To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew
Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense," which depends
for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity, for
"the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the even
stronger and more primitive instinct of fear. Those who find Mrs.
Radcliffe's unruffled pace leisurely beyond endurance, or who
dislike her coldly reasonable methods of accounting for what is
only apparently supernatural, or who sometimes feel stifled by
the oppressive air of gentility that broods over her romantic
world, will find ample reparation in the melodramatic pages of
"Monk" Lewis. Here, indeed, may those who will and dare sup full
with horrors. Lewis, in reckless abandonment, throws to the winds
all restraint, both moral and artistic, that had bound his
predecessor. The incidents, which follow one another in
kaleidoscopic variety, are like the disjointed phases of a
delirium or nightmare, from which there is no escape. We are
conscious that his story is unreal or even ludicrous, yet Lewis
has a certain dogged power of driving us unrelentingly through
it, regardless of our own will. Literary historians have tended
to over-emphasise the connection between Mrs. Radcliffe and
Lewis. Their purposes and achievement are so different that it is
hardly accurate to speak of them as belonging to the same school.
It is true that in one of his letters Lewis asserts that he was
induced to go on with his romance, _The Monk_, by reading _The
Mysteries of Udolpho_, "one of the most interesting books that
has (sic) ever been written," and that he was struck by the
resemblance of his own character to that of Montoni;[40] but his
literary debt to Mrs. Radcliffe is comparatively insignificant.
His depredations on German literature are much more serious and
extensive. Lewis, indeed, is one of the Dick Turpins of fiction
and seizes his booty where he will in a high-handed and somewhat
unscrupulous fashion, but for many of Mrs. Radcliffe's treasures
he could find no use. Her picturesque backgrounds, her ingenious
explanations of the uncanny, her uneventful interludes and long
deferred but happy endings were outside his province. The moments
in her novels which Lewis admired and strove to emulate were
those during which the reader with quickened pulse breathlessly
awaits some startling development. Of these moments, there are,
it must be frankly owned, few in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Lewis's
mistake lay in trying to induce a more rapid palpitation, and to
prolong it almost uninterruptedly throughout his novel. By
attempting a physical and mental impossibility he courts
disaster. Mrs. Radcliffe's skeletons are decently concealed in
the family cupboard, Lewis's stalk abroad in shameless publicity.
In Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, the shadow fades and disappears just
when we think we are close upon the substance; for, after we have
long been groping in the twilight of fearful imaginings, she
suddenly jerks back the shutter to admit the clear light of
reason. In Lewis's wonder-world there are no elusive shadows; he
hurls us without preparation or initiation into a daylight orgy
of horrors.
Lewis was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, but a year
spent in Weimar (1792-3), where he zealously studied German, and
incidentally, met Goethe, seems to have left more obvious marks
on his literary career. To Lewis, Goethe is pre-eminently the
author of _The Sorrows of Werther_; and Schiller, he remarks
casually, "has, written several other plays besides _The
Robbers."_[41] He probably read Heinse's _Ardinghello_(1787),
Tieck's _Abdallah_ (1792-3), and _William Lovell_ (1794-6), many
of the innumerable dramas of Kotzebue, the romances of Weit
Weber, and other specimens of what Carlyle describes as "the bowl
and dagger department," where
"Black Forests and Lubberland, sensuality and horror,
the spectre nun and the charmed moonshine, shall not be
wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with huge whiskers,
and the most cat o' mountain aspect; tear-stained
sentimentalists, the grimmest man-eaters, ghosts and
the like suspicious characters will be found in
abundance."[42]
Throughout his life he seems to have made a hobby of the
literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or
lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and
the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of
his _Romantic Tales_(1808), such as _My Uncle's Garret Window_,
are uncommonly tame. Like the painter of a hoarding who must at
all costs arrest attention, he magnifies, exaggerates and
distorts. Once when rebuked for introducing black guards into a
country where they did not exist, he is said to have declared
that he would have made them sky-blue if he thought they would
produce any more effect.[43] Referring to _The Monk_, he
confesses: "Unluckily, in working it up, I thought that the
stronger my colours, the more effect would my picture
produce."[44]
One of his early attempts at fiction was a romance which he later
converted into his popular drama, _The Castle Spectre_. This play
was staged in 1798, and was reconverted by Miss Sarah Wilkinson
in 1820 into a romance. Lewis spreads his banquet with a lavish
hand, and crudities and absurdities abound, but he has a knack of
choosing situations well adapted for stage effect. The play,
aptly described by Coleridge as a "peccant thing of Noise, Froth
and Impermanence,"[45] would offer a happy hunting ground to
those who delight in the pursuit of "parallel passages." At the
age of twenty, during his residence at the Hague as _attaché_ to
the British embassy, in the summer of 1794, he composed in ten
weeks, his notorious romance, _The Monk_. On its publication in
1795 it was attacked on the grounds of profanity and indecency.
_The Monk_, despite its cleverness, is essentially immature, yet
it is not a childish work. It is much less youthful, for
instance, than Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. The
inflamed imagination, the violent exaggeration of emotion and of
character, the jeering cynicism and lack of tolerance, the
incoherent formlessness, are all indications of adolescence. In
_The Monk_ there are two distinct stories, loosely related. The
story of Raymond and Agnes, into which the legends of the
bleeding nun and Wandering Jew are woven with considerable skill,
was published more than once as a detached and separate work. It
is concerned with the fate of two unhappy lovers, who are parted
by the tyranny of their parents and of the church, and who endure
manifold agonies. The physical torture of Agnes is described in
revolting detail, for Lewis has no scruple in carrying the ugly
far beyond the limits within which it is artistic. The happy
ending of their harrowing story is incredible. By making
Ambrosio, on the verge of his hideous crimes, harshly condemn
Agnes for a sin of the same nature as that which he is about to
commit, Lewis forges a link between the two stories. But the
connection is superficial, and the novel suffers through the
distraction of our interest. In the story of Ambrosio, Antonia
plays no part in her own downfall. She is as helpless as a
plaster statue demolished by an earthquake. The figure of Matilda
has more vitality, though Lewis changes his mind about her
character during the course of the book, and fails to make her
early history consistent with the ending of his story. She is
certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a passionate
soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep:
"The time will come when you will be convinced that my passion is
pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole
weight of my sorrows." But when the devil appears, he declares to
Ambrosio:
"I saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not
principle, and I seized the fit moment for your
seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the
Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty
spirit assume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded
to the blandishments of Matilda."
