is the only thing in the tale which is not--he is too

gentle, too ‘milky’ to be a young sailor and warrior, and is depicted

with a considerable amount of sentimentality. He appears, however, but

little; the principal personage is Elinor, whose hopes and sufferings

are delineated with a psychological insight recalling corresponding

passages in _Women_. Like Zaira, in the last-named romance, Elinor in

vain seeks forgetfulness in philanthrophy and religion. In her aunt’s

house nothing is changed since her earliest childhood. The Puritanic

ideals and the memories of celebrated preachers are still cherished

by the old maid with undiminished force; but Elinor cannot, in spite

of desperate endeavours, find consolation in what once was all in all

to her, too. It is not only that her heart is broken; she belongs to

a new time, and her views have been enlarged during her life in the

castle. The difference between two generations, in the persons of these

two women, is brought forth with exquisite fineness, and the great and

heroic qualities in Puritanism are freely admitted:

An old non-conformist minister, a very Saint John for sanctity of

life, and simplicity of manners, had been seized by a magistrate while

giving the word of consolation to a few of his flock who had met at

the cottage of her aunt.

The old man had supplicated for a moment’s delay on the part of the

civil power, and its officers, by an unusual effort of toleration or

of humanity, complied. Turning to his congregation, who, amid the

tumult of the arrest, had never risen from their knees, and only

changed the voice of supplication from praying with their pastor to

praying for him,--he quoted to them that beautiful passage from the

prophet Malachi, which appears to give such delightful encouragement

to the spiritual intercourse of Christians,--“Then they that feared

the Lord, spoke often to one another, and the Lord heard it,” etc. As

he spoke, the old man was dragged away by some rougher hands, and died

soon after in confinement.

On the young imagination of Elinor, this scene was indelibly written.

Amid the magnificence of Mortimer Castle, it had never been effaced or

obscured, and now she tried to make herself in love with the sounds

and the scene that had so deeply touched her infant heart.

Resolute in her purposes, she spared no pains to excite this

reminiscence of religion--it was her last resource. Like the wife of

Phineas, she struggled to bear an heir of the soul, even while she

named him _Ichabod_,--and felt the glory was departed. She went to the

narrow apartment,--she seated herself in the very chair that venerable

man occupied when he was torn from it, and his departure appeared to

her like that of an ascending prophet. She would _then_ have caught

the folds of his mantle, and mounted with him, even though his flight

had led to prison and to death. She tried, by repeating his last

words, to produce the same effect they had once had on her heart, and

wept in indescribable agony at feeling those words had no feeling now

for her.

The faint hope wakened in her half-benumbed heart by Margaret’s first

letter is soon extinguished. Gradually she loses her beauty and her

strength, and when addressed by Melmoth she is, bodily, almost as weak

as her ward. It has been said[144] that it is not clear why he tempts

Elinor; it must be presumed that he would have the power to restore the

mind of John, though his chance of succeeding with Elinor is certainly

slight, she being altogether resigned to her fate.--

That _The Lovers’ Tale_ is told by Melmoth himself, and told in such

a way as it is, belongs to those curiosities in the composition of

the book, which simply must be accepted as freaks of a careless yet

self-conscious imagination that follows laws of its own. Aliaga,

naturally enough, is at a loss to comprehend how this tale could be

applied to him; but the next day, as they continue their journey

together, Melmoth briefly recapitulates the early history of

Isidora--the details of the shipwreck and her discovery later are

now first revealed to the reader--adding that Aliaga should not lose

a moment to save his daughter. Notwithstanding this warning, Aliaga

allows concerns of business to detain him, and in the meantime the

fatal nuptials of Melmoth and Isidora take place. After the Indians’

tale then has been brought to an end, the thread of the original

narrative is at last resumed and the reader once more conducted to

where young John Melmoth and the Spaniard Monçada are sitting in the

desolate Irish country-house. Their conversation is interrupted by the

sudden appearance of the subject of all these adventures. The term of

his supernaturally prolonged existence is drawing to a close, and the

terrible lustre of his eyes is already extinguished. He assures the

horrified youths that there is nothing to fear; his wanderings are

finished, and the reason for these wanderings need no longer be kept

secret, any more than the failure of all his pursuits:

No one has ever exchanged destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. _I have

traversed the world in the search, and no one, to gain that world,

would lose his own soul!_ Not Stanton in his cell--nor you, Monçada,

in the prison of the Inquisition--nor Walberg, who saw his children

perishing with want--nor--another--

After this confession the Wanderer asks for a moment’s repose, to

sleep for the last time in his human existence. His dreams, however,

are filled with a grand and awful vision of the realm of death which

is awaiting him and which he has no hope of escaping. During the night

mysterious voices issue from the room in which he has shut himself. In

the morning the room is empty, but footsteps can be traced up to a rock

overlooking the sea. John and Monçada follow the steps until they gain

the last summit of the rock:

The ocean was beneath--the wide, waste, engulphing ocean! On a crag

beneath them, something hung as floating to the blast. Melmoth

clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the

Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night--that was the

last trace of the Wanderer!

Melmoth and Monçada exchanged looks of silent and unutterable horror,

and returned slowly home.--

The conclusion of _Melmoth the Wanderer_ is very impressive; the

descriptions are well-balanced, suggestive, and not too furious,

although, in certain details, not decidedly original in invention. As

in the transformation of Melmoth by an apparent death an influence

from a contemporary work of the school of terror can be discerned, his

real death can be traced back to the _Faustus_ of Marlowe.[145] The

preparations of Faustus and Melmoth for the dreadful last night are

carried on in the same way:

_Faustus._ Aye, pray for me--pray for me--and whatever noise soever

you hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.

