Charles Robert Maturin: His Life and Works by Niilo Idman - HTML preview

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]—

The action of the story commences in 1216, at a time when the forces of the Albigenses are threatening the castle of Courtenaye. The sect is alternately headed and abandoned by count Raymond of Toulouse, who, though Catholic himself, occasionally wishes to save his vassals from complete destruction. His present designs are unknown; he has travelled to Rome to seek reconciliation with the Pope, and is expected back at any hour. In the meantime the persecuted Albigenses live in great misery among the mountains of Languedoc. Their leader is an old and venerable pastor of the name of Pierre, whom the cruelty of the crusaders has deprived of sight. He is tended by his granddaughter Genevieve, as good and gentle a being as himself, and constantly exhorts his followers to mildness and forgiveness; in this he is fiercely opposed by a fraction of wild fanatics, represented, among others, by the deacon Mephibosheth, a man of ‘intolerant zeal, and intolerable pretentions,’ who subsequently turns renegade.—The lord of Courtenaye, a savage and cowardly cripple, who fears the vicinity of the Albigenses but is unable to defend himself, summons the chief crusaders to his aid. The summons is very willingly obeyed, and a great army of knights and crusaders is, at the opening of the tale, marching towards the castle. The most eminent leaders of the Catholic forces are count Simon de Montfort, the ‘champion of the church,’ a rude and powerful soldier—and the bishop of Toulouse, a vigorous-minded sceptic, who in everything pursues his own advantage and aims at the increase of his own influence, ‘a man of power and might, body and soul, whose strong mind clung to his strong frame like the human part of the centaur of old to the animal part, making but one between them.’ There is a great deal of jealousy between these two warriors, and their army is split with discord and mutual suspicion. The majority are for attacking the heretics at once and crushing them at a single blow, while others advise waiting till the result of count Raymond’s negotiations with the Pope is known. From a message brought to the bishop it appears that the court of Rome has sent a monk of uncommon sanctity to mediate between the two hostile armies; the mediator has already visited the Albigenses and is now on his way to the castle. This simple and honest monk, who is chosen by the Pope with a view to ‘diminish the power and mortify the ambition’ of the bishop of Toulouse, has been received with hostility by the zealous fraction among the Albigenses, and only after great exertions on the part of Pierre has the arrangement been brought about that they consent to hear an exhortation from the bishop, on a promise of safety. The day being fixed, the crusaders set out with pomp and splendour to the meeting-place. The bishop delivers a magnificent sermon, but without effect; the Albigeois preachers reply with spirit, and reconciliation is found impossible. They are to resort to arms the following day. The crusaders retire to the castle of Courtenaye; the night is spent in carousals, during which De Montfort proposes that he and the knights alone would ride the heretics down; the proposal is eagerly accepted, in spite of the warnings of an old knight called Sir Aymer de Chastelroi.—The Albigenses are prepared for the worst, but the same night count Raymond returns with a great army. Besides the political, he has a personal cause against the crusaders: the late lord Courtenaye, the brother of the present one, has once surprised his castle and slaughtered his wife and children, for which outrage he has sworn eternal vengeance. He now takes command of the Albigenses; it is decided to wait till the crusaders are enclosed in a valley, and then beset them from all sides. The stratagem is easily carried out, and the knights are completely defeated. De Montfort is wounded almost to death, while the bishop succeeds in making his way out of the ambuscade, and arrives at the castle with a few surviving knights. De Montfort also is afterwards brought to the castle, where he slowly recovers.—Count Raymond, understanding that his victory is entirely due to the temerity of the vanquished, commands the whole band of the Albigenses to set out for the kingdom of Arragon, whither, indeed, it is the bishop’s intention immediately to pursue them. De Montfort being disabled for a long time, the bishop assumes the title of the champion of the church and places himself at the head of the crusading army. His enterprise, however, meets various difficulties; the followers of the knights who have perished in the recent battle begin to desert, when no longer commanded by their individual leaders, besides which king Philip refuses to recognize the bishop as the champion of the Church, before the title is admitted by the Pope. Under these circumstances the bishop proceeds to lead his forces to his own castle in the city of Beaucaire. On the road he lights upon a veiled lady who travels with one single attendant and turns out to be no less a person than queen Ingelberg. King Philip, being violently in love with Agnes of Moravia, has deserted the queen and even planned against her life, for which reason she tries to escape to her brother the king of Denmark. The bishop at once resolves to carry her as a prisoner to his castle; he is anxious to preserve the life of the queen, in order to be able to annul the king’s adulterous marriage, should he deny him future aid.—The queen subsequently makes her escape and is reconciled to the king.—A new crusade is soon determined upon, and the bishop, with a great number of nobles and dignitaries whom he has won to his side, marches to Nismes, which is this time fixed as meeting-place for the Catholic leaders. Among these is prince Lewis, who is very desirous to take the lead, and hates the bishop as cordially as he hates De Montfort. The latter has not yet recovered his strength, but shows no inclination to resign his title, and thus the old discord again prevails in the crusading army:—The Albigenses have once more been abandoned by the vacillating count Raymond, but some others of the most potent lords of Languedoc have taken up arms in their cause, and entrenched themselves in Tarascon. The crusaders now march against that city, outside whose walls a long and furious battle is fought. De Montfort, weakened by his illness, falls; still the issue of the battle would be uncertain, should not count Raymond again arrive at the critical moment. The crusaders, indeed, seize the castle of Tarascon, but their army is defeated by count Raymond, who pitches his camp in the vicinity. The next day he makes a new attack and easily occupies the town. The Albigenses triumph once more.—