The discrepancy is obvious, but this blemish is immaterial, for
the whole story is unnatural. The deterioration in Ambrosio's
character--though Lewis uses all his energy in striving to make
it appear probable by discussing the effect of environment--is
too swift.
Lewis is at his best when he lets his youthful, high spirits have
full play. His boyish exaggeration makes Leonella, Antonia's
aunt, seem like a pantomime character, who has inadvertently
stepped into a melodrama, but the caricature is amusing by its
very crudity. She writes in red ink to express "the blushes of
her cheek," when she sends a message of encouragement to the
Conde d'Ossori. This and other puerile jests are more tolerable
than Lewis's attempts to depict passion or describe character.
Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, passionate
faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style
is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes he uses a short,
staccato sentence to enforce his point, but more often we are
engulfed in a swirling welter of words. He delights in the
declamatory language of the stage, and all his characters speak
as if they were behind the footlights, shouting to the gallery.
A cold-blooded reviewer, in whom the detective instinct was
strong, indicated the sources of _The Monk_ so mercilessly, that
Lewis appears in his critique[46] rather as the perpetrator of a
series of ingenious thefts than as the creator of a novel:
"The outline of the Monk Ambrosio's story was suggested
by that of the Santon Barissa [Barsisa] in the
_Guardian_:[47] the form of temptation is borrowed from
_The Devil in Love_ of Canzotte [Cazotte], and the
catastrophe is taken from _The Sorcerer_. The
adventures of Raymond and Agnes are less obviously
imitations, yet the forest scene near Strasburg brings
to mind an incident in Smollett's _Count Fathom_; the
bleeding nun is described by the author as a popular
tale of the Germans,[48] and the convent prison
resembles the inflictions of Mrs. Radcliffe."
The industrious reviewer overlooks the legend of the Wandering
Jew, which might have been added to the list of Lewis's
"borrowings." It must be admitted that Lewis transforms, or at
least remodels, what he borrows. Addison's story relates how a
sage of reputed sanctity seduces and slays a maiden brought to
him for cure, and later sells his soul. Lewis abandons the
Oriental setting, converts the santon into a monk and embroiders
the story according to his fancy. Scott alludes to a Scottish
version of what is evidently a widespread legend.[49] The
resemblance of the catastrophe--presumably the appearance of
Satan in the form of Lucifer--to the scene in Mickle's
_Sorcerer_, which was published among Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_
(1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames
and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two
scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage
from _The Romance of the Forest_, but, if so she is exaggerated
almost beyond recognition.
In fashioning as the villain of her latest novel, _The Italian_,
a monk, whose birth is wrapt in obscurity, Mrs. Radcliffe may
have been influenced by Lewis's _Monk_ which had appeared two
years before. Both Schedoni and Ambrosio are reputed saints, both
are plunged into the blackest guilt, and both are victims of the
Inquisition. Mrs. Radcliffe, it is true, recoils from introducing
the enemy of mankind, but, before the secrets are finally
revealed, we almost suspect Schedoni of having dabbled in the
Black Arts, and his actual crime falls short of our expectations.
The "explained supernatural" plays a less prominent part in _The
Italian_ than in the previous novels, and Mrs. Radcliffe relies
for her effect rather on sheer terror. The dramatic scene where
Schedoni stealthily approaches the sleeping Ellena at midnight
recalls the more highly coloured, but less impressive scene in
Antonia's bedchamber. The fate of Bianchi, Ellena's aunt, is
strangely reminiscent of that of Elvira, Antonia's mother. The
convent scenes and the overbearing abbess had been introduced
into Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier novels; but in _The Italian_, the
anti-Roman feeling is more strongly emphasised than usual. This
may or may not have been due to the influence of Lewis. There is
no direct evidence that Mrs. Radcliffe had read _The Monk_, but
the book was so notorious that a fellow novelist would be almost
certain to explore its pages. Hoffmann's romance, _Elixir des
Teufels_ (1816), is manifestly written under its inspiration.
Coincidence could not account for the remarkable resemblances to
incidents in the story of Ambrosio.
The far-famed collection of _Tales of Terror_ appeared in 1799,
_The Tales of Wonder_ in 1801. The rest of Lewis's work consists
mainly of translations and adaptations from the German. He
revelled in the horrific school of melodrama. He delighted in the
kind of German romance parodied by Meredith in _Farina_, where
Aunt Lisbeth tells Margarita of spectres, smelling of murder and
the charnel-breath of midnight, who "uttered noises that wintered
the blood and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet
long; ay, and kept it stiff." _The Bravo of Venice_ (1805) is a
translation of Zschokke's _Abellino, der Grosse Bandit_, but
Lewis invented a superfluous character, Monaldeschi, Rosabella's
destined bridegroom, apparently with the object that Abellino
might slay him early in the story--and added a concluding
chapter. At the outset of the story, Rosalvo, a man after Lewis's
own heart, declares:
"To astonish is my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can
never act like common men," and thereupon proceeds to prove by
his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a
double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and
by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise
of a noble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter,
Rosabella. The climax of the story is reached when Flodoardo,
under oath to deliver up the bandit Abellino, appears before the
Doge at the appointed hour and reveals his double identity. He is
hailed as the saviour of Hungary, and wins Rosabella as his
bride. In the second edition of _The Bravo of Venice_, a romance
in four volumes by M. G. Lewis, _Legends of the Nunnery_, is
announced as in the press. There seems to be no record of it
elsewhere. _Feudal Tyrants_ (1806), a long romance from the
German, connected with the story of William Tell, consists of a
series of memoirs loosely strung together, in which the most
alarming episode is the apparition of the pale spectre of an aged
monk. In _Blanche and Osbright, or Mistrust_ (1808),[50] which is
not avowedly a translation, Lewis depicts an even more revolting
portrait than that of Abellino in his bravo's disguise. He adds
detail after detail without considering the final effect on the
eye:
"Every muscle in his gigantic form seemed convulsed by
some horrible sensation; the deepest gloom darkened
every feature; the wind from the unclosed window
agitated his raven locks, and every hair appeared to
writhe itself. His eyeballs glared, his teeth
chattered, his lips trembled; and yet a smile of
satisfied vengeance played horribly around them. His
complexion seemed suddenly to be changed to the dark
tincture of an African; the expression of his
countenance was dreadful, was diabolical. Magdalena, as
she gazed upon his face, thought that she gazed upon a
demon."
