II. (continued 2)

and, like her, she is also in possession of a portion of common sense and strength of mind, being eventually cured of the malady under which Elmaide St. Clair breaks down. At first, indeed, her case seems desperate. She is grown up into an ‘early, and exquisite, and dangerous maturity;’ she has been educated ‘without example but of vice and folly,’ and left to form her ideas from improper literature, until she is ‘dying to be the heroine of a mad and wicked tale of a Rousseau, of a Goethe, of a Wolstonecraft.’ And to become such a heroine she imagines it necessary for her to have both a husband and a lover. Therefore she encourages the attentions of the relative of her husband, who otherwise is quite indifferent to her. Yet at the bottom of her heart there is a yearning for fidelity, honourable love and quiet happiness, and when difficulties are gathering around her husband, this yearning grows stronger and stronger. At last she understands that the duties of life differ greatly from those of romance, and in a candid and touching letter—which her husband reads while she is sleeping!—she renounces the relative for ever. Now this argumentation would be very well if the aforesaid writers actually did maintain the views ascribed to them; but it is unquestionably a very childish way of understanding them to long for a forbidden attachment even in case you happen to be united to the man you love. Considering that Athanasia has grown up in an environment so corrupt as Maturin tries to depict it, it is certainly too far-fetched to throw the blame upon Julie and Charlotte. Yet it is never explicitly stated that Athanasia has misconceived what she has read; the opinions pass as those of the author. This curious anti-romantic freak of Maturin, whatever its cause, was not of long duration: eight years later accusations of the same kind were brought against himself, in connection with his tragedy of Bertram.—Among the secondary characters in the book that of Lady Delphina Orberry has been pointed out[47] as representing ‘a type of woman rare in English fiction.’ She is introduced as a rival of Lady Montrevor and is her contrast in every respect; her weapons against that lady’s dazzling brilliancy and sparkling wit are ‘soft, seducing manners,’ a ‘timid silence,’ and ‘melting whispers.’ Behind, however, this unterrifying exterior there is a mind totally depraved, whereas the heart of Lady Montrevor is discovered to have remained uncorrupted, in spite of her position in society. Undoubtedly how Lady Orberry clings to Ormsby like something too soft for him to shake off, gently but irresistingly involving her fate with his, is well described, and how she understands to excite his compassion by representing herself as unjustly suspected of that which she most wishes, in her relation to him. But the end, again, is forced and unnatural; it is only because the hero must be got out of his difficulties that she takes poison, confesses all her crimes to him, and gives him the letters of her unhappy daughter.

Notwithstanding all that can be said against The Wild Irish Boy, it is of considerable interest in Maturin’s earlier production, when regarded as a kind of preparatory study to Women, one of his masterpieces. Many of the characters and situations present obvious similarities, and it will, therefore, be necessary later on to refer to the present work. A few words are still required to define its character as an Irish novel, one of the first where elements typically Irish are brought forward.

Anything finished or complete these Irish ingredients do not form; that Maturin longed to speak of his country but felt himself prevented by other considerations has already been pointed out. Of the attempts to treat of Ireland, her past and present, only some diffuse discussions remain here and there, without being naturally introduced into the story. The first idea of Ireland is introduced in a surprising and poetical way. During his solitary wanderings in the mountains of Cumberland, in his earliest youth, Ormsby sometimes amuses himself by imagining a people whose destinies he is to lead and whose sovereign and benefactor he is to become:

I — — — imagined them possessed of the most shining qualities that can enter into the human character, glowing with untaught affections, and luxuriant with uncultivated virtue; but proud, irritable, impetuous, indolent and superstitious; conscious of claims they knew not how to support, burning with excellencies, which, because they wanted regulation, wanted both dignity and utility; and disgraced by crimes which the moment after their commission they lamented, as a man laments the involuntary outrages of drunkenness. I imagined a people that seemed to stretch out its helpless hands, like the infant Moses from the ark, and promise its preserver to bless and dignify the species.

These fancies he discloses to the good parson, his tutor, who immediately answers that he has ‘accurately described the Irish nation.’ Shortly afterwards Ormsby is sent to Ireland. He might now be expected to come into some contact with the people of his dreams, but this material is, unfortunately, allowed to run to waste. His first stay in Dublin is occupied by a tedious discourse upon the University, and by a description of a Calvinistic set among the students, who endeavour to draw Ormsby into their circle. In Maturin’s days these passages possibly might have excited some local interest, yet to a modern reader they form a most unexhilarating digression, from the like of which all other works of Maturin are exempt. Ormsby’s second sojourn at Dublin, that which he otherwise avoids speaking of in the first person, contains a lengthy comparison between the Irish and English character. This is somewhat more to the point; but even at that time, when but little had been written about the former, observations of this kind were hardly original:

The Irish are more ardent lovers, the English better husbands. The Irishman is more exhilarating in society, the Englishman’s comforts are more domestic. One is formed to give more delight, the other more tranquil and rational happiness to life. The Irishman approaches you with facility and attaches himself to you with ardor; the Englishman it is difficult to conciliate as an acquaintance, and more difficult to obtain for a friend, but once obtained, the prize is beyond all labor.

Now and then the political state of Ireland is mentioned: ‘her depressed trade, her neglected populace, her renegade nobility, her dissipated, and careless, and unnational gentry’—but almost always in the form of a discourse, apart from the story. Events and personages throwing light upon the state of Ireland and her national character, are not allowed to speak for themselves; when the discourse is finished, the reader again finds himself in the drawing-room of Lady Montrevor. In a few instances only the descriptions present a glimpse of Irish life freed from comment. There is a dinner-party at the house of the elder Hammond, of a riotous and disorderly character, the account of which, a note informs us, is taken from real life. The other is an instance of so-called ‘paddyism,’ unique in the production of Maturin who, unlike most older Irish novelists, was not at all fond of depicting the lower classes with sympathetic humour. The night the Montrevors arrive at their castle, the tenantry are gathered to receive them, having shortened the tedium of waiting by indulging in a drop of whiskey, with the result that the approaching family are hailed with an Irish cry that frightens their horses and endangers their very lives. Their intentions were all the best, as is explained by an old man:

But as we were all tenants to this great new lord, and old followers to the family, though they never lived among us, why we all loved him as we did our eyes, though we never set them upon his face till last night. So we thought it would be but right to go out and give him a shout of joy, when he was coming to his own house, that he never was in before; and we all set out, and we were early enough to see him, for the devil a bit of him was there, and so says I to them, there’s no good at all in waiting to see a man in the dark, and we are perished standing here in the bog, with nothing to warm us but the rain and wind; and so let us step into Paddy Donnellan’s that is within a step of the gate, and take a drop of whiskey, and when we hear the carriage wheel, we’ll all come out as fresh as daisies, and give him an Irish cry that he never heard from them English spalpeens in his life.

This is one of the preludes to the innumerable scenes of Irish boisterousness and characteristic blunders, found in the pages of later writers, Carleton, Lover, Lever, and others.

The ancient glory of Ireland is touched upon in the figure of the old Milesian.[48] The type had been introduced into fiction by Miss Owenson; her story of The Wild Irish Girl is the first patriotic Irish novel of a predominantly romantic colouring, and essentially influenced, as will be seen, Maturin’s third book. It is an immature and extravagant, but not undelightful tale of an Irish chieftain, the prince of Inismore, whose ancestors, in the Cromwellian wars, lost nearly all their estates to an English soldier, the same estates still being in possession of the English soldier’s descendants. The present prince of Inismore lives in solitary retirement with his chaplain and his daughter, a beautiful, gifted and accomplished young lady, whose only ‘wildness’ is her naturalness of manners and purity of heart. The head of the English family has made several attempts at reconciliation, his advances having always been proudly rejected. Nevertheless both he and his son visit the prince without revealing their identity, at the same time also concealing their respective visits from each other; both succeed in securing the friendship of the old man, and both fall in love with his daughter. A tragedy is avoided by the father voluntarily retiring and leaving to his son the girl and all his Irish estates. This intrigue, however, is merely a setting for the real tendency of the story, which is to make Ireland known. The colloquies held at Castle Inismore form the principal part of the book; they treat exclusively of the past of Ireland and are furnished with notes and quotations from Walker, Ware, Young, and other historians, all tending to prove the oriental descent and great antiquity of the Milesian race, its attachment to poetry and music, as well as its other noble qualities and high standard of civilization at a very early period.

In spite of its promising title, Maturin’s second book contains no loans from The Wild Irish Girl except the venerable Milesian with his inevitable chapelain de maison, and even this figure has undergone a change. De Lacy is a rich man who has travelled much in foreign parts and is, in every way, more modern and less romantic than the prince of Inismore. The latter always appears in a dress ‘strictly conformable to the ancient costume of the Irish nobles;’ De Lacy wears ‘the English habit of fifty years ago,’ with only an Irish cloak to remind one of his nationality. But their notions of their race and their country are the same, De Lacy also assuring us that ‘he who shakes my belief in the antiquity of my country, must first shake my belief in the beatitude of the immaculate Virgin Mary.’