Melmoth says:

Leave me--I must be alone for the few last hours of my mortal

existence--men retire--leave me alone--whatever noises you hear in

the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not near this

apartment, at the peril of your lives.

The final fulfilment of the bond, however, is only suggested by

Maturin, while in Marlowe the devils who come to fetch Faustus are

actually brought to the stage. In this respect the end of _Melmoth the

Wanderer_ differs, much to its advantage, from the end also of _The

Monk_,[146] where the enemy in person takes hold of Ambrosio, soars

with him in the air and dashes him to pieces against a sharp point of

rock.

* * * * *

When the story of _Melmoth_, on one of the last pages of the book,

turns back to the Irish country-house, the author expresses a fear

that the reader has, perhaps, forgotten the existence of young John

Melmoth. If he has not, he would at least have had plenty of time

to do so; for the whole fabric of the work is nothing but a gigantic

digression from the first action, in the form of tales within tales,

told and read and read and told by somebody to somebody else, in an

exceedingly intricate way rendering a general view of them a matter of

considerable difficulty. The construction of _Melmoth the Wanderer_ is

extravagant beyond any degree reached by _Montorio_ or _The Wild Irish

Boy_, and has been subjected to severe criticism. Saintsbury[147] calls

the arrangement ‘execrably bad,’ wondering ‘how anything quite so bad

in form can have been put forth by anybody so clever.’ One explanation

would be that this form implies an intentional disregard of the rules

of composition, rather than a failure of ability to adhere to them,

in other words, that the general effect is not calculated to rest

upon regularity of construction, any more than in, for instance, the

second part of _Faust_. But even if--which is more probable--Maturin

really sat down to compose a story of ‘ordinary’ proportions and

was unconsciously carried away on the wings of his ungovernable

imagination, the general impression left by the book is such as to

make the defects in its arrangement decidedly appear a question of

secondary importance, just as the many literary reminiscences which

present themselves during the perusal, cannot detract anything from

the originality of the hero. Little as he actually appears, he is the

locomotive power without which the whole would collapse, and he is

remembered still when everything else is forgotten. From behind the

various and manifold scenes of this amazing labyrinth, there arises the

pale figure of the Wanderer, terrible and diabolical, yet suffering and

despairing, to bear witness to his own defeat and the victory of human

nature, so weak and yet so invincible, the object of at once his hatred

and his adoration; and is it not, when we stand face to face with this

wonderful creation of a great genius, indifferent where and when and

by whom the separate tales are related? That the Wanderer, however,

is capable of making so powerful an impression, is due to this curious

fact, that the book, in its most essential feature, does not at all

correspond to the passage in Maturin’s sermon which he maintains to

have inspired it.

Several writers, from the most worthless to the most competent, have

expressed their wonder at the very poor success Melmoth, with all

his supernatural endowments, can boast of. The savage critic in the

_Quarterly Review_[148] sneers that Melmoth ‘during his peregrination

of two centuries, does less mischief than a clever mortal would

have done;’ and Edgar Allan Poe[149] observes that Melmoth ‘labours

indefatigably, through three octavo volumes, to accomplish the

destruction of one or two souls, while any common devil would have

demolished one or two thousand.’ The common devils certainly are more

fortunate, and their difference from Maturin’s hero is conspicuous

enough. In Balzac’s half-parody, _Melmoth Reconcilié_ (1835), the

Wanderer is delivered of his curse by a criminal, a cashier who

has committed a fraud and is desirous to escape his sentence, and

afterwards it passes from hand to hand among similar individuals.

In Stevenson’s story of _The Bottle Imp_ (1893); which has the same

motive, the miracle-working and soul-destroying imp is at last, without

subsequent repentance, purchased by a drunken boatswain who reckons

he is going to hell anyway. The cause of Melmoth’s failure, and the

precise character of his uncleverness, which consists in his strange

ignorance whom to address, is in obvious contradiction to the sermon,

where the final sin is declared to be too frightful even to those who

have ever so much

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

Now the persons who are subjected to the temptations of Melmoth the

Wanderer have done nothing of the kind: on the contrary, most of them

come as near perfection as poor human nature can possibly do. The

tempter invariably takes care to accost those with whom he is least

likely to succeed. He leaves unnoticed a character like the parricide,

who is said to be beyond the redemption of a Saviour, and who, it must

be assumed, would most joyfully accept the bond--to waste his time and

energy on Alonzo di Monçada, whom he perceives to be as firm as any

rock. Of Stanton, of Walberg, of Isidora, of Elinor, not one single

wrong deed is recorded which would speak for the probability of their

succumbing to his seductions. To all the tales, it has finely been

observed,[150] can be applied a motto from _Faust_: ‘ein guter Mensch

in seinem dunkeln Drange ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst;’

but it is not the good instinct in the good, but the good instinct

in the bad, which Maturin, in the preface, promises to demonstrate.