Here, to quote the Lady Hysterica Belamour, we have surely the
"horrid, horrible, horridest horror." But in _Königsmark the
Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia_ (1818), Lewis's caste includes
an enormous yellow-eyed spider, a wolf who changes into a peasant
and disappears amid a cloud of sulphur, and a ghost who sheds
three ominous drops of boiling blood. It was probably such
stories as this that Peacock had in mind when he declared,
through Mr. Flosky, that the devil had become "too base and
popular" for the surfeited appetite of readers of fiction. Yet,
as Carlyle once exclaimed of the German terror-drama, as
exemplified in Kotzebue, Grillparzer and Klingemann, whose
stock-in-trade is similar to that of Lewis: "If any man wish to
amuse himself irrationally, here is the ware for his money."[51]
Byron, who had himself attempted in _Oscar and Alva_ (_Hours of
Idleness_, 1807) a ballad in the manner of Lewis, describes with
irony the triumphs of terror:
"Oh! wonderworking Lewis! Monk or Bard,
Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou;
Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand,
By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band;
Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page
To please the females of our modest age;
All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain
Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
At whose command 'grim women' throng in crowds
And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds
With small grey men--wild yagers and what not,
To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;
Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease.
Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell!"[52]
Scott's delightfully discursive review of _The Fatal Revenge or
The Family of Montorio_ (1810), not only forms a fitting
introduction to the romances of Maturin, but presents a lively
sketch of the fashionable reading of the day. It has been
insinuated that the _Quarterly Review_ was too heavy and serious,
that it contained, to quote Scott's own words, "none of those
light and airy articles which a young lady might read while her
hair was papering." To redeem the reputation of the journal,
Scott gallantly undertook to review some of the "flitting and
evanescent productions of the times." After a laborious
inspection of the contents of a hamper full of novels, he arrived
at the painful conclusion that "spirits and patience may be as
completely exhausted in perusing trifles as in following
algebraical calculations." He condemns the authors of the Gothic
romance, not for their extravagance, a venial offence, but for
their monotony, a deadly sin.
"We strolled through a variety of castles, each of
which was regularly called Il Castello; met with as
many captains of condottieri, heard various
ejaculations of Santa Maria and Diabolo; read by a
decaying lamp and in a tapestried chamber dozens of
legends as stupid as the main history; examined such
suites of deserted apartments as might set up a
reasonable barrack, and saw as many glimmering lights
as would make a respectable illumination." It was no
easy task to bore Sir Walter Scott, and an excursion
into the byeways of early nineteenth century fiction
proves abundantly the justice of his satire. Such
novelists as Miss Sarah Wilkinson or Mrs. Eliza
Parsons, whose works were greedily devoured by
circulating library readers a hundred years ago,
deliberately concocted an unappetising gallimaufry of
earlier stories and practised the harmless deception of
serving their insipid dishes under new and imposing
names. A writer in the _Annual Review_, so early as
1802, complains in criticising _Tales of Superstition
and Chivalry_:
"It is not one of the least objections against these
fashionable fictions that the imagery of them is
essentially monstrous. Hollow winds, clay-cold hands,
clanking chains and clicking clocks, with a few similar
etcetera are continually tormenting us."
Tales of terror were often issued in the form of sixpenny
chapbooks, enlivened by woodcuts daubed in yellow, blue, red and
green. Embellished with these aids to the imagination, they were
sold in thousands. To the readers of a century ago, a "blue book"
meant, as Medwin explains in his life of Shelley, not a pamphlet
filled with statistics, but "a sixpenny shocker."[53] The
notorious Minerva Press catered for wealthier patrons, and, it is
said, sold two thousand copies of Mrs. Bennett's _Beggar Girl and
her Benefactors_ on the day of publication, at thirty-six
shillings for the seven volumes. Samuel Rogers recalled Lane, the
head of the firm, riding in a carriage and pair with two footmen,
wearing gold cockades.[54] Scott was careful not to disclose the
names of the novelists he derided, but his hamper probably
contained a selection of Mrs. Parsons' sixty works, and perhaps
two of Miss Wilkinson's, with their alluring titles, _The Priory
of St. Clair, or The Spectre of the Murdered Nun_; _The Convent
of the Grey Penitents, or The Apostate Nun_. Perchance, he found
there Mrs. Henrietta Rouvière's romance, (published in the same
year as _Montorio_,) _A Peep at our Ancestors_ (1807), describing
the reign of King Stephen. Mrs. Rouvière, in her preface,
"flatters herself that, aided by records and documents,
she may have succeeded in a correct though faint sketch
of the times she treats, and in affording, if through a
dim yet not distorted nor discoloured glass, A Peep at
our Ancestors";
but her story is entirely devoid of the colour with which Mrs.
Radcliffe, her model, contrived to decorate the past. It is,
moreover, written in a style so opaque that it obscures her
images from view as effectually as a piece of ground glass. To
describe the approach of twilight--an hour beloved by writers of
romance--she attempts a turgid paraphrase of Gray's Elegy:
"The grey shades of an autumnal evening gradually stole
over the horizon, progressively throwing a duskier hue
on the surrounding objects till glimmering confusion
encompassing the earth shut from the accustomed eye the
well-known view, leaving conjecture to mark its
boundaries."