The Wild Irish Boy appears to have met with the very fate Maturin had hoped to avoid by trying to please all: it attracted but little attention, or, if the statement of a writer[49] is to be relied upon, that the book was ‘admired, talked of, praised,’ the attention probably was confined to the literary circles of Dublin. In dedicating his third book to the ‘Quarterly Reviewers’ Maturin says that they had been pleased to notice his romance of Montorio, but there are no indications of his second book having been subject to public review. As a means of brightening the economic outlook of its author, The Wild Irish Boy failed completely; it was, like Montorio, published at his own risk, and the success was not distinct enough to induce any publisher to purchase the copyright. Discouraged from an immediate renewal of the attempt, Maturin, for four years to come, devoted his leisure hours exclusively to some less precarious occupation, which, in all probability, consisted in the enlargement of and still closer attention to his boarding-school. What support he might hitherto have had from his father now also ceased, for about 1810 Maturin senior was dismissed from his situation. One biographer,[50] alluding to this deplorable event, says that Charles Robert was ‘roused to poetry by disappointment,’ which would antedate the event in question by about 5 years. There seems, however, to be more reason to believe Alaric Watts, who, writing in 1819, states that William Maturin was dismissed after a service of 47 years, adding the following particulars: ‘The day of his dismissal he was pennyless: it is singular, that though the commissioners of inquiry, who sat repeatedly on the business pronounced this unfortunate gentleman wholly innocent of the charge (of fraud) brought against him, he has been suffered to linger for nine years since, without redress, without relief, and without notice.’ Whether this be correct or not, there is no further intelligence about Mr. William Maturin; but in any case his last years must have cast a gloom over all the family, and exercised a further pressure upon the toiling life of his son.——

In 1810 appeared Scott’s critique on Montorio, ending with this passage:

If the author — — — be indeed, as he describes himself, young and inexperienced, without literary friend or counsellor, we earnestly exhort him to seek one on whose taste and judgment he may rely. He is now, like an untutored colt, wasting his best vigour in irregular efforts without either grace or object; but there is much of these volumes which promises a career that may at some future time astonish the public.

As Maturin had, somehow or other, come to know who this friendly reviewer was, he availed himself of the opportunity to write to Scott and solicit him to become his literary friend and counsellor. This gave rise to an intimate, lifelong correspondence, during the course of which Scott faithfully assisted the poor Irishman with good advice and, sometimes, even in a more substantial way. His epistolary intimacy with the great novelist Maturin always counted among his greatest distinctions, and although the two men never met, their friendship continued warm and sincere until Maturin’s death.[51]

There are no more details available with regard to Maturin’s life at that period, but he was undoubtedly successful in his vocation as a teacher, for when he again turned to literature, he did so in rather a hopeful state of mind. His biographer[52] says that when Maturin was writing The Milesian Chief—which was published in the beginning of 1812—his genius was ‘elastic and ardent, his knowledge of composition improved with the errors of his former works before him, and an increasing desire to do something worthy of fame: he was at the age and under the circumstances that are calculated to improve and correct the taste.’ Colburn paid 80 pounds for the copyright, which was the first success of this kind Maturin had ever experienced; and full of confidence he finishes his preface—in which he does not care to enlarge upon his second book—:

In my first work I attempted to explore the ground forbidden to man; the sources of visionary terror; the “formless and the void”: in my present I have tried the equally obscure recesses of the human heart. If I fail in both, I shall—write again.

The preface is in the form of a dedication to the Quarterly Reviewers, whom Maturin accuses of writing reviews merely to make a display of their own cleverness and neglecting to speak of the works they are to judge:

Seriously I read the Reviews for information, and information I could get none—about myself. All I learned was that I was a bad writer, but why, or how, or in what manner I was to become better, they graciously left to myself.

The tone is throughout very different from that of the preface to The Wild Irish Boy; herein speaks the artist to whom a literary reputation is by no means indifferent. Here also is found the much-quoted sentence where Maturin defines his characteristic powers:

If I possess any talent, it is that of darkening the gloomy, and of deepening the sad; of painting life in extremes, and representing those struggles of passion when the soul trembles on the verge of the unlawful and the unhallowed.

Of the work now at hand Maturin adds:

In the following pages I have tried to apply these powers to the scenes of actual life: and I have chosen my own country for the scene, because I believe it the only country on earth, where, from the strange existing opposition of religion, politics, and manners, the extremes of refinement and barbarism are united, and the most wild and incredible situations of romantic story are hourly passing before modern eyes.

All this material is, very likely, not attended to in The Milesian Chief, yet it is certainly by far the noblest of Maturin’s three earlier romances.—

The Milesian Chief is Connal O’Morven, a young man of an ancient and formerly potent Irish family, now reduced to extreme poverty. Their castle and estates have been sold to an Englishman, Lord Montclare, and Connal lives with his aged and insane grandfather in a ruined watch-tower, subsisting chiefly on memories of bygone glory. The old man, in his frantic rage against England, conceives a plan of insurrection, for the liberation of Ireland; and Connal, young and inexperienced as he is, engages himself to be the leader of it. In the meantime Miss Armida Fitzalban, the daughter of Lord Montclare, whose beauty and talents have struck all Europe with amazement, arrives at the castle, and a violent passion flames up between her and Connal. Fully comprehending the impossibility of success in his enterprise, Connal is determined to dissolve the conspiracy, but the treacherous conduct of Armida’s unsuccessful lover, an English officer called Wandesford, who happens to get wind of the plan, compels him to take up arms. Armida renounces everything and follows Connal and his band to a remote island on the Atlantic coast. The government troops, however, track them even there, and as the cause of the rebels is hopeless, Armida is conducted back to her home. Becoming now a prey to the machinations of an unnatural mother, she ends her days by taking poison; Connal surrenders himself to the government and is sentenced to death.

By the side of this love-story there is another, equally unhappy, but bizarre rather than gloomy, curious rather than grand: of Connal’s younger brother Desmond, and Armida’s younger sister Ines. The last-named, for family reasons, is, by her mother, given out as a boy; and being very young and innocent she never suspects her sex but imagines herself to love Desmond as brother loves brother. At last the secret is revealed and they are married for a short time, but subsequently Ines is also implicated in the schemes of her mother, and dies of a broken heart in a state of insanity.

The destinies of these four people form the contents of the book. It is a record of human passions which are incalculable from the external basis upon which the incidents take place, and the interest is absorbed by the sufferings and inner conflicts of a few figures powerfully domineering at the expense of the milieu. This is, indeed, the case with all Maturin’s Irish stories; a dissection of the social state of Ireland, with a comprehensive view of the different classes, something in the style of Gerald Griffin’s well-known tale of The Collegians (1828), it would hardly have been within his capacity to create. In The Milesian Chief the political state of the country and the insurrection, instead of being the main subject of the story, form but a background to the personal tragedy of Connal O’Morven, which becomes only the more poignant as he fights for a cause in which he does not believe. He is the first to comprehend that it is ‘impossible for Ireland to subsist as an independent country,’ and the masses he has at his disposal are in no way calculated to heighten his confidence. The Milesian spirit so highly admired Maturin finds only in a few surviving descendants of the noblest families; his ideas of the people are tinged with the somewhat aristocratic notion which makes one of the distinctions between the typical 19th century romanticism and its pioneers in the preceding one. In some of his sermons Maturin clearly expresses his opinions on this point:

It is an absurd and mischievous prejudice that supposes the existence of vice confined to the higher classes of life, and virtue (as they call it) the everlasting inhabitant of a cottage—it is a prejudice originating in utter ignorance of life, cherished by the silly illusions of pastoral poetry, and inflamed by the wild and wicked ravings of political enthusiasts, without any reason in nature and in life.

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

The root of the wretchedness of the lower orders of this country is in their depravity, and the root of their depravity is for the most part in their ignorance; they are wicked because they are uncultivated, and they are uncultivated because they have been shamefully, abominably neglected; more neglected than the people of any civilized country under heaven.