In consequence, however, of this ‘blunder,’ the character of Melmoth

the Wanderer becomes so impressive, so impassioned, so distinct from

all common men and common devils. The attraction exercised upon him

by the good has its root in what there is human in him; what causes

him his keenest sufferings is not that he is shut out of paradise but

that he is shut out of the community of the good among human beings;

and what he insists on trying, amid rage and despair, is that some

one of those _good_ would voluntarily share his fate and relieve his

bitter loneliness. The relation of Melmoth to mankind is marked by that

intense sense of loneliness, that sense of being ‘among them, but not

of them,’ or, as Maturin says, ‘mingling with, yet distinct from all

his species’--which goes through the romantic literature of the period

and which indeed is genuinely romantic in its implication of something

exceptional, something outside the common rules of life. The anguish

of loneliness is shared alike by good and bad, by all whom adverse

circumstances or else their own bodily or mental deformities have

placed in a solitary position in the world. In _Montorio_, Ippolito is

undeservedly overtaken by the fate which Melmoth deliberately invokes

upon himself; but their anguish is the same. It is felt by St. Leon,

the moment he attains earthly immortality and understands that those

whom he has loved can mean nothing to him any longer; it is felt by the

Black Dwarf when he contemplates the happiness of the strong and the

beautiful, which he is never to share; and even the miserable monster

created by Frankenstein prays for one being of the same species as

himself, who might smile upon him and not answer his approaches with

curses and maledictions. It was Maturin’s desire to dwell upon this

emotion that in the long run decided the mould of the characters in

_Melmoth the Wanderer_ in a way, perhaps, not intended by him from

the first. Viewed in the light of this same emotion, the contempt of

Melmoth for his victims is only half-real, nor is it probable that

Maturin meant him to appear so superior to humanity as he is shown by

Baudelaire[151] in his well-known _Essay de l’essence du rire_:

Quoi de plus grand, quoi de plus puissant relativement à la pauvre

humanité que ce pale et ennuyé Melmoth? Et pourtant, il y a en lui un

côté faible, abject, antidivin et antilumineux. Aussi comme il rit,

comme il rit, se comparant sans cesse aux chenilles humaines, lui si

fort, si intelligent, lui pour qui une partie des lois conditionelles

de l’humanité, physiques et intellectuelles, n’existent plus! Et ce

rire est l’explosion perpétuelle de sa colère et de sa souffrance.

Il est, qu’on me comprenne bien, la résultante nécessaire de sa

double nature contradictoire, qui est infiniment grande relativement

à l’homme, infiniment vile et basse relativement au Vrai et au Juste

absolus.

The members of this _pauvre humanité_ still represent the power of

absolute Justice and Truth, the power so infinitely stronger than

Melmoth. Theirs is the ultimate triumph.

* * * * *

_Melmoth the Wanderer_ created, at its first appearance, a greater

sensation than any of Maturin’s previous novels. Economically it also

was something of a success: the profits it brought to the author are

said[152] to have amounted to 500 pounds. A second edition appeared

the following year as well as a French translation, _Melmoth, ou

l’Homme errant_, by J. Cohen, and a ‘free’ German translation called

_Melmoth der Wanderer_.--All the works of Maturin, except _Manuel_ and

_Fredolfo_, were translated into French soon after their appearance in

English, and with the rendering of _Melmoth_ his fame became definitely

established in that country, where, in fact, it has always been

greater than in England. A. A. Watts says[153] that his father, while

travelling in France, possessed a passport to the romantic circles as

the friend of that ‘triste et terrible Maturin.’--In 1823 the romance

was published in the form of a melodrama in three acts, by B. West.

This production is a combination of the _Tale of Guzman’s Family_ and

the _Tale of the Indians_; Isidora is represented as the daughter of

Walberg, and has loved Melmoth in her youth. Walberg and Isidora are

both, through the machinations of Melmoth, thrown into the prison of

the Inquisition, whence they are rescued by another lover of hers,

while Melmoth is killed by thunder. The play is without any literary

value whatever, but shows clearly which two tales were most appreciated

by the public.--The principal periodicals of the time also reviewed

_Melmoth_ at a considerable length, although, for the most part, with

a negative result. In the _Quarterly Review_ Croker raged against the

book even more furiously than he had done against _Women_, pronouncing

it to be the very acme of all that is execrable:

Indeed, Mr. Maturin has contrived, by a ‘_curiosa infelicitas_,’ to

unite in this work all the worst particularities of the worst modern

novels. Compared with it, Lady Morgan is almost intelligible--The

Monk, decent--The Vampire, amiable--and Frankenstein, natural. We

do not pronounce this judgment hastily, and we pronounce it with

regret--we honour Mr. Maturin’s profession even when he debases it,

and if ‘Melmoth’ had been only silly and tiresome, we should gladly

have treated it with silent contempt; but it unfortunately variegates

its stupidity with some characteristics of a more disgusting kind,

which our respect for good manners and decency obliges us to denounce.

After declaring, in italics, that the hero of the book is _the Devil

himself_, the reviewer solemnly accuses the author of nonsense,

want of veracity, ignorance, blasphemy and brutality, and a dark,

cold-blooded, pedantic obscenity; and finishes his article with

a hint that it certainly is quite right that the Church does not

provide subsistence for him.--That critics, upon the whole, spoke

unfavourably of _Melmoth_ is not to be wondered at. The school of

terror had irrevocably had its day, and very different literary ideals

were being established. The magic art of Scott held a strong sway

over all minds, while the well-bred drawing-room adventures of Maria

Edgeworth and Jane Austen were now, in their turn, felt as a relief and

a liberation from the wilder forms of romanticism. The extravagances

and horribly startling incidents in Maturin’s romance were enough to

cover its powerful originality and lasting merits--which probably

would be the case did the book appear to-day. Yet the author’s genius

was unreservedly admitted even by most of those who disapproved of

the style and contents of _Melmoth_; the end of the article in the

_Edinburgh Review_ is characteristic, its tone being as dignified as

that of the _Quarterly Review_ is base:

Let it not be imagined, from any thing we have now said, that we

think meanly of Mr. Maturin’s genius and abilities. It is precisely

because we hold both in respect that we are sincerely anxious to

point out their misapplication; and we have extended our observations

to a greater length than we contemplated, partly because we fear

his strong though unregulated imagination, and unlimited command

of glowing language, may inflict upon us a herd of imitators who

‘possessing the contortions of the sybil without her inspiration’ will

deluge us with dull, turgid, and disgusting enormities;--and partly

because we are not without hopes that our animadversions, offered in

a spirit of sincerity, may induce the Author himself to abandon this

new Apotheosis of the old Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, and assume a

station in literature more consonant to his high endowments, and to

that sacred profession to which, we understand, he does honour by the

virtues of his private life.

The _Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany_ writes essentially to

the same purport:

There is one point of resemblance between this author and his hero.

They both, in a different way, possess very considerable powers,

which seem to have some invisible and mysterious limit, beyond which

they cannot pass. The wild and wonderful, the odd and eccentric,

seems to be Mr. Maturin’s chosen province;--into the regions of

nature and probability he is either unable or unwilling to penetrate.

Perhaps this is saying too much, but, if he does make an advance into

these quiet precincts, his love of extravagance and exaggeration

immediately leads him back into his wonted path. -- -- It is difficult

to understand the construction of a mind so pregnant with every

aggravation of mental and bodily suffering, that it seems absolutely

to luxuriate, not only in the pain it describes, but in that which he

produces in his readers. Surrounded as he is with terrible objects,

and gleams of sulphureous flame, which his hero is ever and anon

presenting to our view, the reverend author appears to our imagination

like some Vulcan of the anvil, assiduously labouring and forging

shackles, bolts, and instruments of torture, with this difference,

that with the poor mechanic it was not matter of choice, whereas

Mr. Maturin, with all the flowery paths of fiction open to him, has

preferred this tortuous and gloomy one.

The only one who expresses himself with unrestrained admiration is the

critic in the _Blackwood’s Magazine_--also referred to once above.

Even he, it is true, points out that there are faults and errors in

Maturin’s writings; but he admits that they are more than atoned for by

the merits:

And yet, where is the lover of imaginative excitement, that ever

laid down one of his books unfinished--or the man of candour and

discrimination, who ever denied, after reading through any of them,

that Maturin is gifted with a genius as fervently powerful as it is

distinctly original--that there is ever and anon a truth of true

poetry diffused over the thickest chaos of his absurdities--and that

he walks almost without a rival, dead or living, in many of the

darkest, but, at the same time, the most majestic circles of romance?

This critic, however, could hardly be taken seriously by the author,

inasmuch as he places _Montorio_ before the present work:

We are far from saying that Mr. Maturin should write less--but we do

say, that he should write a great deal more--observe a great deal

more--and correct a great deal more. If he does not, he may depend

upon it he will never fulfil the rich promise of his _Montorio_; for

that, we rather think, was his first--and, we are quite sure, is the

best of all his performances.

It is of interest to notice these opinions; for, however slight their

authority, they seem to have had the desired effect of checking

the ‘extravagances’ of Maturin’s genius--so much the worse for

literature. His desire to please--for such desire there was in his

temperament, quite apart from all pecuniary considerations--was once

more discouraged, and he began to grow weary of being told the same

things over and again. It was several years before he again produced

a novel, and when he did, he painfully strove to adhere to patterns

universally accepted, and avoid displaying those peculiarities which

were distinctly his own, but the absence of which to a production of

his irreparably meant the loss of vital power, notwithstanding a small

temporary success. A sense of ultimate failure and disappointment has,

among other things, its share in the unmistakable gloom cast over

Maturin’s last years.

V.

1821-1824.

When ance life’s day draws near the gloamin’,

Then fareweel vacant careless roamin’;

An’ fareweel cheerfu’ tankards foamin’,

An’ social noise;

An’ fareweel, dear deluding woman!

The joy of joys!

Burns.

Maturin’s last period opens with a poetical enterprise which is

bound up with a mystery exactly opposite to that appertaining to the

publication of the _Waterloo_ prize poem in 1815. In 1821 appeared a

lengthy poem in blank verse, called _The Universe_, under the name of

the Rev. C. R. Maturin, received--very undeservedly--with something

like acclamation. The real authorship of the poem was, even at the

time, claimed by Mr. James Wills, a name afterwards not quite--though

nearly--unknown in the world of letters; but it was not until 1874 that

the case was brought before the public. For the sake of the composition

itself it would be unnecessary long to dwell upon the question, had not

the controversy called forth the publication of a manuscript of Wills,

which throws an interesting, if not entirely agreeable, light upon his

acquaintance with Maturin and the circumstances connected with the

origin of _The Universe_.