The adventures of Adelaide and her lover, Walter of Gloucester,
are so insufferably tedious that Scott doubtless decided to
"leave to conjecture" their interminable vicissitudes. The names
of other novels, whose pages he may impatiently have scanned, may
be garnered by those who will, from such works as _Living
Authors_ (1817), or from the four volumes of Watts' elaborate
compilation, the _Bibliotheca Britannica_ (1824). The titles are,
indeed, lighter and more entertaining reading than the books
themselves. Anyone might reasonably expect to read _Midnight
Horrors, or The Bandit's Daughter_, as Henry Tilney vows he read
_The Mysteries of Udolpho_, with "hair on end all the time"; but
the actual story, notwithstanding a wandering ball of fire, that
acts as guide through the labyrinths of a Gothic castle, is
conducive of sleep rather than shudders. The notoriety of Lewis's
monk may be estimated by the procession of monks who followed in
his train. There were, to select a few names at random, _The New
Monk_, by one R.S., Esq.; _The Monk of Madrid_, by George Moore
(1802); _The Bloody Monk of Udolpho_, by T.J. Horsley Curties;
_Manfroni, the One-handed Monk_, whose history was borrowed,
together with those of Abellino, the terrific bravo, and Rinaldo
Rinaldini,[55] by "J.J." from Miss Flinders' library;[56] and
lastly, as a counter-picture, a monk without a scowl, _The
Benevolent Monk_, by Theodore Melville (1807). The nuns,
including "Rosa Matilda's" _Nun of St. Omer's_, Miss Sophia
Francis's _Nun of Misericordia_ (1807) and Miss Wilkinson's
_Apostate Nun_, would have sufficed to people a convent. Perhaps
_The Convent of the Grey Penitents_ would have been a suitable
abode for them; but most of them were, to quote Crabbe, "girls no
nunnery can tame." Lewis's Venetian bravo was boldly transported
to other climes. We find him in Scotland in _The Mysterious
Bravo_, or _The Shrine of St. Alstice, A Caledonian Legend_, and
in Austria in _The Bravo of Bohemia or The Black Forest_. No
country is safe from the raids of banditti. _The Caledonian
Banditti_ or _The Banditti of the Forest_, or _The Bandit of
Florence_--all very much alike in their manners and morals--make
the heroine's journey a perilous enterprise. The romances of Mrs.
Radcliffe were rifled unscrupulously by the snappers-up of
unconsidered trifles, and many of the titles are variations on
hers. In emulation of _The Romance of the Forest_ we find George
Walker's _Romance of the Cavern_ (1792) and Miss Eleanor Sleath's
_Mysteries of the Forest_. Novelists appreciated the magnetic
charm of the word "mystery" on a title-page, and after _The
Mysteries of Udolpho_ we find such seductive names as _Mysterious
Warnings_ and _Mysterious Visits_, by Mrs. Parsons; _Horrid
Mysteries_, translated from the German of the Marquis von Grosse,
by R. Will (1796); _The Mystery of the Black Tower_ and _The
Mystic Sepulchre_, by John Palmer, a schoolmaster of Bath; _The
Mysterious Wanderer_ (1807), by Miss Sophia Reeve; _The
Mysterious Hand or Subterranean Horrors_ (1811), by A.J.
Randolph; and _The Mysterious Freebooter_ (1805), by Francis
Lathom. Castles and abbeys were so persistently haunted that Mrs.
Rachel Hunter, a severely moral writer, advertises one of her
stories as _Letitia: A Castle Without a Spectre_. Mystery slips,
almost unawares, into the domestic story. There are, for
instance, vague hints of it in Charlotte Smith's _Old Manor
House_ (1793). The author of _The Ghost_ and of _More Ghosts_
adopts the pleasing pseudonym of Felix Phantom. The gloom of
night broods over many of the stories, for we know:
"affairs that walk,
As they say spirits do, at midnight, have
In them a wilder nature than the business
That seeks despatch by day,"
and we are confronted with titles like _Midnight Weddings_, by
Mrs. Meeke, one of Macaulay's favourite "bad-novel writers," _The
Midnight Bell_, awakening memories of Duncan's murder, by George
Walker, or _The Nocturnal Minstrel_ (1809), by Miss Sleath. These
"dismal treatises" abound in reminiscences of Mrs. Radcliffe and
of "Monk" Lewis, and many of them hark back as far as _The Castle
of Otranto_ for some of their situations. The novels of Miss
Wilkinson may perhaps serve as well as those of any of her
contemporaries to show that Scott was not unduly harsh in his
condemnation of the romances fashionable in the first decade of
the nineteenth century, when "tales of terror jostle on the
road."[57] The sleeping potion, a boon to those who weave the
intricate pattern of a Gothic romance, is one of Miss Wilkinson's
favourite devices, and is employed in at least three of her
stories. In _The Chateau de Montville_ (1803) it is administered
to the amiable Louisa to aid Augustine in his sinister designs,
but she ultimately escapes, and is wedded by Octavius, who has
previously been borne off by a party of pirates. He "finds the
past unfortunate vicissitudes of his life amply recompensed by
her love." In _The Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Rosalthe
happily avoids the opiate, as she overhears the plans of her
unscrupulous husband, who, it seems, has "an unquenchable thirst
of avarice," and desires to win a wealthier bride. She flees to a
"cottage ornée" on Finchley Common, the home, it may be
remembered, of Thackeray's Washerwoman; and the thrills we expect
from a novel of terror are reserved for the second volume, and
arise out of the adventures of the next generation. After
Rosalthe's death, spectres, blue flames, corpses, thunderstorms
and hairbreadth escapes are set forth in generous profusion.
In _The Priory of St. Clair_ (1811), Julietta, who has been
forced into a convent against her will, like so many other
heroines, is drugged and conveyed as a corpse to the Count de
Valvé's Gothic castle. She comes to life only to be slain before
the high altar, and revenges herself after death by haunting the
count regularly every night. _The Fugitive Countess or Convent of
St. Ursula_ (1807) contains three spicy ingredients--a mock
burial, a concealed wife and a mouldering manuscript. The social
status of Miss Wilkinson's characters is invariably lofty, for no
self-respecting ghost ever troubles the middle classes; and her
manner is as ambitious as her matter. Her personages, in _Lopez
and Aranthe_, behave and talk thus:
"Heavenly powers!" exclaimed Aranthe, "it is Dorimont, or else my
eyes deceive me!" Overpowered with surprise and almost
breathless, she sunk on the carpet. Lopez stood aghast, his
countenance was of a deadly pale, a glass of wine he had in his
hand he let fall to the floor, while he articulated: "What an
alteration in that once beauteous countenance!"