These two battles form the historical framework, around which is woven the romantic plot of the story, intricate and duly based on chivalry and love. The principal hero is a youthful knight called Sir Paladour de la Croix Sanglante, who, at the very end, is discovered to be the son of count Raymond of Toulouse. He has been saved at the general slaughter of the count’s family, is brought up in obscurity, but knighted by the king after a siege in which he has distinguished himself. The only person who knows of his descent is an old, half-crazy woman, who has seen better days. She was, in fact, once a rich and beautiful lady of the name of Marie de Mortemar; being accused of heresy, she was attacked by count Raymond, the late brother of the lord of Courtenaye, and the bishop of Toulouse, who ‘despoiled her of lands and power, and burnt her castles, and made of her people serfs, and misused her in such sort that she wandered a maniac for a time, and then was heard of no more.’ The ill-usage she has undergone has so changed her that she is recognized by no one, yet she pursues, with relentlessness and dexterity, a scheme of vengeance against her former persecutors. The late lord of Courtenaye, who afterwards became the enemy of count Raymond, is suspected to have been murdered at the instigation of his brother the present lord; but Marie de Mortemar is intent upon the destruction of the whole house of Courtenaye. This destruction is to be executed by the hand of Sir Paladour, whose fortunes she continually follows. When he is hastening, in the first chapter of the book, to join the crusading army, she guides him over a lake and directs him towards the castle of Courtenaye. She lives, for the most part, in the vaults of this castle, where she is, in association with a few other hags, occupied in all sorts of dark and necromantic pursuits, ostensibly in the service of the superstitious lord, but secretly meditating his ruin.—At the castle resides also lady Isabelle, the daughter of the late lord of Courtenaye; she and Paladour fall in love at first sight. He hardly dares to address her, though energetically urged thereto by the merry Sir Aymer de Chastelroi—but before long he has opportunity of rendering her an essential service. On arriving at the castle, count Simon de Montfort informs Isabelle that king Philip, whose ward she is, has promised her hand to a man whom she is very unwilling to accept. Her despair at last touches even De Montfort; he hints that there may be found a way of extricating her from the matter—namely, if some champion of hers can unhorse him, ‘or draw blood from between the joints of his harness.’ Paladour at once accepts the challenge, and really overthrows the dreaded warrior. After this he is regarded as the avowed champion of the lady Isabelle, and takes but little notice of his rivals, two very foolish knights called de Verac and de Semonville.—The great battle that ends so unfortunately for the crusaders is watched by Isabelle from an adjacent hill. When the defeat becomes evident she starts, with her maidens, at full speed for the castle. Suddenly she is accosted by a knight in black armour, who says he has a message from Sir Paladour, and offers to conduct the party by a secret path, the main road to the castle being intercepted by the heretics. While still speaking, the knight seizes her rein and gallops along. After a while they are joined by men in vizards, and the ride finally terminates at the coast of the Mediterranean. The frightened females are conveyed to a small isle where there stands the impregnable castle of a bold outlaw, the terror of all the neighbourhood.—Sir Paladour is among the knights who survive the battle; when told of the disappearance of Isabelle, he immediately sets out in quest of her. On a dark heath he meets his mysterious guide, the maniac woman, who informs him where Isabelle is taken and points out to him the distant tower of the outlaw’s castle. He follows the direction, and at the very moment he is approaching, a party of pilgrims passing along the coast is attacked by the robbers. Paladour rushes to their aid, but is severely wounded, and dragged to the castle as a prisoner.—Isabelle is, at first, treated with a kind of rude courtesy; the outlaw has seized her in hopes of a large ransom, but struck by her beauty he soon begins to make love to her, and, being rejected, assumes a threatening tone. As for Paladour, but little heed is taken of him, and he is left to recover from his wounds as best he can. He is much worried by a raging lycanthrope living in the vaults; once the latter assaults him while he is sleeping, and only by exerting his utmost strength can Paladour knock him down. In his last moments, however, the lycanthrope regains his reason and shows Paladour a secret passage leading to the terrace at the sea, from where he can hold converse with the lady. When it is discovered that he is the lover and champion of Isabelle, their situation becomes extremely precarious; but one night, when the terrace happens to be deserted, Isabelle and her maidens manage to descend from their window to the terrace. Here they are received by Paladour, and the whole party sets out in a boat. Their flight is soon discovered; the outlaw, pursuing them in another boat, reaches them as they touch the shore. At the moment when he is about to stab Paladour, a dark figure rushes between and plunges a dagger in the outlaw’s heart: it is again the maniac woman, Marie de Mortemar. Taking Paladour aside she reminds him of a vow he has made, as a child, to sacrifice the last survivor of his enemy’s race. Paladour is still ignorant who his enemies are, but the woman promises to let him know in due time. Without further adventure the party then arrives at the castle. The lord of Courtenaye is not delighted; his state and wealth depend on Isabelle’s continuing unmarried, and he has secretly hoped, that both she and her bridegroom would perish. He cannot avoid celebrating their nuptials with a grand feast, but contemplates all the time means for their destruction; calling the maniac woman to his presence he declares himself ready to enter an alliance with the devil, whom he, in his superstition, believes her able to conjure. She answers with mysterious threats, having decided in the bridal night to wreak her vengeance on the house of Courtenaye. The night comes, and as it grows late the lord retires into his secret chamber among the vaults, where the other hags are awaiting their leader. Through their imprudence the chamber catches fire, and the lord of Courtenaye who, in a fit of impatient rage, has thrown the key in a cauldron, perishes with his attendants. At the same time the news spreads in the castle that the bride has been murdered and the bridegroom has disappeared. The maniac has now informed Paladour that his destined victim is no other than his bride. He conceives that the only way of escaping the fulfilment of his vow is to stab himself; Isabelle, thinking him mad, tries to prevent him, and during the grapple the dagger is plunged into her breast. Paladour rushes away half-deranged and runs till he falls down exhausted, being then taken care of by the maniac, who at last relents towards him. She dresses up Isabelle—whose wound is not mortal—as a page and gives her to Paladour; in this capacity she follows him without daring to reveal herself so long as his reason is not quite restored.—Being indifferent to everything and seeking only death, he joins the count’s army as a mysterious ‘black knight,’ unknown to all. After the victory of Tarascon his relationship to count Raymond is discovered with the help of a monk; on the same occasion Isabelle reveals her identity, and they are happily re-united.—