But much ‘sinned against’ as the lower classes are, in the opinion of the clergyman, to the romantic they remain unattractive; and here is the basis of the fact that the Irish peasantry occupies, upon the whole, so inconspicuous a place in Maturin’s production, and never—except in the opening chapters of Melmoth—gives him the inspiration to his most interesting work. On the other hand his treatment of the subject is never undignified; if he has not created anything like the dark and impressive pictures of Irish rebels and outlaws found, say, in the pages of John Banim, neither does he give way to the popular habit of representing the Irish peasant as a cross between a fool and a jester, which idea was so keenly resented in the Irish literary circles in the fifties.[53]

Yet The Milesian Chief must be considered, in a way, a national tale, and it is even extremely characteristic as such; the plot, in its roughest outlines, is the identical one used by Irish novelists up to this day with a persistence which cannot escape any student of Anglo-Irish literature. These rough outlines are as follows. A person of eminence arrives in Ireland; he (or she) possesses every qualification for a rich and interesting life, yet nothing noteworthy has ever happened to him, and he is full of spleen until, once there, he is dragged into a whirl of undreamt-of adventures; his former habits, prejudices and ways of thinking suddenly give way to an all-absorbing passion, which irresistibly hurries him towards bliss or destruction, as the case may be. In the predilection of Irish novelists for an intrigue of this description there is something more than a natural partiality to a theme which aptly lends itself to literary aims; it is the revenge of a subdued and oppressed country upon her masters. In the field of fiction the conquered becomes the conqueror, and the first come in as the last. Connal O’Morven, unreal and idealized though he be, is the embodiment of all that is great and proud in the Milesian spirit, which spirit here subjugates the most brilliant representative of the happier race. This, again, does not hinder Armida’s infatuation from being quite individual in character, limited only to the person of Connal. His princely ancestry of which he is so proud, the ancient glory of Ireland, her poetry and music, are all indifferent to her, and Irish scenery, in all its grandeur, only makes her sigh for the sunny regions she has quitted. As Connal is persuaded that he could never be happy out of Ireland, their love is born under most unpromising auspices, and its tragic issue is necessitated by the circumstance of their having nothing in common.—

Armida and Connal—and Wandesford, too—are all nearly related. This fact is made no mystery of, but plainly communicated to Armida by her father, on their way to Ireland. At the time of the ruin of the Irish family, and upon the estates forthwith becoming the property of Lord Montclare, his sister has married Mr. Randal O’Morven, son of the old Milesian. The latter has never forgiven his son, any more than Lord Montclare has forgiven his sister; but shortly before her death Mrs O’Morven has written to her brother and disclosed the extreme misery of their condition. Lord Montclare has, consequently, appointed her husband to be his land-steward, and offered her sons commissions in the army. The younger, Desmond, has accepted the offer, while Connal prefers to starve with his grandfather.

The family has, it is true, been shrouded in a real mystery, but this also is shortly afterwards revealed by Lord Montclare, when lying at death’s door to which he is brought by the unexpected arrival in Ireland of the rest of the family, whose existence Armida has been wholly ignorant of. Her father has, long ago, contracted a marriage, having in view the sole purpose of excluding the O’Morvens from the property, by begetting a son. Armida, however, is the only child remaining alive, whereupon Lord Montclare, exasperated by his misfortunes, confines his wife in an obscure place and spreads the report of her death; this is done with the assistance of an Italian monk called Morosini, who subsequently turns out to be in the service of two masters. Before Lord Montclare has time to form another connection, his lady is delivered of a son. Under the circumstances he cannot acknowledge his heir without acknowledging his imposture, and threatened and persecuted by Morosini he flees from land to land, too feeble in courage to reveal the secret. Wandesford—who is the son of his younger sister—is the only person acquainted with the actual facts of the case, and therefore Lord Montclare eagerly presses Armida to accept his proposal. At last he is determined to give the matter publicity in Ireland, for the consolatory reason that in this country ‘the judgment of his character was indifferent to him from his contempt for its inhabitants.’ Before, however, he has accomplished his purpose, his death is caused by the sudden arrival of his family, who make their appearance at Castle Montclare, attended by Morosini and Desmond O’Morven. Desmond has come from Italy by the same boat as Lady Montclare, and has had an opportunity of saving her son from drowning, after which a very tender friendship has sprung up between the two.—

The commencement of the story in Ireland is preceded by two prologues, representing ‘Armida in Italy’ and ‘Armida in England.’ The first describes a banquet given by Lord Montclare at Naples, where Wandesford also makes his appearance. Armida has, for the occasion, arranged some tableaux in which her manifold accomplishments are dazzlingly displayed. In one of these the scene

represented the garden of an oriental palace: the sides filled with flowers, whose lofty and luxuriant clusters seemed to rise above the height of the apartment, and whose deep and sunny hues were softened by the magic diffusion of the lights; and the perspective terminated in an arch, beyond which was caught a view of the ruins of Persepolis. — — — Armida advanced on the stage alone: she was in the oriental dress, and she had an instrument in her hand resembling the lute. Wandesford gazed with astonishment: the pale, slight, simply clad girl he had lately seen was transformed into the most brilliant female in the world. The colour which applause brought to her cheek mantled richly through the tinge of rouge she had put on to conceal the effects of her exertions. — — The torrent of sound that she now poured forth, the height to which she soared, the rapidity with which she traversed intervals that connected the widest extremes of human voice, the precision with which she marked their minutest subdivisions, and, above all, the ease of attitude and expression which she preserved amid her exertions, like a skilful charioteer, who commands and enjoys the flight of his coursers, whilst their speed terrifies the spectators, filled the Italians with a sensation which applause could neither express nor exhaust.

There is, it will be observed, no stint of powerful attributes, the marvels of Armida leading directly back to Lady Montrevor in The Wild Irish Boy. Yet the descriptions here are somewhat softened, and the style is free from the extravagances of Maturin’s second book; Armida, somehow, seems more fit for a heroine of this extraordinary kind. Her cousin Wandesford, though a cold and selfish character, is so enraptured by her performance that he declares himself on the spot. Armida decidedly rejects his attentions, and on the following morning when he calls on her again, he is informed that Lord Montclare and his daughter have departed from Italy without any intentions of ever returning.

The second prologue represents Armida in London society, of which Maturin draws an amusing and curious picture. Here she is incapable of creating any sensation:

But what was the astonishment, the horror, of the beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious foreigner, on her first introduction to fashionable life in London: lost amid a crowd where beauty could not be distinguished; stunned by a buz of nothings, where mind could not be displayed; elbowed by rouged, naked, dashing dowagers; suffered to stand unnoticed or eyed through a glass by yawning, lounging bucks of ton; sinking amid the crowd, to be permitted to help herself to refreshments, or to want them; to be without conversation, though a mistress of half the dead and living languages, from her ignorance of fashionable jargon; to walk down a set with a partner who appeared to be debating whether it would not be high ton to drop asleep during the exercise—what a reception for a woman who had seen at her feet Italy and France contending to scatter the laurels of fame and the roses of pleasure.

Wandesford reappears, and Armida, in her desolation, receives his attentions with something akin to gratitude. He renews his proposal, which is eagerly embraced by Lord Montclare. Harassed on all sides Armida at last complies and gives Wandesford her word; upon this she is hurried off to Ireland, where Wandesford is shortly to follow them.—

These two chapters are a clever preliminary to the thrilling adventures Armida is going forth to meet, besides giving a good idea of her character and circumstances. In spite of her brilliant position in society she feels lonely and unhappy in her restless life, where in everything she is subjected to the caprices of her father. Her only pleasure is the gratification of her pride through the admiration she excites with her talents; but in England her pride also gets a severe blow. She feels utterly humiliated and is, as it were, prepared to meet what she will be forced to surrender to. In a state of dejection she accepts the proposal of Wandesford, who is less than indifferent to her, nor is her future brightened by her father’s determination to set out for Ireland, which determination she cannot imagine to be anything but a fit of his incurable melancholy. She shudders to think of the country she is taken to, and travels on almost in apathy. Much ‘fury’—of which there is quite enough already—is spared by her not entering the scene of action immediately from the highest pinnacles of glory and triumph; and the deeper and truer side of her character is naturally developed in sorrow and desolation, which her father’s death increases to the uttermost. Her new-found relations cannot compensate for the loss. Lady Montclare, though always wearing a mask of unvarying suavity, inspires not the least confidence in her daughter, and her young son, Endymion, is so closely watched by her and Morosini, that it is impossible for Armida to approach him. Thus she is inevitably drawn to Connal O’Morven, who comes like an incarnation of his wild country, grand and solitary, distinct from anything she has ever seen or dreamt of, while at the same time the boundless devotion he offers her recalls by-gone, brighter days to her mind. Being thus mentally prepared for their fate, they are thrown together by external events with rather unnecessary violence: in the first dawn of their acquaintance Connal finds an opportunity of saving Armida’s life—at the risk of his own—three different times. Upon her first arrival to the castle her horses are terrified and rear staggering backwards on to the rock, and she would be lost did not Connal rush to the scene of imminent danger and snatch her from the carriage. The following day she walks out to the shore and sits down on a rock. Lost in meditations she fails to observe the tide coming on before it has cut off her return; again she would perish but for Connal, who happens to be close at hand. And a few days later, when Wandesford, too, has arrived, he and Armida and Connal visit a small islet to look at some Celtic antiquities. In the meantime a dreadful storm breaks out, and only by exerting his superhuman strength to the utmost Connal succeeds in rowing them back sufficiently near the shore to be rescued when the boat capsizes. In all this, however, there is a kind of inner veracity which saves any of the passages from becoming merely melodramatic. The delineation especially of Armida, who is not (like Connal) raised above human weaknesses, is skilfully represented, and the descriptions of her mental struggles are both psychologically, as well as poetically, true. In Ireland everything is so different from what she is accustomed to, and her relation particularly to Connal is so uncomfortable, that all her experience of the great world is unable to guide her upon her first encounters with him. When Connal rescues her from the waves of the tide, Armida, in her confusion, offers him her purse. The manner in which this ill-chosen retribution is rejected she imagines to imply contempt of her person. This is a possibility that has never before entered her mind; and though it makes her shed tears of resentment, she is unable to answer with the same feeling by dismissing him from her recollection; in order to rid herself from thoughts of Connal, she sits down to—write to Wandesford.