Miss Wilkinson's sentences stagger and lurch uncertainly, but she
delights in similes and other ornaments of style:
"Adeline Barnett was fair as a lily, tall as the pine,
her fine dark eyes sparkling as diamonds, and she moved
with the majestic air of a goddess, but pride and
ambition appeared on the brow of this famed maiden, and
destroying the effect of her charms."
She is, in fact, more addicted to "gramarye" than to
"grammar"--the fault with which Byron, in a note to _English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, charged the hero and heroine of
Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Her heroes do not merely
love, they are "enamoured to a romantic degree." Her arbours are
"composed of jasmine, white rose, and other odoriferous sweets of
Flora." She sprinkles French phrases with an airy nonchalance
worthy of the Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs are included
in Barrett's _Heroine_. Her duchesses "figure away with
_éclat_"--"a party _quarrie_ assemble at their _dejeune_." It is
noteworthy that by 1820 even Miss Wilkinson had learnt to despise
the spectres in whom she had gloried during her amazing career.
In _The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_ (1820) the ghost is
ignominiously exposed, and proved to be "a tall figure dressed in
white, and a long, transparent veil flowing over her whole
figure," while the heroine Amelia speaks almost in the accents of
Catherine Morland:
"My governess has been affirming that there are Gothic
buildings without spectres or legends of a ghostly
nature attached to them; now, what is a castle or abbey
worth without such appendage?; do tell me candidly, are
none of the turrets of your old family mansion in
Monmouth rendered thus terrific by some unquiet,
wandering spirit?, dare the peasantry pass it after
twilight, or if they are forced into that temerity, do
not their teeth chatter, their hair stand erect and
their poor knees knock together?"
That Miss Wilkinson, who, for twenty years, had conscientiously
striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last
to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a
piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen. When even the
enchantress disavowed her belief in them, the ghosts must surely
have fled shrieking and affrighted and thought never more to
raise their diminished heads.
From a medley of novels, similar to those of Miss Wilkinson,
Scott singled out for commendation _The Fatal Revenge or The
Family of Montorio_, by "Jasper Denis Murphy," or the Rev.
Charles Robert Maturin. Amid the chaos of horror into which
Maturin hurls his readers, Scott shrewdly discerned the spirit
and animation which, though often misdirected, pervade his whole
work. The story is but a grotesque distortion of life, yet Scott
found himself "insensibly involved in the perusal and at times
impressed with no common degree of respect for the powers of the
author." His generous estimate of Maturin's gifts and his
prediction of future success is the more impressive, because _The
Fatal Revenge_ undeniably belongs to the very class of novels he
was ridiculing.
Maturin was an eccentric Irish clergyman, who diverted himself by
weaving romances and constructing tragedies. He loved to mingle
with the gay and frivolous; he affected foppish attire, and
prided himself on his exceptional skill in dancing. His
indulgence in literary work was probably but another expression
of his longing to escape from the strait and narrow way
prescribed for a Protestant clergyman. Wild anecdotes are told of
his idiosyncrasies.[58] He preferred to compose his stories in a
room full of people, and he found a noisy argument especially
invigorating. To prevent himself from taking part in the
conversation, he used to cover his mouth with paste composed of
flour and water. Sometimes, we are told, he would wear a red
wafer upon his brow, as a signal that he was enduring the throes
of literary composition and expected forbearance and
consideration. It is said that he once missed preferment in the
church because he absentmindedly interviewed his prospective
vicar with his head bristling with quills like a porcupine. He is
said to have insisted on his wife's using rouge though she had
naturally a high colour, and to have gone fishing in a
resplendent blue coat and silk stockings. Such was the flamboyant
personality of the man whose first novel attracted the kindly
attention of Scott. His oddities, which would have rejoiced the
heart of Dickens, are not without significance in a study of his
literary work, for his love of emphasis and exaggeration are
reflected in both the substance and style of his novels.
Maturin's writings fall into three periods. Of his three early
novels, _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_ (1807),
_The Wild Irish Boy_ (1808) and _The Milesian Chief_ (1812), the
first only is a tale of horror. _The Wild Irish Boy_ is a
domestic story, and forms a suitable companion for Lady Morgan's
_Wild Irish Girl_. _The Milesian Chief_ is a historical novel,
and is now chiefly remembered on account of the likeness of the
opening chapters to Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ (1819). After
the publication of these novels, Maturin turned his attention to
the stage. His first tragedy, _Bertram_ (1816), received the
encouragement of Scott and Byron. The character of Bertram is
modelled on that of Schiller's robber-chief, Karl von Moor, who
captivated the imagination of Coleridge himself, and who is
reflected in _Osorio_ and perhaps in Mrs. Radcliffe's villains.
The action of the melodrama moves swiftly, and abounds in the
"moving situations" Maturin loved to handle. _Bertram_ was
succeeded in 1817 by _Manuel_, and in 1819 by _Fredolfo_.
Meanwhile Maturin had returned to novel-writing. _Women, or Pour
et Contre_, with its lifelike sketches of Puritanical society and
clever characterisation, appeared in 1818, and was favourably
reviewed by Scott.[59] _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's
masterpiece, was published in 1820, and was succeeded in 1824 by
his last work, _The Albigenses_, a historical romance, following
Scott's design rather than that of Mrs. Radcliffe.