The story, however, contains yet another love-intrigue. Paladour has a younger brother of the name of Sir Amirald, who also appears to have been saved from the massacre. He is brought up at the castle of Courtenaye and very badly used by its lord. When Paladour and Amirald meet in the crusading army, a close friendship springs up between them, and they find, to their wonder, that they bear a similar mark on the shoulder. Amirald has seen Genevieve, the granddaughter of the old Albigeois pastor, and fallen in love with her. Once when he is wandering in the vicinity of the castle, he is roused by cries for help; they proceed from Genevieve, whom two robbers are carrying away, deeming her ‘no unacceptable prize’ to the crusaders. Amirald overcomes the ruffians and accompanies Genevieve to the Albigenses. In the first great battle a stone from a sling smites him down; as the Albigenses move on, Genevieve stumbles over his body. She recognises her preserver and, perceiving there is life, removes him into a cave, with the reluctant assistance of an unsuccessful lover of hers, a young man called Amand. She then visits Amirald regularly and tends him till he is restored to health. When count Raymond commands the Albigenses to move still farther into the mountains, Amand demands her promise to abandon Amirald; on her refusing, he in jealousy informs the chiefs of the sect that Genevieve has saved the life of an enemy, with the result that she is banished from the community. Two men are sent to convey her to Toulouse, but, having lost their way, they both perish, and Genevieve herself is, in a senseless state, carried into a convent by some monks who chance to find her. Yet when she is discovered to be a heretic, she is instantly expelled. Pursuing her way alone, she is now seized by the same ruffians from whom Amirald had rescued her. They drag her into the abbey of Normoutier where she falls into the hands of the bishop of Toulouse and is taken with his party to Beaucaire. Here she is sumptuously clad and treated with mildness, the bishop’s intention being to make her his mistress; but she firmly resists his temptations. Subsequently she succeeds not only in escaping but in effecting the escape of the queen, whose life she saves at the risk of her own, thus earning her gratitude and protection. They travel onward with a party of knights who have been in quest of the queen in order to bring her back to the king, he being now willing to receive her as his spouse again. Among the knights is Amirald, who openly avows his love to Genevieve. He is commissioned to conduct her to Toulouse, but this time their journey is intercepted by the army of prince Lewis. He also is enraptured by the beauty of Genevieve and compells her to follow him to Nismes, where the new crusade is being prepared. Being told by Genevieve that she has saved the life of his mother, the prince promises to protect her from every injury, yet determines to keep her for himself and refuses to surrender her to Amirald. The bishop, however, who is filled with a deadly hatred against her, urges that she be delivered into the hands of justice, to be condemned to death as a heretic. When the prince tries to protect her a riot breaks out—the house where she is kept is burnt down, but at the last moment Amirald saves her and they escape to Tarascon where he, now turned an Albigeois, joins the army of the lords of Languedoc. In the battle of Tarascon, Amirald and Genevieve are among a party of Albigenses who remain captives in the town. All prisoners are, at the command of the bishop, to be burnt alive; they are already bound at the stake when the army of count Raymond rushes into Tarascon. Paladour, remembering the mark on their shoulders, immediately hastens to liberate his brother.—At the same time the bishop falls a victim to the vengeance of Marie de Mortemar. She has also been brought to the city as a prisoner, and being kept in custody in a solitary chamber near the chapel, she manages to poison the holy water a moment before the bishop celebrates the mass. He rushes into his room where he applies strong antidotes, all in vain. Suspecting the maniac he calls her to his presence; she reveals herself as Marie de Mortemar, declaring the aim of her life to be fulfilled: while the bishop is expiring, she throws herself out of the casement and is dashed to pieces.—The heroes and heroines live in happiness ever afterwards; ‘The difference of birth and creed was never known to disturb the affection that subsisted between the high-born Lady of Courtenaye and the humble bride of Amirald.’

Considering the inordinate length of The Albigenses, it must be admitted that the story is fairly well constructed, and the rich materials—although of little originality—not unskilfully arranged. In this respect there certainly can be detected a sort of improvement on Maturin’s earlier romances; but it is a very poor compensation for the loss of their peculiar charm in style and description. In The Albigenses there is hardly a page which could not have been written by somebody else; the personal note in the diction, the keenness of psychological insight, and the characteristic boldness of imagination which distinguished Women and Melmoth, and even The Milesian Chief, have completely disappeared. And this change, it is painful to observe, has been brought about by the attacks of injudicious reviewers, as clearly stated in the preface:

How far I may have succeeded, is not for me to judge. I put forwards my present work with diffidence. No one can think more moderately of his powers than I do of mine; but I must demand of my reader’s consideration, that the opinions and errors of my imaginary characters shall not be transferred to my own. In what singularly severe and injurious spirit this has been hitherto done, I need not say. No man less disregards public opinion; no man is less disposed to offer an insolent defiance to sincere criticism: but if an unoffending life cannot protect a writer from those dangerous imputations, I disdain defence, and leave them to their judgment by all generous and unprejudiced minds.