Wandesford himself arrives before he is expected, and is received by Lady Montclare with joyful attention, but with very marked indifference by Armida. She has contracted the habit of frequently strolling on the shore, attended by a newly-acquired friend, Rosine St. Austin. Here she meets Connal, and their acquaintance is quickly developed. He sings Irish songs to her and is, on the whole, quite at his ease, taking no pains to conceal his admiration for her, as he fully comprehends from first that his love is hopeless. But Armida, too, is in love, though her feeling, to begin with, asserts itself as a desire to dazzle him by the display of her accomplishments, for which purpose she invites him to the castle; or as what she imagines to be hatred, when he refuses, being disinclined to enter, as a stranger, the abode of his forefathers. He comes, however, and appears to be the only person capable of understanding Armida and appreciating her talents according to their merits. Their intimacy grows stronger every moment. Then follows the excursion to the islet, to which much piquancy is added by the presence of Wandesford, who is well aware that he has acquired a formidable rival; the storm under which Connal is exerting his strength to save Armida and at the same time his enemy, is very dramatically depicted. Being at last beyond all danger, Connal, wildly happy to have Armida in his arms and pressed to his heart, insists on carrying her so all the way to the castle:

Her wet hair had fallen back from her cheek: he touched it with his lips: she sighed: his hyacinth breath, warm with life and passion, passing over her cheek was balmy to her returning senses: she seemed to see him in a dream. Her arm that hung on his shoulder now half-extended itself, and sunk again; the soft fingers, with a tremulous motion, touched his neck: he felt every nerve in his body shiver: the anguish of passion increased with its hopeless fondness: he held her to his breast in sweet and bitter ecstacy; he felt her too precious to be possessed, or to be resigned; he felt that he could clasp her to his heart with desperate love, and then spring with her from the rock he was climbing.

Half-conscious as she is, the attitude touches a latent chord in Armida’s bosom, which makes her understand her own feelings; that same night her passion becomes clear to her. Yet there is still another experience in store for her, as novel as it is startling: the suspicion of a rival. The next time she goes to the shore, Connal appears in the door of a solitary hut which he, with some embarrassment, confesses that he often visits. Approaching it, Armida sees through the open door a beautiful woman with an infant in her lap. After this episode all the pangs of jealousy are roused to life, and sometimes take a very frenetic mode of expression. An explanation, however, is soon given by the woman herself, who accosts Armida and Rosine on one of their walks and tells them the story of her life. The father of her child is Wandesford, by whom she has been seduced during one of his former stays in Ireland, whereupon he has taken her with him to England and there abandoned her; under much suffering she has returned to Ireland, and would have perished but for the assistance of Connal, who is the only one that has taken pity on her fate. She is, and has always been, desperately in love with Connal, but as she understands that he adores Armida, she wishes to clear his character before her. Armida is calmed, and when she next meets Connal she is triumphant and impossible to resist. He is forced to throw himself at her feet, but remembers the conspiracy he is engaged in, and darkly hints that they must part for ever.—

The progress of Armida’s mind to the point of an all-absorbing passion is described with a consistency and a flexibility that gives the first remarkable proof of Maturin’s deep insight into feminine psychology. The characterization of Connal is much more schablonenmässig: he simply possesses every mental and bodily perfection. Nevertheless there are some good observations upon his character, which tend to naturalness rather than to eulogy. His inexperience of life and society, an effect of his solitary existence in which he has thought more than he has seen, is distinctly presented. Thus his high-sounding theories are sometimes dispersed by Armida’s charms and his own feelings. Once she asks him to come to a fête given by a lady in the neighbourhood. He first refuses to visit a house where, he says, his grandfather has been insulted; and when Armida resents his disobedience he assures her that ‘to a Milesian the sacrifice of his life is trivial to the sacrifice of his pride.’ All the same he makes his appearance at the feast, the description of which is one of the finest things in the book. Armida has been, all the evening, in a state of weariness and absent-mindedness that greatly enrages Wandesford. Through his carelessness a part of her drapery is torn in a dance, and she retires to repair it in the room of Lady Gabriella, the granddaughter of their hostess. Here she is joined by Connal, who has been wandering round the gardens in hope of catching a glimpse of her. Hitherto they have met mostly under circumstances endangering their lives, or else amid wildness and desolation; but now they are brought together in surroundings inviting them to happiness and joy. Armida confesses to Connal that his feelings are reciprocated, and they succeed in becoming oblivious to all but the present moment. Their interview being interrupted she asks him to accompany her, and he instantly obeys:

But what a different figure entered the ball-room from that which had quitted it—glowing, brilliant, her features sparkling with the tremulous, with the gem-like lustre of hope and passion; her form almost too bright and light for any element but air to support or to convey; her very vestments seemed to undergo a change like the Cameleon from the air she respired; and her whole figure realized the fable of the statue converted into woman by the charm of love. No longer shrinking into obscurity, she accepted the trembling hand that Connal offered, and when they joined the set, they scarce seemed beings of the same species with those who surrounded them.

When the dance began, all the other performers paused almost involuntarily. Envy was stifled by resistless admiration, and even applause by wonder. The perfection of their figures, the ease, lightness, and enjouement of their movements, the exquisite modulation of their attitudes, that seemed to form a kind of visible music, gave to the spectators the idea of two descended genii mixing in the festivity. The light movements of Connal scarce disturbed a ringlet of the glossy hair that fell on his white neck: and as Armida’s nymph-like form glided among the dancers, it appeared like a star sometimes passing through the clouds, sometimes sparkling as it emerged from them: all gazed with delight, but the anxious Rosine (who could as little account for Connal’s appearance as for Armida’s sudden re-animation) and the disappointed Gabriella.

The pressure of company towards the door announced the approach of supper, and Connal, ignorant of the modern custom of the young, hurrying down to secure the best accommodations, waited with the reverence of other days, till every female had quitted the apartment. The supper-room was completely filled when he entered, but Lady Gabriella eagerly displacing those near her, offered him a seat next herself, but Connal slightly bowing, placed himself at the back of Armida’s chair, and intoxicated with his situation, forgot alike the luxuries of the feast and the gaze of strangers.

Never had they appeared to each other so resistless: that rose-coloured light which a brilliant entertainment diffuses on every object was more congenial to the voluptuous splendour of Armida’s beauty than the gloom of rocks, or the paleness of moonlight: and Armida, who amidst all her passion revolted from the chill and stern character of Connal, his apathy of life, and his contempt of luxury, now amid scenes that renewed her former existence saw him all she wished, and like the sun-flower expanded in his unclouded rays.

This, indeed, is the only time the sun shines upon them. The fête does not pass off without ominous collisions between Connal and Wandesford, and Lady Montclare, anxious for many reasons, hastens to take leave of the party. Having arrived home Armida again goes to meet Connal on the rocks. He dare not speak of the conspiration, but gives her to understand that he is compelled to leave Ireland to seek his sustenance. Armida, with tears, implores him to take her with him. All her pride is vanished; henceforth she is only a woman who loves. A hope springs to life in Connal, but this night the fatal event takes place which frustrates all his chances—it is told by Connal to Armida long afterwards, but may, for the sake of elucidation, be mentioned now. Inspired by Armida’s love Connal determines to dissolve the conspiracy. He seeks out his men, who are assembled in a cave, adjures them to surrender themselves to the mercy of the government and make him their hostage, if need be. They listen with conviction, when Wandesford, who has traced Connal’s footsteps from the castle, suddenly appears in their midst. The men are on the point of killing him, but Connal saves his life and appeals to him to intercede for them with the government, which Wandesford promises on his word of honour to do.—When Armida, however, on the following morning solemnly rejects him—on account of the story of the woman in the hut—Wandesford breaks his word without a scruple. He disappears for some days to prepare for his plan. This interval is filled by a very romantic description of an old Irish harper, who has remained faithful to the house of O’Morven. Connal takes Armida to see him, but he terrifies them both with prophecies of death and woe. And the following night, when they are together on the heath, the tower where Connal lives with his grandfather, is suddenly seen bursting into flames and besieged by soldiers, who are sent to suppress the intended rebellion. From this moment Connal is forced to appear in the character of a leader of rebels. He succeeds in retiring with his band into an inaccessible place in the mountains, whence reports of his miraculous valour soon reach Castle Montclare. Armida, having never taken any interest in Irish politics, has great difficulty in grasping what has happened. All the same she would be ready to follow Connal under any circumstances, but one day the news is spread that he has enticed Lady Gabriella to accompany him into his retreat. In reality this warm-blooded young lady, who has taken a fancy to the interesting Milesian, has followed him of her own accord, and Connal immediately restores her to her grandmother. Armida, however, finds no reason to doubt the news, and thus once more becomes a prey to unfounded suspicions. Besides being repetition, this means of bringing the plot forward is not very brilliant; but the emotions of Armida are again admirably analyzed. This time there is no outburst of pride or indignation, only silent despair. She walks out on the darkening heath, followed by Rosine, and hurries onward without aim or purpose, until they sink down exhausted and presently recognize, without being seen, two figures passing by them: Connal, conducting Gabriella back to her home. Having now lost all interest in life, Armida re-engages herself to Wandesford. His treatment of her continues to be very unchivalrous, as she does not conceal that her heart cannot be his; it is, however, determined that they are to proceed to England directly and get married there, Armida still being attended by Rosine. Their journey is soon impeded by a snowstorm, and they fall into the hands of the rebels. Wandesford is dragged away, but Connal, who is under the impression that Armida is already married to him, once more saves his life, enabling him to proceed alone to the nearest town. Connal then undertakes to conduct Armida back to Castle Montclare; before long he understands that she is not the wife of Wandesford, and she, on her part, learns the truth about Gabriella. After scenes of great passion their final resolution is impressively told in a few words, sounding, as it were, like the bang of a heavy gate:

The distracted Connal, kneeling before her, implored for a word, a look of life. “I can no longer see you,” said Armida, sinking from his arms to the ground; “and though I stretch out my hands, they wander about, without being able to reach you.”