In reviewing _The Family of Montorio_, Scott prudently attempted
only a brief survey of the plot, and forsook Maturin's sequence
of events. In his sketch the outline of the story is
comparatively clear. In the novel itself we wander, bewildered,
baffled and distracted through labyrinthine mazes. No Ariadne
awaits on the threshold with the magic ball of twine to guide us
through the complicated windings. We stumble along blind alleys
desperately retracing our weary steps, and, after stumbling alone
and unaided to the very end, reach the darkly concealed clue when
it has ceased to be either of use or of interest to us. Many an
adventurer must have lain down, dispirited and exhausted, without
ever reaching his distant and elusive goal. Disentangled and
simplified almost beyond recognition, the story runs thus: In
1670, Count Orazio and his younger brother are the sole
representatives of the family of Montorio. Orazio has married
Erminia di Vivaldi, whom he loves devotedly. She does not return
his love. The younger brother determines to take advantage of
this circumstance to gain the title and estates for himself, and
succeeds in arousing Orazio's jealousy against a young officer,
Verdoni, to whom Erminia had formerly been deeply attached. In a
violent passion Orazio slays Verdoni before the eyes of Erminia,
who falls dead at his feet. This part of his design accomplished,
the younger brother plots to murder Orazio himself, who, however,
discovers the innocence of his wife and the hideous perfidy of
his brother. Temporarily bereft of reason, Orazio sojourns alone
on a desert island. When his senses are restored, he resolves to
devote the rest of his life to vengeance. For fifteen years he
buries himself in occult studies, and when his diabolical schemes
have matured, returns, disguised as the monk Schemoli, to the
scene of the murder. He becomes confessor to his brother, who has
assumed the title and estates. It is his intention to compel the
Count's sons, Annibal and Ippolito, to murder their father. Death
at the hands of parricides seems to him the only appropriate
catastrophe for the Count's career of infamy. To reconcile the
two victims--Annibal and Ippolito--to their task, he "relies
mainly on the doctrine of fatalism." The most complex and
ingenious "machinery" is used to work upon their superstitious
feelings. No device is too tortuous if it aid his purpose. Even
the pressure of the Inquisition is brought to bear on one of the
brothers. Each, after protracted agony, submits to his destiny,
and the swords of the two brothers meet in the Count's body. When
the murder is safely accomplished, it is proved that Annibal and
Ippolito are the sons, not of the Count, but of Schemoli and
Erminia. By the irony of fate the knowledge comes too late for
Schemoli to save his children from the crime. At the close of a
lengthy trial the two brothers are released, but deprived of
their lands. Ultimately they die fighting in the siege of
Barcelona. Schemoli perishes, in the approved Gothic manner, by
self-administered poison. Intertwined with the main theme of
Schemoli's fatal revenge are the love-stories of the two
brothers. Rosolia, a nun, who seems to have been acquainted with
Shakespeare's comedies, disguises herself as a page, and devotes
her life to the service of Ippolito and to the composition of
sentimental verses. She only reveals her sex just before her
death, though we have guessed it from her first appearance.
Ildefonsa, who is beloved of Annibal, has been forced into a
convent against her will--a fate almost inevitable in the realm
of Gothic romance. When letters are received authorising her
release from the vows, a pitiless mother-superior reports that
she is dead. She is immured, but an earthquake sets her free, for
Maturin will move heaven and earth to effect his purposes. The
ill-fated maiden dies shortly afterwards. Ere the close it proves
that Ildefonsa was the daughter of Erminia, who had been secretly
married to Verdoni before her union with Orazio. Such is the
skeleton of Maturin's story, when its scattered members have been
patiently collected and fitted together. The impressive figure of
Schemoli, with his unholy power of fascinating his reluctant
accomplices, lends to the book the only sort of unity it
possesses. But even he fails to arouse a sense of fear strong
enough to fix our attention to so wandering a story. Like the
doomed brothers, we drift dejectedly through inexplicable
terrors, and we re-echo with fervour Annibal's dolorous cry:
"Why should I be shut up in this house of horrors to
deal with spirits and damned things and the secrets of
the infernal world while there are so many paths open
to pleasure, the varieties of human intercourse and the
enjoyment of life?"
Maturin, a disciple of Mrs. Radcliffe, feels it his duty to
explain away the apparently miraculous incidents in his story,
but he lacks the persevering ingenuity that partly compensates
for her frauds. On a single page he calmly discloses secrets
which have harassed us for four volumes, and his long-deferred
explanations are paltry and incredible. The bleeding figures that
wrought so painfully on the sensitive nerves of Ippolito are
merely waxen images that spout blood automatically.
Disappearances and reappearances, which seemed supernatural, are
simply effected by private exits and entrances. Other startling
phenomena are accounted for in the same trivial fashion.
Maturin seems to have crowded into his story nearly every
character and incident that had been employed in earlier Gothic
romances. Schemoli is a remarkably faithful portrait of Mrs.
Radcliffe's Schedoni. From beneath his cowl flash the piercing
eyes, whose very glance will daunt the bravest heart; his sallow
visage is furrowed with the traces of bygone passions; he shuns
society, and is dreaded by his associates. The oppressed maiden,
driven into a nunnery, drugged and immured, the ambitious
countess, the devoted, loquacious servant, the inhuman
abbess--all play their accustomed parts. The background shifts
from the robber's den to the ruined chapel, from the castle vault
to the dungeon of the Inquisition, each scene being admirably
suited to the situation contrived, or the emotion displayed.
Maturin had accurately inspected the passages and trap-doors of
Otranto. No item, not a rusty lock, not a creaking hinge, had
escaped his vigilant eye. He knew intimately every nook and
cranny of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. He had viewed with
trepidation their blood-stained floors, their skeletons and
corpses, and had carefully calculated the psychological effect of
these properties. He had gazed with starting eye on the lurid
horrors of "Monk" Lewis, and had carried away impressions so
distinct that he, perhaps unwittingly, transferred them to the
pages of his own story. But Maturin's reading was not strictly
confined to the school of terror. He had studied Shakespeare's
tragedies, and these may have suggested to him the idea of
enhancing the interest of his story by dissecting human motive
and describing passionate feeling. In depicting the remorse of
the count and his wife Zenobia, who had committed a murder to
gratify their ambition, and who are tormented by ugly dreams,
Maturin inevitably draws from _Macbeth_. Zenobia, the stronger
character, reviles her husband for indulging in sickly fancies
and strives to embolden him:
"Like a child you run from a mask you have yourself painted."
He replies in a free paraphrase of _Hamlet_:
"It is this cursed domestic sensibility of guilt that makes
cowards
of us all."