Maturin’s journey to Canossa was graciously acknowledged by all critics except one. In the newly established Westminster Review[170] there appeared an uncommonly intelligent and well-written article, showing an understanding of Maturin and a penetration into his talent, which far surpasses that of all other contemporary critics. To the general verdict of this unknown writer on The Albigenses nothing could be added, nor can its rightfulness be questioned by any one acquainted with Maturin’s works:

We are a little disappointed in finding that Mr. Maturin’s new work is not of a character that either entitles or entices us to make it the occasion of a general examination of his literary pretensions. For we could not do this effectually, without adducing various examples of the faults and the good qualities that are peculiar to his writings; and it so happens, that the work now before us is almost entirely deficient in either of these. It is, perhaps, not very difficult to account for this. Mr. Maturin, though now a tolerably practised writer, is far from having acquired that command over the efforts of his pen which the time that he has exercised it would, under ordinary circumstances, have given him: for his mind is not one that will submit to be “constrained by mastery,” either in its strengths or its weaknesses. It may be led, we sincerely believe, to perform very valuable services to the republic of letters; but it may not be driven to do either good or evil. And if it be driven, the results will be a something between the two, and bearing no distinctive character whatever. Now, we conceive the work before us to have proceeded from an artificial and ill-considered impetus of the above kind. Mr. Maturin has publicly stated, as an excuse (that is the form under which he most unnecessarily puts it) for writing Romances at all, that his necessities oblige him to do so; and yet all the Romances he has hitherto written have subjected him to the most virulent abuse from several of those critical tribunals, on whose fiat the popularity of works of this class mainly depends—or, at all events, by which that popularity can be greatly advanced, and still more greatly retarded. And this abuse, too, when it has descended to detail, has, in almost every instance, been levelled at precisely those portions of the work in question in which the author must have felt, and every one else must have admitted, that the beauties, if beauties the work contained, were to be found. What could a writer, but little acquainted with the nature of his own powers, and avowedly employing them with a view to present distinction, be expected to do under such circumstances, but resolutely set himself to avoid the errors that seemed to lay in the way of his object? And in doing so, what could be expected as the first result of this effort, but what we, in fact, meet with in the work, the title of which stands at the head of this paper?—namely, a production in which all the most glaring faults that existed in his previous ones are in a great degree absent; and in which all the beauties which more than redeemed those faults, are absent too. The truth is, Mr. Maturin did not seek instruction from the right source. Instead of feeling contempt for those who expressed a contempt which they did not feel towards him, he flew to them for that counsel which he should have taken of his own good sense, and his own heart.

That Maturin did not take counsel of his own heart means that he wrote without inspiration; and that is why the adventures and hair-breadth escapes fail to excite, and the characters appear so hopelessly conventional. The characterization is, in fact, the weakest side of The Albigenses, and that of the principal personages the least worthy of Maturin’s powers. Paladour and Amirald simply possess every chivalrous virtue imaginable, neither being subject to any faults whatsoever, nor is there one single individual trait to distinguish them from others. The description of these two paragons is pervaded by a deadly seriousness and an unbroken solemnity, all the more causeless as both are destined to become perfectly happy in the end. The influence of Scott, which otherwise is perceptible throughout the story, in no instance extends itself to the treatment of the heroes. The different methods of the two novelists can be compared in the openings of The Albigenses and Quentin Durward (1823). Both works begin with a brief account of the state of France in the respective periods—after which the heroes are introduced as solitary travellers and knight-errants. Quentin Durward, a merry light-hearted youth, appears on a bright summer morning, carelessly joining company with the first people he encounters, committing various indiscretions, being on the point of getting hanged, and going through it all with imperturbable good-humour. Paladour travels through an autumnal night, engaged in sombre thoughts, recollections and anticipations, meeting beings unearthly and mysterious and preserving all the time the same sepulchral gravity. The one way, of course, can in itself be as good as the other, and the beginning of The Albigenses is not without merit; but as the story advances it would not be out of the place to make a counterpoise to this lugubrious hero in the person of the younger Sir Amirald. Yet he is but a repetition of his brother, as grave and as blameless. There is nothing of the contrast so finely brought forth in Montorio between Hippolito and Annibal, and in The Milesian Chief between Connal and Desmond: Amirald, no more than Paladour, does anything rash or thoughtless; they never laugh; they are never even present in comical situations. Now one of the secrets of the perennial freshness of the Waverley novels is a manner the author has of ‘dealing sly digs at his own stateliest heroes.’[171] He never takes them too seriously; he exposes their human weaknesses with obvious satisfaction, and finally allows them to be united with their lady-loves much because he does not think them worth writing tragedies about. This method being extremely foreign to Maturin, his surest way of succeeding with his heroes is to make them really tragic and treat them with the terrible pathos and passionate sympathy which breathes from the pages of The Milesian Chief. In The Albigenses neither condition is fulfilled, and the personages, consequently, do not live. The same is equally true of the heroines; there are no traces of the psychological mastery which had created Eva and Immalee. Isabelle and Genevieve are as superlative with regard to exalted qualities as are their lovers: the former, being a high-born lady, is supplied with a just amount of pride, while the latter, as suits her station, is all humbleness and self-denial. How horribly fustian and melodramatic the description occasionally becomes, can be seen from the scene where the outlaw, whose prisoner Isabelle is, makes her a proposal of marriage:

Isabelle sprang on her feet—both hands were compressed on her left bosom, as if expecting her heart would burst, and her eyes inflamed and dilated seemed starting from their sockets. She directed them right onward for some moments, as if they could have pierced her prison-walls; at length she turned them full on the outlaw and that look said as audibly as language, “Begone this moment, or stay and see me driven to frenzy!”