A correspondent in the _Notes and Queries_[154]--who was a great

admirer of the poem--happened, in the year mentioned above, to allude

to its disputed authorship and utter some doubts as to the statements

of Wills. Against this view the surviving family of that writer

energetically protested; two sons of Wills, referring to a note in the

second edition of Lord John Russell’s biography of Moore,[155] and

producing two or three utterances of some of their father’s friends

who were initiated into the secret, put about the following statements

concerning _The Universe_. Maturin was engaged by Colburn to compose

for him a poem consisting of a thousand lines. The renumeration--500

pounds--was paid in advance; but, having spent it, Maturin found the

fulfilment of his engagement to be encumbered with insurmountable

difficulties. Being at a loss how to get on with the work, he was shown

a poem of Wills, then a very young man. Maturin pathetically entreated

him to lend it to him for use, promising, first, to let Colburn know of

the transaction, and secondly, to reveal the real authorship after the

publication; neither of which promises was kept, the poem being read

and reviewed as a production of Maturin’s.

In the polemics in the _Notes and Queries_ the Wills family--who also

considered the _Universe_ a work of uncommon merit--had the last word,

and their assertions were, a little later, supported by the _Dublin

University Magazine_,[156] whose editor had received a record in the

handwriting of Wills, found between the covers of an old copy of the

poem and sent to Dublin by Messrs. Chatto & Windus, the well-known

London publishers. In this record, which the editor supposes to have

been written for the benefit of Lord Russell before the publication

of the second edition of his life of Moore, Wills relates that he had

composed the poem in the years 1819 and 1820,[157] while residing at

Bray, the then most fashionable watering-place in the neighbourhood of

Dublin. He intended it to be a very great work which was to fill up all

his life-time; but having written upwards of 800 lines, he made a new

acquaintance of whose appearance he gives the following description:

There was an accession of guests (at the table d’hôte), and among them

a very remarkable-looking gentleman attracted my attention, and I was

struck by the extreme precision of his dress, his handsome and well

sitting black wig, which, on a first glance, looked like a splendid

head of hair, his silver spectacles, neatly cut features, and the

imposing modulation of his deep voice. Had he been some years younger,

I should have said there was a little shade of the clerical dandy in

his appearance. As it was I thought I could discern the air of one who

aimed to be very _recherché_ in his manners and conversation, and that

all his personal advantages were a little overdone. Who he could be I

had no notion.

I was seated at a side table: but when the cloth was removed he

beckoned to me, and I went and took a seat next to him. He pushed his

bottle to me, and asked me to join him in his wine, and addressed

his conversation entirely to me. I presently took exception to some

fallacy which he let drop: and as he seemed disposed to contest the

point (whatever it was) the conversation degenerated into argument.

The gentleman I soon found, though extremely pointed, witty and

epigrammatic, and very happy in allusion, had very little power in

disputation, and he presently gave in with a good grace.

In the course of the same day Wills was formally introduced to his

opponent, who he had learnt, was Maturin. Their acquaintance soon

ripened into intimacy. The fascinating personality of the novelist cast

a strong spell over Wills, although he received the impression that

Maturin was ‘a little too flattering’ and not quite sincere. When the

transaction as to the poem was then proposed to him, Wills felt extreme

reluctance, but at last yielded, overcome by Maturin’s persuasions

and the consideration that Maturin’s family, to whom he had been

introduced, would be ruined if the money had to be refunded to Colburn.

The accomplishment of this great work is told by Wills with a naive

open-heartedness, amusing indeed when regarded in the light of the

controversy in _Notes and Queries_, where his sons seriously maintain

that both Scott and Campbell considered _The Universe_ the best thing

produced by Maturin, and the other party as seriously declares it to

contain passages equal to Milton:

I then went stoutly to work and as I had engaged to expand my poem

into 2,000 lines within the next month, without the materials which

the original plan required, I diluted it with whatever came uppermost.

It was thus easily completed within the time, and copied from my

own first draught by different transcribers as I had insisted on

preserving my own M. S., which I still have. I also wished to keep

possession of my plan and the original passages, all of which had been

carefully elaborated, though the filling up was carelessly done.

The poem being completed and sent to the publisher, it became clear to

Wills that Maturin was determined not to reveal the secret. It came

out, however, ‘with a celerity truly surprising;’ the literary circles

of Dublin were divided in two contesting parties, the one standing

by Maturin, the other by Wills, and the matter was eagerly discussed

in the drawing-rooms of Lady Morgan and the Mrs. Smith mentioned by

Moore. The former was also deeply impressed by the production; when

assured by Wills that Maturin never wrote a line of it, she answered,

‘well, then, you must do something very considerable to convince the

world you could have written it.’ Nevertheless Wills seems to have

succeeded in convincing Lady Morgan, for it was she who, according to

him, communicated the particulars to Colburn. When Wills some time

afterwards met the publisher in London, he presented Wills with all

the remaining copies of the stock, hinting that the affair ‘had been

injurious to Mr. Maturin in his relations with him as a publisher.’--

In connection with this version of Wills it is not out of place to

quote a passage from an unpublished letter of Maturin to Sir Charles

Morgan, dated 1821:

-- -- Apropos to the _cursed_ booksellers, you can render me a most

essential service by simply making an inquiry. I have Mr. Colburn’s

written engagement to give £ 500 for my present work. I wrote to

Charles Phillips three months ago to request he would inform C. that

the work was more than half completed, that I was willing to place

the M. S. in his hands and depended on his fulfilling his engagement.

I have never had a line from Phillips in answer, though I stated my

distress to him repeatedly and in the most urgent terms. Now, my dear

friend, if without _committing me_ you could make C. speak out, it

would relieve me from considerable anxiety.