Maturin is distinguished from the incompetent horde of
romance-writers, whom Scott condemned, by the powerful eloquence
of his style and by his ability to analyse emotion, to write as
if he himself were swayed by the feeling he describes. His insane
extravagances have at least the virtue that they come flaming hot
from an excited imagination. The passage quoted by
Scott--Orazio's attempt to depict his state of mind after he had
heard of his brother's perfidy--may serve to illustrate the force
and vigour of his language:
"Oh! that midnight darkness of the soul in which it
seeks for something whose loss has carried away every
sense but one of utter and desolate deprivation; in
which it traverses leagues in motion and worlds in
thought without consciousness of relief, yet with a
dread of pausing. I had nothing to seek, nothing to
recover; the whole world could not restore me an atom,
could not show me again a glimpse of what I had been or
lost, yet I rushed on as if the next step would reach
shelter and peace."
_Melmoth the Wanderer_ has found many admirers. It fascinated
Rossetti,[60] Thackeray[61] and Miss Mitford.[62] It was praised
by Balzac, who wrote a satirical sequel--_Melmoth Reconcilié à
L'Eglise_ (1835), and by Baudelaire, and exercised a considerable
influence on French literature.[63] It consists of a series of
tales, strung together in a complicated fashion. In each tale the
Wanderer, who has bartered his soul in return for prolonged life,
may, if he can, persuade someone to take the bargain off his
hands.[64] He visits those who are plunged in despair. His
approach is heralded by strange music, and his eyes have a
preternatural lustre that terrifies his victims. No one will
agree to his "incommunicable condition."
The bird's-eye view of an Edinburgh Reviewer who described
_Melmoth_ as "the sacrifice of Genius in the Temple of False
Taste," will give some idea of the bewildering variety of its
contents:
"His hero is a modern Faustus, who has bartered his
soul with the powers of darkness for protracted life
and unlimited worldly enjoyment; his heroine, a species
of insular goddess, a virgin Calypso of the Indian
Ocean, who, amid flowers and foliage, lives upon figs
and tamarinds, associates with peacocks and monkeys, is
worshipped by the occasional visitants of her island,
finds her way into Spain where she is married to the
aforesaid hero by the hand of a dead hermit, the ghost
of a murdered domestic being the witness of her
nuptials; and finally dies in a dungeon of the
Inquisition at Madrid. To complete this phantasmagoric
exhibition, we are presented with sybils and misers,
parricides, maniacs in abundance, monks with scourges
pursuing a naked youth streaming with blood;
subterranean Jews surrounded by the skeletons of their
wives and children; lovers blasted by lightning, Irish
hags, Spanish grandees, shipwrecks, caverns, Donna
Claras and Donna Isidoras--all exposed to each other in
violent and glaring contrast and all their adventures
narrated with the same undeviating display of turgid,
vehement, and painfully elaborated language."[65]
This breathless sentence gives some conception of the delirious
imagery of Maturin's romance, but the book is worthy of a more
respectful, unhurried survey. _Melmoth_ shows a distinct advance
on _Montorio_ in constructive power. Each separate story is
perfectly clear and easy to follow, in spite of the elaborate
interlacing. The romance opens with the death of a miser in a
desolate Irish farmstead, with harpies clustering at his bedside.
His nephew and heir, John Melmoth, is adjured to destroy a
certain manuscript and a portrait of an ancestor with eyes "such
as one feels they wish they had never seen and feels they can
never forget." Alone at midnight, John Melmoth reads the
manuscript, which is reputed to have been written by Stanton, an
English traveller in Spain, about 1676. The document relates a
startling story of a mysterious Englishman who appears at a
Spanish wedding with disastrous consequences, and reappears
before Stanton in a madhouse offering release on dreadful
conditions. After reading it, John Melmoth decides to burn the
family portrait. He is visited by a sinister form, who proves
that he is no figment of the imagination by leaving black and
blue marks on his relative's wrist. The next night a ship is
wrecked in a storm. The Wanderer appears, and mocks the victims
with fiendish mirth. The sole survivor, Don Alonzo Monçada,
unfolds his story to John Melmoth. The son of a great duke, he
has been forced to become a monk to save his mother's honour. He
dwells with the excruciating detail in which Maturin is inclined
to revel, on the horrors of Spanish monasteries. Escaping through
a subterranean passage, he is guided by a parricide, who
incidentally tells him a loathsome story of two immured lovers.
His plan of flight is foiled, and he is borne off to the dungeons
of the Inquisition. Here the Wanderer, who has a miraculous power
to enter where he will, offers, on the ineffable condition, to
procure his freedom. Monçada repudiates the temptation, effects
his own escape during a great fire, and catches sight of the
stranger on the summit of a burning building. He takes refuge
with a Jew, but, to evade the vigilance of the Inquisitors,
disappears suddenly down an underground passage, where he finds
Adonijah, another Jew, who obligingly employs him as an
amanuensis, and sets him to copy a manuscript. This gives Maturin
the opportunity, for which he has been waiting, to introduce his
"Tale of the Indian." The story of Immalee, who is visited on her
desert island by the Wanderer in the guise of a lover as well as
a tempter, forms the most memorable part of _Melmoth_. In the
other stories the stranger has been a taciturn creature, relying
on the lustre of his eyes rather than on his powers of eloquence
to win over his victims. To Immalee he pours forth floods of
rhetoric on the sins and follies of mankind. Had she not been one
of Rousseau's children of nature, and so innocent alike of a
knowledge of Shakespeare and of the fault of impatience, she
would surely have exclaimed: "If thou hast news, I prithee
deliver them like a man of this world." When Immalee is
transported to Spain and reassumes her baptismal name of Isidora,
Melmoth follows her and their conversations are continued at dead
of night through the lattice. Here they discourse on the real
nature of love. At length the gloomy lover persuades Isidora to
marry him. Their midnight nuptials take place against a weird
background. By a narrow, precipitous path they approach the
ruined chapel, and are united by a hand "as cold as that of
death." Meanwhile, Don Francisco, Isidora's father, on his way
home, spends the night at an inn, where a stranger insists on
telling him "The Tale of Guzman." In this tale the tempter visits
a father whose family is starving, but who resists the lure of
wealth. Maturin portrays with extraordinary power the
deterioration in the character of an old man Walberg, through the
effects of poverty. At the close of the narration Don Francisco
falls into a deep slumber, but is sternly awakened by a stranger
with an awful eye, who insists on becoming his fellow traveller,
and on telling, in defiance of protests, yet another story. The
prologue to the Lover's Tale is almost Chaucerian in its humour:
"It was with the utmost effort of his mixed politeness
and fear that he prepared himself to listen to the
tale, which the stranger had frequently amid their
miscellaneous conversation, alluded to, and showed an
evident anxiety to relate. These allusions were
attended with unpleasant reminiscences to the
hearer--but he saw that it was to be, and armed himself
as best he might with courage to hear. 'I would not
intrude on you, Senhor,' says the stranger, 'with a
narrative in which you can feel but little interest,
were I not conscious that its narration may operate as
a warning, the most awful, salutary and efficacious to
yourself.'"