The comic figures in the story—most of whom are invariably comic—are hardly less stereotyped and without charm. An exception must be made for the well-drawn Sir Aymer, an old knight who continually affects a tone of youthful gallantry but is, at bottom, a man of honour and delicacy. The drunken abbot of Normoutier with his eternal mal-a-prop Latin quotations, and the foppish Sir Ezzelin de Verac, are, on the other hand, very heavy and tiresome. The best drawn character in The Albigenses is the bishop of Toulouse. There is something truly imposing in his ambitious schemes, and his scepticism and clear-headedness form a salutary contrast to the superstitious fanaticism of his fellow-crusaders. The speech with which he tries to dazzle and seduce the inexperienced Genevieve, while she is his prisoner in Beaucaire, is one of the most eloquent passages in the book, and shows once more what Maturin was capable of achieving on his favourite topic, the unlimited power and the soul-destroying influence of the Catholic church:

The vast system of which I am no feeble or inert engine, hastens to the summation of its working—the conquest of the world. That old and mighty Rome, of whom pedants prate, subdued but the meaner part of man—his body; but our Rome enslaves the mind—that mind, which, once enslaved, leaves nothing for opposition or for defeat. Look round thee—a peevish dotard in the seven-throned palace tramples with his palsied foot on the necks of the crowned kings of earth, from the shores of the Orcades to the cliffs of Calpe. He stamps with it, and their blood, their treasures, and their vassals are poured on Asia, making the eastern world tremble to its centre: for ours is the power that not only binds the spirit but makes it clasp its chain; ours are the powers of the world to come; all that is potent in life, all that is mysterious in futurity, the fears, the hopes, the hearts of mankind, all are ours; and shall we not wield the weapon their credulity has put into our hands for our own behoof? — — — All knowledge is ours—to the laity the book is closed—the key is lost—every avenue to science, every loophole through which light might wander, is barred up or sternly sentinelled; the tomes of ancient wisdom are buried in monkish libraries, unfolded, save by daring hands like mine. Under the old tyrants of the earth the decree of a senate might desolate a province, and the frolic of an emperor consume a city; but when did it chain up the arm of man, or wither his soul within him, like a papal interdict, at whose reported sound the bridegroom drops the hand of the betrothed, the mourner quits the unburied corse, and the priest flies from the altar? I tell thee, maiden, the eagles of Ancient Rome would be blasted if they dared to grasp the thunder that is now wielded by the hand of every busy legate.

The best things in The Albigenses are to be found in certain vividly narrated episodes and brilliant descriptions, which are quite other than the hackneyed adventures of the actual dramatis personæ. Among them is the story of the heretic deacon Mephibosheth. He is taken, by some Catholic travellers, to the abbey of Normoutier, where the monks, in the absence of the abbot, have elected an ‘abbot of misrule’ and arranged a carousal on a large scale. The deacon is compelled to become one of the company and take part in a wild dance; he first refuses, but then, being sufficiently drunk, he for a while becomes the jolliest of them all, until his feelings as suddenly reverse themselves and he starts smashing costly windows and figures of saints. The monks decide to hang him, but the cord breaks, and he is finally spared on condition of procuring them a beautiful heretic damsel. The deacon, remembering Genevieve, readily complies, but she is brought there by the two robbers before he has time to fulfil his promise. The deacon, however, remains at the abbey and, having turned Catholic, becomes a follower of the bishop and is, at last, hanged in good earnest by the men of count Raymond, after the battle of Tarascon. The feast of the abbot of misrule, which presents a phase of monastic life seldom described,[172] is depicted with superabundant vivacity and humour, and in a true mediaeval spirit:

— — “Surely I will not dance,” quoth the deacon, whose courage rose with opposition; “it is an abomination more befitting the daughter of the harlot Herodias than a deacon of the holy congregation. All dancing is evil, exceedingly evil, and not good—but to dance in the tents of Kedar and the tabernacles of the idolaters, to be set up on high among the ungodly, and dance in the high places, were an utter abomination:—wherefore I say, Down with the filthy squeaking of pipes, and the lewd jarring of crowds, and—” “So please you, my lord abbot,” said one of the monks, “let us drown this peevish fellow’s noise, and cause him to dance with us:—your true sour heretic (and your lordship perceives he is no better, though I shame to name such vermin before your lordship) needs no other martyrdom than the sight of free honest mirth.”—“Thou sayest well,” said the abbot; “he shall dance and die the death of the spleenful: for the rest, let such of the nine worthies as be sober, lead forth Deborah, Judith, and Queen Dido—the three children in the furnace shall dance with Nebuchadnezzar to make up their old grudge—Susanna shall pace with one of the elders, and the goddess of Chastity with the other—ourself, the Abbot of Misrule, will lead the lady of loose-delight, with her paintings and her pouncings, her mincings and her mockings—and the heretic shall dance with the devil, and there is a company meetly sorted. Strike up, my masters.”—Here the hapless Mephibosheth was seized on by a hideous figure enveloped in a black garment, with cloven feet of flame colour, a tail that swept the ground, a mask equipped with “eyes that glow and fangs that grin,” and a huge pair of horns starting from the forehead. All his struggles availed nothing with his frightful partner: he was dragged into the circle, compelled to perform numerous pirouettes, which were more remarkable for velocity than grace, and if he relaxed for a moment in his exertions, a swinge of his partner’s tail, a kick of his cloven foot, or a blow with his horns, set him prancing again with pain and terror till his strength was exhausted, and he fell to the ground. At this moment the cook was seen entering the hall, attended by the lay-brothers groaning under the heavy dishes they bore, and shouting in unison the monastic chorus—

Caput apri defero,

Reddens laudes Domino;

Qui estis in convivio,

Plaudite cum cantico. — — —

A fine chapter is also one describing a night at the castle of Courtenaye before the first battle. A frightful tempest is raging, and most of the guests have retired; at last only a few of the chief crusaders are sitting in the dimly illuminated hall, passing their time in telling ghost-stories. Sir Aymer, in his humorous way, relates an adventure which happened to his uncle, whereupon De Montfort tells a very dismal one which happened to himself, as he once beheld the ghosts of a large congregation of Albigenses whom he had slaughtered some ten years before. The right note is here struck by simple means, and the uncomfortable sensations of the superstitious company are skilfully transferred to the reader.—Scenes like these are, no doubt, filled with the real spirit of the time in question; but as a historical novel in the usual sense of the word The Albigenses has no great claims to distinction. The historical facts which underlie the plot are but meagre, and, moreover, treated with considerable freedom. Imagination often makes up for accurate information. Even one of those critics[173] who admired The Albigenses as a romance, thinks the author deficient in a ‘minute and extensive acquaintance with the antiquities of the middle ages,’ declaring his descriptions to be of a cast that ‘may be executed by any one moderately read in Froissart, and tolerably conversant with the less recondite sources of information contained in the common English and German romances.’