This seems to prove that the £ 500 was not paid in advance, and

that Maturin had written a large part of some work agreed upon with

Colburn, before he received anything for it. Whether the manuscript

here referred to was published as a constituent part of _The Universe_

it is hazardous to decide; if it was, Maturin had probably lost

all interest in the poem and entreated Wills to complete it--the

alternative being that the manuscript was deemed unfit, and Wills

supplied all the materials. The poem itself gives little clue to the

mystery. When speaking of _The Universe_, Wills more than once alludes

to the ‘effective passages’ and the ‘filling up;’ but to a modern

reader it is not easy to distinguish which is which, the whole being

extraordinarily ineffective. The subject resolves itself into something

that cannot possibly be firmly grasped. A contemporary critic[158]

says not inappropriately: ‘Where in the name of criticism and common

sense, could he begin with a subject that had no beginning, or finish

with that which, being infinite and eternal, can have no end? He has

followed no plan--he has given his fancy the rein. His flight is wild

and discursive, but indicates a bearing in no particular direction. --

-- -- His poem is not a _whole_: any man might as well have tried to

cram the solar system into a cockle-shell as to produce a complete and

finished poem on such a subject.’ The following passage belongs, in the

critic’s opinion, to the happiest in the poem:

So array’d

In manifold radiance, Earth’s primeval spring

Walk’d on the bright’ning orb, lit by the Hours

And young exulting Elements, undefil’d,--

And circling, free from tempest, round her calm

Perennial brow,--the dewy Zephyrs, then,

From flower-zon’d mountains, wav’d their odorous wings

Over the young sweet vallies, whispering joy--

Then goodliest beam’d the unpolluted--bright--

Divine similitude of thoughtful man,

Serene above all creatures--breathing soul--

Fairest where all was fair,--pure sanctuary

Of those sweet thoughts, that with life’s earliest breath,

Up through the temperate air of Eden rose

To Heav’n’s gate, thrilling love!--Then, Nature,--then,

Thy Maker looked upon his work and smiled--

Seeing that it was good!--And gave thee charge

Thenceforth for evermore with constant eye

To watch the times and seasons, and preserve

The circling maze, exact.

These lines are, as a matter of fact, neither better nor worse than any

others of the two thousand of which this sorry production consists.

There are no traces of the rugged beauty of _Bertram_ and _Fredolfo_,

and it is really difficult to imagine that Maturin had any part in the

work. On the other hand it must be admitted that it is equally inferior

to the poetry later produced by Wills.[159] The matter ought to have

been taken very quietly by those whom it concerned, nor did it, to

judge from the record of Wills, stop their friendly intercourse. It may

lastly be mentioned that Maturin dedicated _The Universe_ to his old

antagonist Samuel Taylor Coleridge; which must have happened either in

a fit of Christian forgiveness or of deliberate irony.

* * * * *

The picture which Wills draws of Maturin is, it will be observed,

totally different from the description quoted in connection with his

mode of composing _Melmoth_. It also differs from what other scanty

records there are preserved of Maturin, which all agree that he was,

at that time, beginning to lead a retired life and appear but little

in society. His pecuniary embarrassments were extremely distressing;

the profits he had reaped by _Melmoth_ and _The Universe_ had probably

been swallowed up by the old debt he had contracted some time about

1815, besides which he undoubtedly was something of a spendthrift

and unpractical in business-transactions. His home had undergone a

melancholy change since the success of _Bertram_, as depicted by the

writer in _Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine_ 1846:

The inside of the house was gloomy and melancholy in the extreme: just

the house for the romancist who penned “Melmoth.” The dull kitchen

candle of the servant threw but a faint light; and my feet struck

with a lonely sound on the naked flags of the hall, which was barely

furnished with two chairs surmounted by his crest, a galloping horse;

the stairs were without carpets. On entering the drawing-room, it

almost appeared to be unfurnished. A single drugget partly covered

the floor, and a small table stood in the centre: but the entire end

nearest the door was occupied by a divan covered with scarlet, which

appeared strangely out of character with the general meagreness of the

apartment; beside the folding-doors was a square piano; at the fire

was placed an old armchair, in which I afterwards saw him sit for many

a weary hour, till three or four o’clock in the morning, while writing

the “Albigenses;” and on a small work-table between the windows lay a

very ancient writing-desk. Such was my first glimpse of the author’s

domicile, which had once been a witness of very different scenes.

The gloominess of Maturin’s existence was brightened by the return

of Lady Morgan to her native country in 1821, after an absence of

several years abroad. The little governess who had earned her first

laurels with _The Wild Irish Girl_ was now transformed into one of the

foremost literary celebrities of the day. In 1812 Miss Owenson had

become the wife of Dr. Thomas Charles Morgan, physician to the Marquis

of Abercorn, who had shortly before been ‘knighted by the viceroy--at

a hint, it is said, from the doctor’s enterprising fiancée. She had,

since then, published numerous novels, amongst others the Irish story

_O’Donnel_ (1814). Her greatest fame, however, was due to the extensive

work on _France_ (1817), the strongly liberal views of which had roused

the fury of the _Quarterly Review_ and caused the fierce contest of

which Maturin also had borne his share of the brunt in the vehement

attacks upon his best romances. From the rare and brief political

utterances in Maturin’s works, sermons, and letters, it may be gathered

that he rather inclined to toryism; but uninterested as he was in

politics, his opinions did not in any way bias his regard for Lady

Morgan, of whom he used to speak ‘in terms of the most extravagant

admiration.’[160] Though the two were the only authors of repute

residing in Dublin, there was no kind of jealousy between them. The

character of Lady Morgan was broad-minded and generous, and her desire

to help Maturin was sincere beyond any doubt. Her weekly _réunions_ in

Kildare Street, pleasantly described by her biographer,[161] were among

the few relaxations Maturin allowed himself in his later years:

In this agreeably situated mansion there was regularly held for a long

series of years, a still more voluminous series of most delightful

and select literary réunions, which are remembered by the surviving

few who had the privilege of access, with enthusiastic feelings of

pride and pleasure. A constant guest was the brilliant, eccentric,

and almost forgotten Charles Robert Maturin. Domestic sorrows

and pecuniary reverses threw a gloom over the later years of his

existence; and, as a contemporary record informs us, every inducement

failed to make him desert his melancholy hearth save the intellectual

circle which Lady Morgan illuminated by her sparkling wit, or the

romantic solitudes of Wicklow wherein some of his richest veins of

inspiration had been caught in happier bygone days.

Among the domestic sorrows was the loss of a child, in 1821,

immediately after its birth. When Lady Morgan called to inquire after

Mrs. Maturin during her confinement, Maturin sent her this reply: ‘My

angel is better, The Cherub is flown’--which words she noted down on

a letter she received from him shortly afterwards.--That there were

troubles also of another kind can be inferred from some lines in the

above-mentioned letter to Sir Charles: ‘You terrify me by saying

there is a _prejudice_ against me amongst the Catholics; what have

I done? I have never been a partizan--my voice was never heard at a

meeting--I am not a public man in the least--what _can_ I have done?’

Whatever this may have reference to, the answer obviously would have

been, that he had written _Melmoth_. Although he had never meant to

offend his Catholic townsmen, their resentment was not altogether

inexplicable, and it is certainly curious that it should have come

to him so unexpectedly. If the Methodists had not been favourably

disposed towards him after the publication of _Women_, he now got the

Catholics against him; but as it was only the errors of both creeds he

had wished to attack, he must have suffered much from the feeling of

having, perhaps, given personal offence.--Yet in all this dreariness

there would occasionally be outbursts of the old eccentricity and the

invincible desire sometimes to assume the rôle of a _grand seigneur_,

which he, in his harmless way, imagined best to suit him. The following

anecdote[162] has a characteristic ring about it:

Sir Charles raised a subscription for him, amounting to fifty pounds.

The first use he made of it was to give a grand party. There was

little furniture in the reception room, but at one end there had been

erected an old theatrical property throne under a canopy of crimson

velvet, where he and Mrs. Maturin sat to receive their visitors.--

That Maturin did not greatly care about the completion of _The

Universe_ is evident from the fact that he was, so early as 1821,

engaged on a new play. In a note to Lady Morgan he mentions that it

will be acted at Hawkins’--‘the profits will be far inferior to those

of Covent Garden, but they will be something.’ Still the play was,

later on, sent to Covent Garden, Sir Charles undertaking to use his

influence with Kean who appears, from the very first, to have been

unwilling to accept it. In a letter dated Dec. 16, 1822, Maturin writes

to Sir Charles:

I never felt my “lack of words” so great as at this moment when they

altogether fail me in adequately expressing my gratitude for your

kindness. Matters are not however so bad as it is _Elliston_, not

_Kean_, who has rejected the play. I have written to Kean to beg him

to read over the play _himself_, and to assure him I will acquiesce in

his judgment, whatever it be.

I need not say how much it would enhance my numerous obligations to

Lady Morgan were she to write to Kean merely to _enforce my request_,

to beg he will read over the play (which he has not done) and

determine _for himself_ whether it is worthy of his powers or not.

No decision of his can diminish my gratitude to Lady M---- and to you.

Whether there was an intervention on the part of Lady Morgan or not,

the play was doomed never to see the light. It can hardly have been

any other than the one to which Watts refers in his autobiographical

notes:[163]

He had another tragedy in the hands of Edmund Kean, but on this he

could obtain no decision whatever. It was entitled _Osmyn_, and is

said to have been the most careful and effective of his dramatic

compositions. I made many attempts to obtain its restitution, but in

vain. On one occasion I attacked Kean before a large party, and dwelt

upon the cruel injury which Maturin had sustained from his persistent

disregard of the matter. Finally, I obtained from him a promise that

the M. S. should be forthcoming, if I could call in Clarges Street for

it on the ensuing day. This of course I did, but was denied access to

Mr. Kean, who was said to be too ill to see me.

The only person who has been able to give an account of and publish

some extracts from the play is the writer in the _Irish Quarterly

Review_ 1852. He states that a completed tragedy called _The Siege of

Salerno_ was found among Maturin’s manuscripts after his death, without

explaining when and how he had an opportunity of seeing it. He states

further that the plot bears, in conception, some resemblance to Byron’s

_Siege of Corinth_--the hero in both works being, in fact, a renegade

who leads Turkish forces against a Christian town. The passage quoted

in the _Irish Quarterly Review_ consists of a scene where Osmyn--the

copy sent to Kean apparently bore the name of the hero--relates the

story of his life. He has formerly been the prince of Salerno, the very

town which he now attacks as a Turkish captain. He lived in happiness

with his wife Matilda, when suddenly his enemy

Manfred, the terror of the neighbouring states;

Plunderer of all, and tyrant of his own,

invaded his country. Osmyn was thrown into the dungeon of his own

castle, where he was kept for years. A time came when his prison walls

were destroyed by a tempest--that is, an earthquake--and he gained his

liberty. Being recognized by no one he wandered about in the streets

and became witness of a procession where Matilda, now the wife of

Manfred, was borne in solemn festival. In despair he left the country:

On the last shore of Italy I kissed

A cross my mother bound about my neck,

And flung it towards these towers. On Asia’s coast

I grasped the crescent.