At this veiled hint Don Francisco discharges a volley of oaths,
but he is silenced completely by the smile of the stranger--"that
spoke bitterer and darker things than the fiercest frown that
ever wrinkled the features of man." After this he cannot choose
but hear, and the stranger seizes his opportunity to begin an
uncommonly dull story, connected with a Shropshire family and
intermingled with historical events. In this tale the Wanderer
appears to a girl whose lover has lost his reason, and offers to
restore him if she will accept his conditions. Once more the
tempter is foiled. The story meanders so sluggishly that our
sympathies are with Don Francisco, and we cannot help wishing
that he had adopted more drastic measures to quieten the
insistent stranger. At the conclusion Francisco mutters
indignantly:
"It is inconceivable to me how this person forces
himself on my company, harasses me with tales that have
no more application to me than the legend of the Cid,
and may be as apocryphal as the ballad of
Roncesvalles--"
but yet the stranger has not finished. He proceeds to tell him a
tale in which he will feel a peculiar interest, that of Isidora,
his own daughter, and finally urges him to hasten to her rescue.
Don Francisco wanders by easy stages to Madrid, and, on his
arrival, marries Isidora against her will to Montilla. Melmoth,
according to promise, appears at the wedding. The bridegroom is
slain. Isidora, with Melmoth's child, ends her days in the
dungeons of the Inquisition, murmuring: "Paradise! will he be
there?" So far as one may judge from the close of the story, it
seems not.
Monçada and John Melmoth, whom we left, at the beginning of the
romance, in Ireland, are revisited by the Wanderer, whose time on
earth has at last run out. He confesses his failure: "I have
traversed the world in the search, and no one to gain that world,
would lose his own soul." His words remind us of the text of the
sermon which suggested to Maturin the idea of the romance. Like
the companions of Dr. Faustus, Melmoth and Monçada hear terrible
sounds from the room of the Wanderer in the last throes of agony.
The next morning the room is empty; but, following a track to the
sea-cliffs, they see, on a crag beneath, the kerchief the
Wanderer had worn about his neck. "Melmoth and Monçada exchanged
looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly
home."
This extraordinary romance, like _Montorio_, clearly owes much to
the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, and "Monk" Lewis. Immalee, as her
name implies, is but a glorified Emily with a loxia on her
shoulder instead of a lute in her hand. The monastic horrors are
obviously a heritage from _The Monk_. The Rosicrucian legend, as
handled in _St. Leon_, may have offered hints to Maturin, whose
treatment is, however, far more imaginative and impressive than
that of Godwin. The resemblance to the legend of the Wandering
Jew need not be laboured. Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_ and the first
part of Goethe's _Faust_ left their impression on the story. The
closing scenes inevitably remind us of the last act of Marlowe's
tragedy. But, when all these debts are acknowledged they do but
serve to enhance the success of Maturin, who out of these varied
strands could weave so original a romance. _Melmoth_ is not an
ingenious patchwork of previous stories. It is the outpouring of
a morbid imagination that has long brooded on the fearful and the
terrific. Imbued with the grandeur and solemnity of his theme,
Maturin endeavours to write in dignified, stately language. There
are frequent lapses into bombast, but occasionally his rhetoric
is splendidly effective:
"It was now the latter end of autumn; heavy clouds had
all day been passing laggingly and gloomily along the
atmosphere, as the hours pass over the human mind and
life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
portentously off, like ships of war reconnoitring a
strong fort, to return with added strength and fury."
He takes pleasure in coining unusual, striking phrases, such as:
"All colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary,"
or "Minutes are hours in the _noctuary_ of terror," or "The
secret of silence is the only secret. Words are a blasphemy
against that taciturn and invisible God whose presence enshrouds
us in our last extremity."
Maturin chooses his similes with discrimination, to heighten the
effect he aims at producing:
"The locks were so bad and the keys so rusty that it was like the
cry of the dead in the house when the keys were turned," or:
"With all my care, however, the lamp declined,
quivered, flashed a pale light, like the smile of
despair, on me, and was extinguished ... I had watched
it like the last beatings of an expiring heart, like
the shiverings of a spirit about to depart for
eternity."
There are no quiet scenes or motionless figures in _Melmoth_.
Everything is intensified, exaggerated, distorted. The very
clouds fly rapidly across the sky, and the moon bursts forth with
the "sudden and appalling effulgence of lightning." A shower of
rain is perhaps "the most violent that was ever precipitated on
the earth." When Melmoth stamps his foot "the reverberation of
his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with
the thunder." Maturin's use of words like "callosity,"
"induration," "defecated," "evanition," and his fondness for
italics are other indications of his desire to force an
impression by fair means or foul.
The gift of psychological insight that distinguishes _Montorio_
reappears in a more highly developed form in _Melmoth the
Wanderer_. "Emotions," Maturin declares, "are my events," and he
excels in depicting mental as well as physical torture. The
monotony of a "timeless day" is suggested with dreary reality in
the scene where Monçada and his guide await the approach of night
to effect their escape from the monastery. The gradual surrender
of resolution before slight, reiterated assaults is cunningly
described in the analysis of Isidora's state of mind, when a
hateful marriage is forced upon her. Occasionally Maturin
astonishes us by the subtlety of his thought:
"While people think it worth while to torment us we are never
without some dignity, though painful and imaginary."
It is his faculty for describing intense, passionate feeling, his
power of painting wild pictures of horror, his gifts for
conveying his thoughts in rolling, rhythmical periods of
eloquence, that make _Melmoth_ a memory-haunting book. With all
his faults Maturin was the greatest as well as the last of the
Goths.