“God! this is too much for man. Armida! answer!—Will you be mine? I speak in despair; I have nothing to offer or to promise: will you be the companion of a rebel, in a desert, amid war, and want, and danger?”

Armida, with an impulse like fate, threw herself into his arms. He clasped her to his heart. — —

There follows now a pause in the narrative, as Connal tells Armida the story of his life, his engagement in the rebellion, and the treachery of Wandesford. Upon this they are obliged to set out for the coast of the Atlantic, and at this period even Rosine is compelled to leave them. After a march through a country devastated by the ravages of famine and rape, enduring intolerable hardships and continual attacks from the troops of the government, they finally reach the isles, where a solitary hut with a bed of rushes becomes the dwelling of Armida for a long time to come. Ireland has taken her revenge; the proud and brilliant being at whose feet Europe has lain prostrate, is changed into a silent and self-sacrificing woman, deprived of all qualifications ever to re-assume her place in society. This trait is a remarkable one in the romantic fiction of the time, where the freshness and buoyancy of a heroine are usually not in the least affected by perilous adventures and privations ever so hard.

The story of Desmond and Endymion is more eccentric and presents a curious mixture of passion and fantastic gracefulness. It has already been said that Endymion, in reality, is a girl, though her mother, who covets the estates of Montclare, endeavours to conceal her sex. From the moment Desmond has clasped her to his heart, in saving her life, Endymion is absorbed by a feeling for him, the nature of which she does not comprehend. She plainly avows her love to Desmond, whom she imagines herself to regard in the light of an elder brother; he fully shares her sentiments, but, dreading their apparently unnatural tendency, tries, though without success, to avoid her presence:

— — — — — “Oh that sensation,” cried Endymion, “how often I feel it in your presence: at some moments, at the present, it almost deprives me of breath, of sense: it is a delight that makes me sick and giddy: the Italians before an earthquake, have a sensation for which there is no name; such is the sensation I feel in your presence, that I could throw myself into your arms and weep, if you would let me.”

“Stop, stop,” said Desmond, “talk this language no more: if the sight of each other be thus intoxicating, thus ruinous, let us part, and see each other no more.”

Endymion wept.

“Oh torture me no more with this fantastic fondness,” said Desmond, “so unlike what we ought to feel for each other: this female fastidiousness I cannot bear. I wish to love you like a younger brother; you treat me with the caprice of a mistress. Endymion, I cannot endure this. Never did I feel before these wild, these maddening sensations. I know not what you have done with me; what strange influence you have obtained over me, but it is an influence that I must fly from to preserve my reason, my life.”

“Oh! do not, do not talk of going,” said Endymion, ringing his hands in agony. “Am I so lost that I cannot love or be loved without being guilty: is my affection a crime, or a curse—why must I not love you? It is so sad, none can envy me; none shall ever see me.” She whispered, “If you will sometimes let me twine those bright ringlets on my fingers, or gaze on you, when your eye is averted from me, or touch your hand when it is unconsciously suspended near me—and is that too much; can you refuse me that?”

“I can refuse you nothing, and therefore I must fly from you. I tried, but I cannot love you as a man: I know what it is to love a brother well; for Connal I would die, but for you, Endymion, I would live: live, in you, for you, in your sight: dream life away in voluptuous and frantic melancholy: the feelings that oppress, that soften, that sicken me, even now while I speak to you I cannot describe them; I must not feel them; no, not another moment. Oh! untwine those arms from me; you are making me wild; my blood burns like fire in my veins: do not believe these hot tears that drop on your hands: they are tears of hatred,—hatred of myself and you” — — —

The appearance, in the literature of all times, of a young female in male attire is, as a rule, connected with the gay and humorous—it is enough to call to mind Shakespeare’s comedies—or else it is used as a pretty and sentimental expedient finally leading to a happy result, as in Cymbeline, in certain episodes in Don Quixote, in the Monastery of Scott and the Albigenses of Maturin. The figure is not often taken very seriously, and the disguise still more seldom leads to conflicts of a tragical import. Of famous literary characters of the last-mentioned description, Goethe’s Mignon is slightly recalled by Endymion,[54] while the peculiar circumstances appertaining to the concealment of Endymion’s sex render her case well-nigh exceptional in fiction. The topic is delicate enough and its treatment difficult to the extreme. The tone might easily get a tinge of the ridiculous, or even of the coarse, yet here it does neither; Maturin’s singular skill and delicacy in depicting those young, pale and ethereal beings that unite precocity and purity, timidity and passion, by no means denies itself in the creation of Endymion.—Desmond, as a character, is more successful than Connal, if only as being less faultless. He is brave and high-minded like his brother, but at the same time light-headed and choleric; he is said to have been ‘famous for rural gallantry,’ and is not insensible to refined gallantry either. Shortly before the disastrous events narrated above take place, he learns the fact of Endymion’s being a woman from the old harper, who has overheard a conversation between Lady Montclare and the monk Morosini. About the same time he receives a note inviting him to a nightly rendez-vous. He takes it to come from Endymion, and, in spite of the serious admonitions of Connal, whom he makes his confidant, he goes to the meeting-place; but to his astonishment he finds that the writer of the billet is not Endymion, but her mother. Shocked and disgusted he leaves the castle, being thus absent when the rebellion breaks out. In the meantime he is thrown into the arms of Lady Gabriella. Having been rejected by Connal, she seeks consolation with the younger brother; Desmond, passionate and disappointed as he is, surrenders himself to her charms, and they disappear together for a long time.—In the meanwhile Connal leaves his island and undertakes an adventurous journey to Dublin, having heard that an eminent person there would be willing to intercede for him with the government. By accident he enters a theatre, where he sees his brother with Gabriella, and from a conversation near him he gathers that their life is considered to be a perfect scandal. He seeks out Desmond and persuades him to re-join his regiment, which is in the vicinity of Castle Montclare. The brothers part, Desmond being still entirely ignorant of Connal’s participation in the rebellion. Desmond travels back to the castle, where his position becomes very painful. Lady Montclare is about to contract a marriage with his father the agent, who is wholly unlike his sons. As for Endymion, she continues to be a victim of the shameful imposture and is, moreover, surrounded by dangers threatening both her life and her reason. Her love for Desmond is more conspicuous than ever; one night he finds her in the chapel where she is doing penance which Morosini has imposed on her for permitting her thoughts to dwell too much on Desmond. As the monk is often present during these penances, and she confesses that he talks to her in a way she does not understand, Desmond concludes that his motives for staying alone with the slightly-clad girl are not purely ecclesiastic. Indignant and despairing, but at a loss how to treat her, Desmond withdraws from the scene. The decisive moment, however, comes that very night; as in the case of Armida and Connal, it is told in a few simple sentences. Desmond is roused from his slumbers by hearing Endymion sobbing at his door and imploring him to open it. At last he yields to the entreaties:

“Desmond!” she cried, starting at his altered looks, though she could not understand their expression, “Desmond! the wildness of your eyes terrifies me: I feel there is danger, though I cannot comprehend it. How your hand burns! how you tremble! Are you afraid?”

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

“And what is it we fear? I have seen you sit beside your brother; I have seen you lean on his arm; I have seen your hand locked in his.”

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

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

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

At these words Endymion started from his arms, and with a scream of horror flew towards her own apartment; and Desmond, terrified at the consequences of his own imprudence, pursuing her, kneeled at her door, and supplicated in his turn for admission in vain.

Endymion’s horror does not arise from any immediate realization of what she has heard; though she has attained a standpoint at which a continuation of the imposture would destroy her reason, the vital truth regarding herself becomes clear to her but by degrees. But she recollects having heard her mother say to Morosini: ‘should she ever learn she is a woman, she must live no longer,’ and this she at once applies to herself. The next day she rushes to Desmond and wildly implores him to save her, as she is to be sent away under the protection of the monk. Desmond fortunately remembers a clergyman called St. Austin, uncle to Armida’s friend Rosine, to whom they succeed in flying. He unites them and procures for them a solitary retreat, where they spend some idyllic months in perfect felicity.