The picture of the merry life led in the abbey of Normoutier strikes one by its perfect novelty in Maturin’s work, nor are there, in The Albigenses, any instances of ecclesiastical cruelty or monastic oppression; the monks are, upon the whole, no worse than other people. Nevertheless the Radcliffe school reappears in some of the adventures of the heroines, especially in the escape of Isabelle from the clutches of the outlaw, and that of Genevieve from the palace of the bishop of Toulouse. The secret passages, happily detected at the right moment, the inevitable subterranean vaults and concealed doors have their origin in that style of fiction which Maturin now had disavowed. The design of Marie de Mortemar to have her vengeance on the last survivor of the house of Courtenaye executed by the hand of Sir Paladour, leads back to the idea upon which Montorio is founded. Otherwise The Albigenses is but too clearly modelled on Scott; most of the characters have their prototypes in the Waverley novels, and a great many of the situations likewise bear a resemblance to the same distinguished patterns. Quentin Durward, Old Mortality (1817), Ivanhoe (1820), The Monastery (1820) and others are constantly called to mind, all the comparisons being to the disadvantage of The Albigenses. To mention some of the most conspicuous likenesses, count Simon de Montfort has a counterpart in duke Charles of Burgundy in Quentin Durward; both are men of a fierce and uncontrollable temper and unrefined habits, accustomed only to consult their own will and pleasure. Duke Charles has the same message to Isabelle of Croye as De Montfort to Isabelle of Courtenaye, namely, of a marriage which appears to be against the inclinations of the heroines, and the language of these powerful lords, when contradicted, is very offensive to a young lady of rank. Duke Charles threatens to drag the lady to the altar with his own hands, contemptuously speaking of her ‘baby face,’ while De Montfort, in the corresponding scene, flies out against Isabelle, calling her a ‘gaudy, delicate, disdainful toy.’ At last the matter is, in both cases, referred to the skill and valour of the champions of the fair ones.—The capture of Isabelle by the outlaw resembles much the seizure of Rowena, in Ivanhoe, by Reginald Front-de-Boef. Both prisoners are, as a token of respect, shown into the best rooms; ‘the apartment to which the Lady Rowena had been introduced was fitted up with some rude attempts at ornament and magnificence, and her being placed there might be considered as a peculiar mark of respect not offered to the other prisoners. — — — The tapestry hung down from the walls in many places, and in others was tarnished and faded under the effects of the sun, or tattered and decayed by age.’ Maturin’s description of the chamber of Isabelle is exactly similar: ‘It was to this apartment the lady Isabelle ascended, and it was evident that it had been furnished with a kind of rude and hasty splendour. Tapestry was hung on the walls by wooden pegs stuck between the interstices of the stones, but in many places those walls of ragged stone were totally bare.’ Then the ladies are the object of love-making by persons odious to them, while their real lovers lie prisoners in the same castles. Rebecca, in Ivanhoe, obviously served as a model to Genevieve. Their goodness and mildness is the same, and the one, being the daughter of a Jew, as well as the other being a heretic, is in a defenceless and dangerous position. The speech of the templar to Rebecca, when he persuades her to fly with him to the Orient and become a partner in his bold plans has, no doubt, influenced the speech which the bishop makes to Genevieve, quoted above:

The Templar loses, as thou hast said, his social rights, his power of free agency, but he becomes a member and a limb of a mighty body, before which thrones already tremble,—even as the single drop of rain which mixes with the sea becomes an individual part of that resistless ocean, which undermines rocks and engulfs royal armadas. Such a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the batoon of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of kings—a hempsandall’d monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne—our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. — — —

The likeness of the bishop to the templar is, however, but slight; the latter is a fantast, with nothing of the cold deliberateness of the former.—In the abbot of Normoutier critics believed they recognized the prior of Jorvault. Neither is, indeed, over-eager in discharging his sacerdotal duties, yet the prior is a man of the world, while the abbot is a coarse boar and never would have wit enough to compose a letter like that sent by the prior to the templar—however heartily he would approve of the contents.—Sir Ezzelin de Verac would scarcely have been born but for the existence of Sir Piercie Shafton in The Monastery; but of all imitations in The Albigenses he is the least successful. His only interest is the state of his wardrobe, and his only accomplishment to dress fashionably, while Sir Piercie—one of the most delightful creations of Scott—is a master also of other arts, knowing how to recite poetry and play lute and viol-de-gamba. The ‘euphuistic’ conversation of Sir Piercie is feebly copied by Sir Ezzelin; the epithets which the former bestows on Halbert Glendinning—‘Good goatbearded apostle! Good fellow! Good selvaggio!’—are echoed in the terms of address of the latter to an Albigeois whose prisoner he once happens to be: ‘Good villagio! kind rustic!’ and so on.—