The story, we see, is rather improbable, and the deliverance of Osmyn

from his prison belongs to the most hackneyed tricks of the older

school of terror. The hero is, however, typically Maturineian. He is a

kind of Bertram in Ottoman costume; the one returns as a robber-chief,

the other as the leader of an infidel army, and the speech of Osmyn is

a distinct echo from Maturing first play:

If thou would’st make man wretched, make him vile:

Sear up his conscience--make his mind a desert,

His heart an ulcer, and his frame a stone;

Countryless, friendless, wifeless, childless, Godless;

Accused of heaven, and hated.--Make him Osmyn.

Thus have they dealt with me.

The writer in the _Irish Quarterly Review_ assures his readers that

the play ‘abounds in passages of great power and beauty;’ the extracts

which he communicates, however, do not rise to the level of the best

pages in _Bertram_ or _Fredolfo_.--

One more tragedy contemplated by Maturin in his last years may yet

be mentioned. A motive from the recent history of France had been

suggested to him, to which he refers in a letter[164] of Oct. 20:th

1823:

I feel myself flattered by the reference to me contained in your

letter.--I am not disposed to think favourably of the French Tragedies

which are rather declamatory than impassioned but will do my utmost

with the subject you have sent me.

The allusion to Buonaparte, appears to me to constitute the _forte_

of the story, and as he is (fortunately for Europe) now dead, I

cannot think that the most inveterate Jacobin would be offended by a

representation of him on the stage to which I am convinced Mr. Kean’s

powers would give the most distinguished effect.

The recipient of this letter is not known, nor anything else

connected with the matter, with which all the biographers seem to be

unacquainted. Among other unfulfilled projects is said[165] to have

been a poem the scene of which was ‘to be laid in Ireland during the

period of harps and minstrels;’ besides which Maturin wrote,[166] some

time before his death, a short tale founded upon the family legend

quoted in the first chapter of the present study.

A determination of Maturin ‘to devote himself more exclusively to

the service of his calling’[167] led to the publication, in 1824,

of _Five Sermons on the Errors of the Roman Catholic Church_. These

controversial sermons were preached during the Lent of the same year

before an audience unparalleled in number. ‘Never since Dean Kirwan’s

time,’ it is stated in a contemporary memoir,[168] ‘were such crowds

attracted to the Parish Church as during the delivery of these sermons;

neither rain nor storm could subdue the anxiety of all classes and

all persuasions to hear them.’ The sermons are explicitly said to be

directed, not against Catholics, but Catholicism; Maturin endeavoured

earnestly to avoid a tone of personal offensiveness, although it is

much to be questioned whether he did not, in the following passage,

underrate the attachment of the Irish Catholics to their faith:

I will add, that of all the Protestant Ministers in Dublin, I have

happened to have the most extensive and intimate intercourse with

Roman Catholics, and that I have found many of them so truly amiable

and excellent, that I could heartily have wished myself, and all I

loved, to be “almost and altogether like unto them, _except their

bonds_”--but amongst all of them I have remarked such an obvious,

though tacit admission, of the errors of their Church--such an

earnest wish for scriptural instruction and mental enlargement--such

a desire for the only true _Catholic Emancipation_, the emancipation

of the intellect and the conscience, that though I would have felt it

unfit to turn the stream of social conversation into the channel of

controversy, I did most anxiously wish for an opportunity of pointing

out to them in a public address, those errors of which they themselves

appeared so deeply conscious.

The volume was received very favourably and reprinted in 1826.

* * * * *

In autumn 1824 appeared the last of Maturin’s lucubrations, a

historical novel called _The Albigenses_. Though of imposing

length--four volumes, together about 1500 pages--it was intended to be

but the first series of a great trilogy, ‘illustrative,’ as stated in

the preface, ‘of European feelings and manners in ancient times, in

middle, and in modern.’ How the second and third parts had been planned

is thus described:

The more subtle policy, improved system of government, and commencing

diffusion of literature in the second period,--and the still more

enlightened political system, confirmed knowledge, and popular

influence, that distinguish times nearer to our own,--give obvious

room for all that is picturesque, intelligent, and interesting in

description.

There is little doubt that Maturin was induced to turn to the

historical romance by the immense popularity of Scott, whose fame now

stood at its zenith. He knew that this _genre_, at any rate, would not

be objected to as obsolete or offensive to good feeling, as had been

the case with his previous work. An outward success, moreover, was

now more imperative than ever before, and everything could be hoped

from the public rage for historical novels. This field of fiction

was entirely new to Maturin; in _The Lovers’ Tale_ only the general

‘atmosphere’ is historical--the incidents might have taken place in

any age. The experiment, if praiseworthy, was decidedly hazardous; to

outdo Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis had been easy enough, but to enter

into competition with the Author of _Waverley_ was a serious matter

for a writer whose powers lay in depicting what was passing before

his own eyes, or else, what never could have happened at all. That

most contemporary critics nevertheless hailed _The Albigenses_ as

Maturin’s best work only proves their partiality for the style in

which it was written; of later judges even his greatest admirer admits

that Maturin’s attempt to ‘marry history to fiction’ turned out a

failure.[169]--