On arriving at Dublin Connal learns that the eminent person in whom he has placed his hope is in Ireland no more. The only thing for him to do, under the circumstances, is to return to the island, where his presence indeed would be urgently necessary. He has confided Armida to the protection of a young man of the name of Brennan, who secretly hates him and, what is worse, cherishes a violent passion for Armida. He begins to harass her with his attentions, and they being met in a way that may be surmised, extends his hatred towards her as well, devising an exquisite mode of vengeance. He comes one night to the hut where Armida lives attended by a peasant woman, and requires her to accompany him, on the pretext that O’Morven has returned and wishes to see her. He then conducts her into a cavern where there really is an O’Morven: the old grandfather of Connal, who is now totally insane and appears to bear a particular malevolence against Armida. It is Brennan’s intention to have her murdered by the maniac, which undoubtedly would happen, did not Connal arrive at the very last moment. His journey thither has been much retarded by his being wounded by three men whom Brennan has sent out to waylay and assault him. Now, after a hideous fight, Brennan’s own life is ended. Yet Connal is wanted for more than one reason. The state of his band has, in his absence, grown utterly desperate; it is again seen how soberly and realistically Maturin conceived the business of the rebellion:

The discipline that Connal had established was destroyed: instead of confining themselves to the islands, they had spread themselves along the shore, exercising every outrage and aggression on the inhabitants; and, from the indiscriminate admission of every vagabond and profligate into the ranks, their numbers had increased beyond all power of control, and the spirit of humanity and honour, that Connal had tried to inspire them with, was utterly extinguished.

In proportion as this barbarization increases, the chances of any reconciliation with the government naturally diminish, and the final traces of Connal’s own enthusiasm for the cause disappear as well. Troops are now everywhere collected to march against him, and besides being daily beset by enemies, Connal is besieged by a terrible anxiety for the fate of Armida. One day a detachment of soldiers come over to the island. The officer at their head is wounded, and it is only with difficulty that Connal saves him from being killed by the rebels. He is taken care of, and to his horror Connal recognizes Desmond, who, to this moment, has been ignorant of the story of Armida and Connal. His own paradisiacal existence with Endymion—or Ines, as she is now called—has come to a sorrowful end. They have been traced to their retreat, and one night the door is burst open whereupon Morosini rushes in with two attendants. The monk pursues Ines as she flees out of the hut, while the attendants attempt to detain Desmond. He overpowers them, however, and follows in pursuit of his wife, whom he sees plunge herself into the river with the monk in hot haste after her. Some days later the body of Morosini is found, but no traces of Ines. Desmond, being now possessed of the sole desire to court death, joins his regiment, and Wandesford immediately takes care to command him to march against Connal.

Though disapproving of the rebellion, Desmond resolves to fight and perish with Connal. Before the decisive battle he conducts Armida away and places her at the house of St. Austin, where Rosine still resides, and then returns to the island. The battle is fought, and, contrary to all expectation, both Connal and Desmond survive it. The former finds his way to a remote and solitary cave, where he hides himself with his dying grandfather. Desmond, weak and wounded, goes back to the castle. He is carefully nursed by Lady Montclare, whose husband has recently died and who now conceives a plan concerning Desmond. Her whole life has been a struggle to keep in her family the estates of Montclare, and her last resort turns out to be a marriage between Armida and Desmond. To that end she has her daughter brought to the castle and imposes on her the fraudulent statement that Connal is in the hands of Wandesford, and is to suffer death unless she consents to marry Desmond. Of Armida there is, by this time, left but a faded beauty and a ruined mind; but seeing that she is only required to persevere in her self-sacrifice for Connal, she easily consents. Nor does Desmond oppose himself; both are too weary and apathetic even to enquire for the reasons of Wandesford’s singular resolution. The report of their intended marriage reaches Connal. He meets Lady Montclare who, in fear of her life, solemnly declares that it is Armida’s will and that he is to hear it from her own lips. She arranges an interview between them, and Armida has strength enough to stand to her resolution, the reasons for which she promises to disclose to Connal immediately after her wedding. The night of this very interview, however, Connal is plunged into despair at seeing how innocent people are punished for having given him shelter, and thus he straightway betakes himself to Wandesford to deliver himself up. Still he is not to die yet; Wandesford, to whom the whole affair is one of personal hatred and vengeance, orders five hundred lashes to be administered to him, whereupon he is to be set free, in case he survives the scourging. He does survive it, and is able to keep his last appointment with Armida. The night of Armida’s wedding Connal is wandering near the castle, when Wandesford rides past him. Connal challenges him and shoots him through the heart, and he expires repenting his crimes.—In the meantime Armida, having fulfilled what she imagines her last duty towards Connal, takes her fate in her own hands. Her late father has been an expert in, and also initiated his daughter into, the interesting science of preparing poisons. Immediately before the ceremony is to commence she swallows a dose of poison that has the power of dismissing life, without pain, in eight and forty hours. The marriage, however, is destined never to be contracted; just as the priest is opening his book, a piercing shriek rings through the chapel, and Ines appears in their midst. She has been saved from the river by the agents of Lady Montclare, and, since then, been secretly imprisoned in the castle. Her reason is irrevocably lost: she does not even recognize Desmond. Sick of horrors Armida retires to her apartment, whither Rosine brings Connal at the appointed hour. Everything is now explained; the conversation is interrupted only by a party of soldiers breaking into the castle, in quest of Connal. He is conducted to take his trial for rebellion, by martial law, and the sentence is death. At the moment the soldiers fire, Desmond rushes to Connal and falls with him. Armida and Ines likewise find their death beside the corpses of their respective lovers. Rosine and her uncle are left to inter the dead; Lady Montclare, it is stated, buries her crimes and her remorse in a convent.

The end, it is clear, somewhat lowers the level of the book and disturbs the final effect. From the rather unnatural idea of marriage between Armida and Desmond and onwards in the ensuing events there is much that is strained and stilted in the story; the circumstance of Armida’s extraordinary poison is too trivial and absurd to make any serious impression. The closing scene is entirely melodramatic: the eight and forty hours come to an end exactly at the time of Connal’s execution, and Ines expires at the same moment for the simple reason that everybody else does. But, strange to say, the chief incident itself, causing this conventional winding up of a highly romantic story, strikes one with its painful realism. One of the most remarkable features in The Milesian Chief is the mode of Connal’s death. In romances with tragical issue, of the time, the hero may die in a battle, he may die by accident, he may commit suicide or even be assassinated; but to let him first be flogged and then executed in consequence of the sentence of a court martial, is to excite terror and pity at the expence of the atmosphere of greatness and invincible superiority with which he is surrounded in the beginning of the tale. To reject everything conciliatory in the tragic, to bereave the death of a hero of every trait of sublimity and poetical splendour, to let his own person, as it were, be degraded by the ignominy he is exposed to, is certainly alien to the spirit and methods of the early 19:th century romanticism. The manner in which Scott allows the Master of Ravenswood to end his days is perfectly characteristic of the period, while the death of Connal O’Morven anticipates ideas much more modern. There is, in the end of Connal, something that brings to mind a very impressive Irish story of later date, the Maelcho (1894) of Emily Lawless, treating of the Desmond wars (1579-81), where the romantic halo in which the hero is enveloped is torn into shreds by degrees, until he is, both mentally and physically broken, hanged obscurely, en passant, like any of the countless victims of those troubled times.—

Of the principal personages in The Milesian Chief Armida and Ines are the most remarkable as types of some novelty in the fiction of the time. The latter is not without parallels in Maturin’s own work, but her originality lies in the absence of all reflection or principle: she acts solely by instinct, never expending a thought upon the moral standard of her feelings, and guided only by the nature contrary to whose intentions she has been reared up. A young lady answering to the description of Armida is uncommon in all romantic literature. The Radcliffe heroine, as has been pointed out by a critic,[55] is but a slight variation of the one favoured by Richardson: weak and sentimental, only calculated to move pity, never doing anything for her lover, who gladly sacrifices his life for her. As for the heroines of Scott, many of them, no doubt, display activity and courage and accomplish wonders for others, yet none would, in all likelihood, take the step Armida does, were they in her position; none have the independence of mind and superiority of intellect which render her perfectly regardless of the opinion of the world. The pride and the accomplishments, the grandezza and the accustomedness to obedience and admiration with which she is invested, usually distinguish females of a maturer age, like Lady Ashton in The Bride of Lammermoor and Lady Montrevor in The Wild Irish Boy. But though Armida entirely lacks that girlish docility and inexperience which seems to require manly protection, Maturin has succeeded in making her young and natural, and it is described with great beauty and power how her stateliness melts away before an overwhelming passion, and how the burning heart of youth demands its due when opportunity arises.