A very characteristic figure in the romantic literature of the time is, finally, Marie de Mortemar. A personage of this kind had once before, through the influence of Scott, occupied Maturin’s imagination; the old Irishwoman in Women, as we have seen, was pronounced to be drawn after Meg Merrilies, and the same observation was made by critics[174] about Marie de Mortemar: ‘—an old woman, who is a sorceress, a conspirator, a preserver, and a perpetual meddler; such are the sins for which the maker of Meg Merrilies has to answer.’ The type certainly was, if not actually invented, at least made fashionable by Scott. His old women appear as champions of some great cause which they with might and main try to advance, or else endeavour to revenge personal injuries to which they have been subjected and which have reduced them to their pitiable state. Marie de Mortemar belongs to the latter class, possessing, however, all the strength and energy of the former. With Meg Merrilies she has but little in common, except the miraculous skill with which she pursues her aim; she guides the ways of Paladour much as Meg guides young Bertram, never resting till punishment has reached the guilty. Magdalena Greame, in The Abbot (1820) has devoted her life to Queen Mary and the Catholic faith, and as mysteriously and unflinchingly conducts the adventures of her kinsman Roland, whom she has chosen to be a promoter of her schemes. Yet another meddler is Norna in The Pirate (1822). She, like Marie de Mortemar, has been ill-used in her youth and partially lost her reason; and although she is not revengeful and her meddling is only for the good, she has the same gift of omnipresence and omniscience which appeals to the superstition of her neighbours and which has been acquired in a way suggested, perhaps, by the Radcliffe heroes: ‘It was one branch of various arts by which Norna endeavoured to maintain her pretensions to supernatural powers, that she made herself familiarly and practically acquainted with all the secret passes and recesses, whether natural or artificial, which she could hear of, whether by tradition or otherwise, and was, by such knowledge, often enabled to perform feats which were otherwise unaccountable.’ Marie de Mortemar, it is needless to say, is perfectly acquainted with the caves and the rocks, the high-ways and by-ways of all Languedoc.—The other variation of this character is personified by Ulrica in Ivanhoe: a deeply-wronged woman, a prisoner, who once ‘was free, was happy, was honoured, loved, and was beloved’ while yet being ‘the daughter of the noble Thane of Torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled’—just as her counterpart in The Albigenses was ‘a noble, beautiful lady, heiress of Mortemar.’ As the prototype of Ulrica we may perhaps regard Queen Margaret in Shakespeare’s Richard III, who walks about, a ghost of her former self, cursing the murderer of her son and her husband:

Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?—

Why, then give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!

— — — — —

If heaven have any grievous plague in store,

Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,

O, let them keep it, till thy sins be ripe,

And then hurl down their indignation

On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace!

The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!

Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,

And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!

No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,

Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream

Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!

Like Queen Margaret, Ulrica is unable actively to work for the destruction of her malefactor, having to content herself with ineffective wailings and execrations; while Marie de Mortemar—who also most terribly curses her oppressors—finds opportunity of ‘meddling’ as much as she pleases. Yet Ulrica, by accident, succeeds in setting fire to the magazine of fuel beneath the castle of Reginald Front-de-Boef and thus has, like Marie de Mortemar, the satisfaction of witnessing the dying agonies of her enemy. Their gloomy triumph is the same; Ulrica cries to the perishing Reginald: ‘Summon thy vassals around thee, doom them that loiter to the scourge and the dungeon—But know, mighty chief — — — thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid, nor obedience at their hands.’ Marie de Mortemar exults at the death-scene of the bishop of Toulouse: ‘Hark — — — hark to thy knell. Thine enemies are around thee—thine allies in blood and crime are perishing. Chain me to the stake: burn me an’ ye will; but, ere I am in ashes, thou wilt be in flames.’ The unhappy women willingly perish themselves at the moment their vengeance is fulfilled.

The picture drawn of the life and manners of the Albigenses is, in some essentials, inspired by the descriptions of the Covenanters in Old Mortality—a circumstance which, besides being pointed out by critics both contemporary and modern,[175] was admitted by Maturin himself; he observes, when introducing the sect for the first time: ‘It is — — — a curious, but indisputable matter of fact, that the majority of them were as tenacious of certain texts and terms of the Old Testament, as their legitimate descendants, the English Puritans, were some centuries later; and that, like them, they assumed Jewish names, fought with Jewish obduracy, and felt with Jewish hostility, even towards those of their community who differed from them in a penumbra of their creed.’ Hence the speeches and opinions of Boanerges—the leader of the sterner Albigenses—are the same, only less poignantly expressed, as Balfour’s; they quote the Old Testament as their chief authority, evince a mind equally relentless and unforgiving, and Boanerges rejects the appeals of Pierre to common humanity on the same arguments which Balfour uses in his dispute with Morton. The passages treating of the Albigenses are, however, vividly written and not wholly lacking in originality. The deacon Mephibosheth has no counterpart in Scott, and the little love-story of Amand is both natural and skilfully introduced, while the character of Pierre is entirely conventional.—

This last romance of Maturin was soon forgotten, nor was it ever reprinted, notwithstanding the benevolent critiques.[176] What the renumeration amounted to is not known, but Maturin’s last months were, by all accounts, about the gloomiest in his existence. Cares and anxieties had already begun to prey upon his health—never very robust—and the unfavourable circumstances under which The Albigenses was composed, at the expense of the night’s rest during a long time, completely broke it down, his pecuniary difficulties remaining as threatening as ever. There are, in Mangan’s article, a few recollections relative to the closing period of Maturin’s life; and although the writer, no doubt, shares the old tendency of his subject ‘of darkening the gloomy, and of deepening the sad,’ it is clear enough that there was, at this time, very little left of the well-dressed dandy who had once so greatly excelled in quadrille-parties and private theatricals:

The second time I saw Maturin he had been just officiating, as on the former occasion, at a funeral. He stalked along York Street with an abstracted, or rather distracted air, the white scarf and hat-band which he had received remaining still wreathed round his beautifully-shaped person, and exhibiting to the gaze of the amused and amazed pedestrians whom he almost literally encountered in his path, a boot upon one foot and a shoe on the other. His long pale, melancholy, Don Quixote, out-of-the-world face would have inclined you to believe that Dante, Bajazet, and the Cid had risen together from their sepulchres, and clubbed their features for the production of an effect. But Maturin’s mind was only fractionally pourtrayed, so to speak, in his countenance. The great Irishman, like Hamlet, had that within him which passed show, and escaped far and away beyond the possibility of expression by the clay lineament. He bore the ‘thunder-scars’ about him, but they were graven, not on his brow, but on his heart.