The characterization of Connal and Desmond, as has already been pointed out, is not equal to that of Armida and Ines. The best-drawn male character in the book is Wandesford, who is surprisingly real. He is a man of the world of the selfish and unfeeling kind, retaining some outward dignity by displaying a sort of conventional courage, that, ‘stimulated by witnesses, or by military tumult, could rush on death: the courage of the senses rather than the mind.’ When the latter is required, as on the occasion of his being well-nigh drowned with Armida and Connal, he proves to be a coward at heart. He is incapable of generosity towards his enemy, and his bad qualities always grow worse when met by adversities; thus in his strife with Connal, whom he hates as a rival and dislikes as an Irishman, he continually sinks deeper into the quagmire of crime and dishonour, which process is quite plausible and recounted without exaggeration. The narrow, unimaginative side of his character is well illustrated by his discussion, especially with Armida, whose superiority he cannot avoid instinctively to feel:

“The hearts of your whole sex,” said Wandesford, furiously, “are not worth the earth I tread: you have no heart: you have nothing but pride, caprice, and desire. While the first men in Europe were at your feet, you spurned them. My honourable addresses, the addresses of a man of the first family, fortune, and character were despised; but the moment you saw this Irishman, this heir of the poverty, and pride, and infamy of his country, you rushed into his arms, though he dashed you from them. Perhaps his figure awoke your classical taste, and you wished to transfer your study, like the statuary of old, from marble to flesh.”—

In the case of certain other personages Maturin’s sovereign contempt for a secondary character comes to light. This is, indeed, one of the most conspicuous flaws of the book. All delineation, for instance, of the wonderful mind of Lady Montclare is omitted. She is perfectly stereotyped; it is only evident that her every thought runs upon keeping the estates of her husband, and that she is, to this end, ready to commit the most atrocious crimes with an ever-smiling countenance—but in the reality of her being it is impossible to believe. Another character of whom much might have been made is the elder O’Morven, Connal’s father, who has gratefully accepted the situation of land-steward to Lord Montclare. He might be all the more interesting as he is expressly said to represent the worst kind of Irish character, being intent upon ‘unfeeling, unworthy self-enjoyment, not destitute of affection, but wholly without dignity.’ He receives Armida and her father on their arrival at the castle, and his conversation is expressive enough:

There he (Connal) has shut himself up in a hovel with that old fool my father, and all my hopes of him are destroyed; and it was not from my want of speaking to him either, for says I to him, as I said, ‘Why, Connal, where’s the use of your refusing his lordship’s kindness? Where did I get this good coat on my back, and a seat at his table (for your lordship promised I should not dine with the servants)? and where did your brother get his commission? Was it not from his lordship condescending to take us up, and forgetting our offence in being his relations?’ And says I, Do you think that poring over an old Irish manuscript, or wandering over these wild shores, listening to an old harp with hardly a string to it will put a potatoe in your mouth, or give a stone to repair those ruins you live in, or bring you back your land to you again?

Upon this, however, he is all but dropped out of the plot; he is very seldom brought into contact with his sons, and, upon the whole, plays no part in the story. Towards the end it is told that he is married by Lady Montclare, and shortly afterwards dies, wearied by her ‘violence’—of which the reader is not favoured with one single instance.

The Milesian Chief could not be better characterized than Talfourd[56] does in his much-quoted phrase: ‘There is a bleak and misty grandeur about it which, in spite of its glaring defects, sustains for it an abiding place in the soul.’ The defects are glaring indeed. The composition, here as always the blind side of Maturin, is anything but flawless. The development of the intrigue is sometimes primitive, sometimes rough and rhapsodical. Repetition occurs frequently in the adventures—the saving of lives especially is an actual habit with the brothers O’Morven; Connal’s journey to Dublin is so long as to be a digression, and not particularly interesting; the end is forced and theatrical, and some of the characters are made nothing of. These faults were, at all times, counterpoised by plenty of good characterization and impressive narrative; but now, at a distance of a hundred years, they appear so unimportant just because the whole is wrapped up in that ‘bleak and misty grandeur.’ The absence of technical defects is, after all, but a negative merit which swiftly loses its charm, while the creations of a truly poetical imagination are never entirely defaced by the wear and tear of time. The romantic atmosphere about the best scenes in The Milesian Chief, in so far as such a thing can be defined, arises from a close affinity between the human emotions and the sombre scenery around, effected by the instrumentality of a suggestive, passionate, and musical style. In point of description The Milesian Chief shows a great advance from Maturin’s earlier works; the nature of Western Ireland had, perhaps, never yet been depicted with a power and accuracy like this. Hence it is difficult to embrace the opinion of a critic[57] that in the description of scenery the influence of Mrs. Radcliffe is discernible. In Montorio it was, and it is easy to perceive that neither was acquainted with the Mediterranean nature which they painted in such glowing colours. But here there is quite a different strain, Northern and familiar; or what is to be said, for instance, of this sonorous passage:

The character of the scene was grandeur—dark, desolate, and stormy grandeur. The sea, troubled with rains and winds, dashed its grey waves along a line of rocky coast with a violence that seemed even in the absence of a storm to announce perpetual war and unexhausted winter. The dark clouds, though they moved rapidly along, never left the horizon clear, and seemed too thick for rains to melt or storms to disperse. The country near the shore, brown, stony and mountainous, looked as if the sun never shone on it, as if it lay for ever under the grey and watery sky: the shore itself, bold, high, and sweeping, had all the savage precipitateness, the naked solitude, the embattled rockiness, which nature seems to throw round her as a fortress, where she retires from the assaults of the elements, and the approach of man.

It has been hinted before that The Milesian Chief seems indebted to Miss Owenson’s Wild Irish Girl. The germ of the plot may have been taken from the latter: an Irish family of princely descent have sunk into poverty and lost their lands to an Englishman whom they regard as an usurper—the complications this circumstance leads to form the incidents in both tales. These, however, are quite differently developed. Miss Owenson’s story has the character of an idyll rather than a tragedy, being brought to a happy and harmonious end. Nor is there any communion between the principal personages. The venerable figure of the prince of Inismore Maturin had already borrowed in The Wild Irish Boy; here, presumably to avoid repetition, the burden of chieftaincy is placed upon younger shoulders, and the old Milesian, who is but once brought upon the scene of action, is represented as a complete ruin. Connal, then, as an Irishman, is a new type in the fiction of his country. Reminiscences of the antiquarian enthusiasm of Miss Owenson crop up in some of the conversations between Armida and Connal, where particularly the poetry and music of the ancient Irish is extensively discussed and warmly striven for.—The Radcliffe school—through the medium of Montorio—is slightly recalled only by the trio of Lord and Lady Montclare and Morosini. From Maturin’s first romance proceed the figures of the dark, melancholy-looking nobleman whose conscience is weighed down by an evil deed, and of the diabolical monk who is his confidant and tormentor at the same time. Yet Lord Montclare shows a development from the genuine Gothic Romance, represented by count Montorio. The latter has committed a bloody and terrible crime, the remembrance of which confines him within the walls of a gloomy castle, where he sits brooding over his deeds and starting at the slightest sound. The offence which Lord Montclare is guilty of is of a less violent kind and has the opposite effect of driving him restlessly from land to land. With him a step is taken towards the type of the Wanderer.

A great many passages in The Milesian Chief anticipate the manner of Scott rather than recall Mrs Radcliffe and Lewis. Very characteristic is the well-written episode where Brennan conducts Armida to the old O’Morven. The silent desolation of the night; Brennan’s sudden appearance in the hut and the alarm of the peasant woman, who in vain dissuades Armida from following him; his conversation on the way; the impotent rage of the maniac, and lastly the furious fight between Connal and Brennan: all this is horrifying, certainly, but in the same way horrible as are innumerable scenes in Scott. The difference, in this respect—apart from the question of the supernatural—between the school of Scott and the school of Radcliffe, is, that the thrilling, the exciting, is removed from the vaults of a castle and the dungeons of the Inquisition out into the open air under a Northern sky. But there is even a more obvious reason to mention Scott in connection with The Milesian Chief. Talfourd adds to his phrase quoted above: ‘Yet never perhaps was there a more unequal production—alternately exhibiting the grossest plagiarism and the wildest originality.’ From where the plagiarism is suggested, unless from The Wild Irish Girl, the present writer is unable to say; Maturin’s novel is, on the contrary, alleged to have been a subject for imitation for no less a man than Walter Scott himself. The resemblance of The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) to The Milesian Chief is, in fact, far more detailed than that of the latter to the story of Miss Owenson. Edgar Ravenswood, like Connal O’Morven, is the heir of a once powerful family whose dominions have passed into the possession of an Englishman. Like his Milesian counterpart he lives in an old tower in great poverty, profoundly discontented with the supposed oppressor. The new owners, in both cases, have a daughter, and the two heroes of the respective tales have occasion to begin their acquaintance with the fair ones by saving their lives. Both fall in love, and the love of both is reciprocated. Connal becomes the leader of a rebellion which his love to Armida would induce him to suppress; Ravenswood, too, is involved in a conspiracy against the government, from which his attachment to Lucy Ashton urges him to withdraw. Both love-stories finally end in a tragic way, the heroines being first, by fraud, brought to the point of union with another.—With all these likenesses, it is of interest to note how differently the two novelists work up the subject-matter they have in common. Maturin, as usual, is for the extreme, making the conditions of his hero desperate from the first, and the contrast between the two families as striking as possible. Connal lives in the remote and unknown West of Ireland, hated and despised by the new lord—relatives as they are—and supported only by a handful of peasants. All paths are practically closed to him; he is, as it were, predestined to his fate. In The Bride of Lammermoor, constructed with the temperate and easy skill of Scott, no such contrarieties are felt. Edgar Ravenswood is acknowledged and entertained by Sir William Ashton, he possesses powerful friends, and would, no doubt, advance far in the world but for his fatal love for Lucy. The course of events, here, runs smoother but is, at the same time, more varied and less easy to guess beforehand; compared with The Milesian Chief, the book seems to contain almost an infinite variety of characters and episodes. Ravenswood himself is rather a solitary figure in Scott, being destitute of the light-heartedness and sunny good-humour of his youthful heroes in general. Yet he has his faults, and in comparison with Connal, seems almost real. But if Scott was more successful with the male characters, Maturin was more so with the feminine. There is no denying that Armida is far more interesting than Lucy. The latter is, in fact, nothing but the weak and passive type from the preceding century, merely ennobled by the hand of Scott, and would never be able, like Armida, to support the central part of a story. That the emotional element in The Milesian Chief outweighs the ruggedness of the construction and the poverty of the action may be ascribed to the skilful characterization of Armida; and a chapter like the twentieth in The Bride of Lammermoor seems quite tame and colourless after the fiery love-scenes described by Maturin.