The third and last time that I beheld this marvellous man I remember well. It was some time before his death, on a balmy autumn evening, in 1824. He slowly descended the steps of his own house — — — and took his way in the direction of Whitefriars Street, into Castle Street, and passed the Royal Exchange into Dame Street, every second person staring at him and the extraordinary double-belted and treble-caped rug of an old garment—neither coat nor cloak—which enveloped his person. But here it was that I, who had tracked the footsteps of the man as his shadow, discovered that the feeling to which some individuals, rather over sharp and shrewd, had been pleased to ascribe this ‘affectation of singularity,’ had no existence in Maturin. For, instead of passing along Dame Street, where he would have been ‘the observed of all observers,’ he wended his way along the dark and forlorn locality of Dame Lane, and having reached the end of this not very classical thoroughfare, crossed over to Anglesea Street, where I lost sight of him. Perhaps he went into one of those bibliopolitan establishments wherewith that Paternoster Row of Dublin then abounded. I never saw him afterwards.

In the beginning of October 1824 Maturin was seized by an acute malady which the physicians, considering his impaired health in general, apprehended to be mortal. On the 5:th Sir Charles Morgan wrote to Cyrus Redding:[177]

My dear R.—Poor Maturin is ill, severely ill; we (the Drs.) have sent him into the country, I fear, to die. Not contented with drawing the ‘saints’ down upon him, he has attacked the ‘papishes’ and is now in the condition somewhat of a nut between the two blades of a nutcracker. If the poor fellow should live, and the two parties abuse him into a good living, there might be some good for it, for he has a family of fine children. I fear, however, there is little chance of either.

These forebodings were, indeed, soon fulfilled: Maturin died on October 30:th in his home in Dublin whither he, for some reason or other, had returned from the country. There was a story afloat of his having caused, or at least precipitated, his death by some mistake about his medicine;[178] however this may have been, it is evident from the letter of Sir Charles that the case was sufficiently alarming already some four weeks before.—The death was briefly announced by the local papers; in The Morning Star of Nov. 3 there was this necrology:

In him the poor have lost a kind friend; our religion a firm supporter; and literature one of its brightest ornaments.—

In the summer of 1825 Walter Scott made his journey to Ireland, which he had long been planning. He had looked forward, with pleasure, to the prospect of becoming personally acquainted with Maturin, and had intended to invite the latter to accompany him during the tour. Now he could only pay a visit to the family,[179] for whose profit he is said to have contemplated a new edition of Maturin’s works, as well as the publication of some manuscripts found among his literary remains,[180] to which he would have prefixed a biography of his deceased friend; but his own pecuniary embarrassments, commencing just at this time, prevented him from realizing the project—and Maturin’s works soon began to fall into oblivion. Montorio was, in 1841, republished by William Hazlitt as vol. I in the Ballantyne’s Romancists and Novelists Library which he edited; Bertram appeared in The British Drama in 1865 and in Dick’s Standard Plays in 1884; and, lastly, Melmoth the Wanderer was reprinted in 1892, with no very distinct success.

To Charles Robert Maturin’s life and to his works, as such, the present study must be confined; his influence on later literature, above all on French romanticism, can here only be pointed out as a subject not yet exhaustively inquired into.[181] The work through which this influence was exercised is Melmoth the Wanderer, chiefly, yet not exclusively, inasmuch as Bertram also was immoderately admired in France and hailed as one of the foremost productions of contemporary literature. Melmoth, the great and concluding outburst of the English school of terror, stands there as at once its lasting monument and an outlet through which some of its peculiarities were, directly or indirectly, revived by the movements succeeding the downfall of 19:th century naturalism. The place in literary history of Women, Maturin’s other masterpiece, is more isolated. So far from belonging to any definite movement of the time it foreshadows, in a striking manner, the school of Dickens in its descriptions of middle class life, manners and characters, while its minute researches in the abysses of the human heart anticipate the analytic fiction of the very latest periods. In Maturin’s production Women is of an importance equal to that of Melmoth, nor is his literary physiognomy complete if The Milesian Chief is not remembered for its purely romantic qualities and its patriotic enthusiasm. These three works, which are Maturin’s best, afford ample illustration of the versatility of his genius, which versatility itself is an exponent of the spirit of freedom and experiment prevailing during the romantic revival. What they all have in common is the style of writing, the art of dealing with language as the sculptor deals with clay. Maturin’s part in the renewal of the imaginative English prose has been asserted by the latest authorities,[182] and the excellence of his style doubtless did much to obtain for him the appreciation of his brothers in the trade. It was the custom of contemporary reviewers to speak of Maturin’s novels as something particularly suited to the frequenters of circulating libraries, and it is true that with the large bulk of respectable, educated readers Maturin never was very popular; but then there was a small fraction of the public whose taste, in this respect, closely coincided with that of the former: most of those writers, great or small, whom Maturin admired, eagerly repaid the compliment. Lewis used to revel in the gloomy pages of Montorio[183] and was, as has been seen, pleased even with Manuel. Godwin, to whom so many of Maturin’s writings are indebted, is recorded[184] to have uttered: ‘if there be any writer of the present day, to whose burial-place I should wish to make a pilgrimage, that writer is Maturin.’ The Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) of James Hogg—one of the favourite poets of Maturin—seems to be not uninfluenced by Melmoth the Wanderer. The high opinion which Scott and Byron entertained of Maturin has more than once appeared in the foregoing pages—and among later romancists who are known to have delighted in the adventures of the Wanderer, or upon whose work he has even left an unmistakable print, we find names such as Balzac, Hugo, De Vigny, Baudelaire, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Poe, Thackeray, Rossetti, Stevenson, Oscar Wilde. Thus, if Maturin is not always—as he would deserve to be—remembered on his own account, he is at least mentioned in connection with, as he was acknowledged by, a great many of those writers who unquestionably form the ‘upper ten’ in the world of 19:th century letters.