To how high a degree the resemblance of the one romance to the other is a result of direct influence and intentional imitation, it would be purposeless to discuss. It may even be quite accidental, for in a country with the history of Scotland and Ireland, a theme like this must have been both natural and lent itself profitably to the novelist. That the outlines were furnished by actual life is made more than probable by their continued appearance in Irish literature. They are made use of, as late as 1845, in Charles Lever’s story of The O’Donoghue. During nine hundred years, the heads of this family have been kings of that part of Ireland where their castle stands. Towards the end of the 18:th century they fall into a state of decay and are compelled to part with their castle and their estates, which are sold to a wealthy English baronet who has a beautiful daughter. The old O’Donoghue, with his two sons, is reduced to the state almost of peasants. The elder of these sons is, like Connal O’Morven, a proud and impetuous character, whom a deep sense of his own and his country’s wrongs prompts to embrace the insurrection of ’98; the younger, a counterpart of Desmond, turns Protestant and enters Trinity College. Otherwise the tales of Maturin and Lever contain no elements in common—the elder O’Donoghue succeeds in escaping to France, the younger finally marries the baronet’s daughter—and thus imitation is entirely out of the question. But from an intended preface to The O’Donoghue, where Lever tells[58] how the story occurred to him while on a tour in the South of Ireland, it appears how conspicuous these impoverished descendants of noble families were in Irish society:

Between the great families—the old houses of the land and the present race of proprietors—there lay a couple of generations of men who, with all the traditions and many of the pretensions of birth and fortune, had really become in ideas, modes of life, and habits, very little above the peasantry about them. They inhabited, it is true, the “great house,” and they were in name the owners of the soil, but, crippled by debt and overborne by mortgages, they subsisted in a shifty conflict with their creditors, rack-renting their miserable tenants to maintain it. Survivors of everything but pride of family, they stood there like stumps, blackened and charred, the last remnants of a burnt forest, their proportions attesting the noble growth that preceded them.

What would the descendants of these men prove when, destitute of fortune and helpless, they were thrown upon a world that actually regarded them as blamable for the unhappy condition of Ireland? Would they stand by “their order” in so far as to adhere to the cause of the gentry? Or would they share the feelings of the peasant to whose lot they had been reduced, and charging on the Saxons the reverses of their fortune, stand forth as rebels to England?

Now in the preface to The Milesian Chief Maturin had promised to apply his powers to scenes of actual life. The actual life of the class of society he was choosing for his subject had, according to the sentence of Lever, also a sordid and prosaic side, nor could they all be regarded as martyrs for their country without any fault of their own. As Maturin’s peculiar powers were, above all, in ‘painting life in extremes,’ he described not so much what is, as what would be, under given circumstances, exceptional indeed, but not impossible; and even in so doing he was, as has been pointed out, most attracted by the phenomena in the ‘recesses of the human heart.’ Thus the promise of actual life, in the usual sense of the word, is but imperfectly fulfilled. Yet beneath the delineations of human passions of general applicability, there is, however, a perceptible glimpse of a certain aspect of unmistakable Irish life—in the absence of which Mangan[59] would hardly have called The Milesian Chief the most intensely Irish story he knew of.

Of Maturin’s third book, any more than of his second, no contemporary reviews are extant, but its immediate success—at least where the author was known—seems to have been considerable. The writer in the New Monthly Magazine 1827 tells us that the book ‘received encomiums from many of the leading critics,’ and that ‘several individuals, inspired perhaps by the highly-wrought and poetical feeling of “The Milesian,” composed sundry “complimentary verses” upon it.’ Yet a second edition never appeared, and that Maturin’s circumstances continued to be distressing, all biographers agree.[60] His delicacy in concealing himself behind a pseudonym was of no avail to him regarding his chances of religious preferment; according to the aforesaid writer these were completely destroyed by the publication of his novels. So far, however, from abandoning the Muses, Maturin turned his poetical inspiration in another direction, still more contradictory to his profession. He became a dramatist, probably encouraged by the success bestowed upon a new play of no very remarkable merit. In 1813 Richard Lalor Sheil, the celebrated Irish barrister, produced a tragedy called Adelaide, or the Emigrants, written for the highly talented Miss O’Neill, who, after many hardships in obscure provincial theatres, had been engaged at the Old Crow-Street Street Theatre in Dublin. The decided success of Sheil—who also had composed his play in order to defray some necessary expenses—incited Maturin to follow his example. He sat down to write a drama in good earnest, as in his juvenile years he had often done for amusement. Already in the latter part of the year he was able to send in his Bertram, but the management of the theatre, for some reason or other, thought it advisable to reject it. Nearly a year afterwards Maturin hit upon it among his manuscripts, and, on the advice of a friend, sent it over for the perusal of his literary correspondent Walter Scott. The kindness of Scott was never appealed to in vain; he read the play and warmly recommended it to John Kemble, as he relates[61] in a letter to Daniel Terry, dated Nov. 10:th 1814, observing that Bertram is ‘one of those things which will either succeed greatly, or be damned gloriously, for its merits are marked, deep, and striking, and its faults of a nature obnoxious to ridicule.’ With every allowance for Scott’s desire to help Maturin, it seems unquestionable that he was really impressed by the play. After a few critical remarks upon the last act, he concludes his letter to Terry: ‘With all this, which I should say had I written the thing myself, it is grand and powerful: the language most animated and poetical; and the characters sketched with a masterly enthusiasm.’

Notwithstanding these eulogies Kemble refused the play, and its fate seemed as doubtful as ever. Fortunately for Maturin, however, the committee of management of the Drury Lane Theatre were, in the following year, wanting something new for their repertory. The members of that body were, in 1815, men of high literary aspirations; the procurement of plays devolved on Lord Byron, who states[62] that the number he was supplied with amounted to five hundred, not one of which he could think of accepting. His attempts to exact a new play from some of the foremost writers of the day remained without effect, but Scott, to whom he also addressed himself, faithfully referred him to Maturin. A correspondence ensued, in consequence of which, Byron says,[63] ‘Maturin sent his Bertram and a letter without his address, so that at first I could give him no answer. When I at last hit upon his residence, I sent him a favourable answer and something more substantial. His play succeeded; but I was at that time absent from England.’

The answer must indeed have been a favourable one, for, to judge from a letter from John Murray[64] to Scott, dated Dec. 25:th 1815, Bertram created quite a sensation in the committee:

I was with Lord Byron yesterday. He enquired after you, and bid me say how much he was indebted to your introduction of your poor Irish friend Maturin, who had sent him a tragedy, which Lord Byron received late in the evening, and read through without being able to stop. He was so delighted with it that he sent it immediately to his fellow-manager, the Hon. George Lamb, who, late as it came to him, could not go to bed without finishing it. The result is that they have laid it before the rest of the Committee; they, or rather Lord Byron, feels it his duty to the author to offer it himself to the managers of the Covent Garden. The poor fellow says in his letter that his hope of subsistence for his family for the next year rests upon what he can get for this play. I expressed a desire of doing something, and Lord Byron then confessed that he had sent him fifty guineas.

In a letter to Moore, written from Venice in 1817, Byron again expresses[65] his satisfaction at having been able to promote the ‘first and well-merited success’ of this ‘very clever fellow.’ There is no reason to doubt that Byron’s admiration was genuine. The high opinion he entertained of Bertram may, of course, have been biassed by his regard for Scott, like that of Scott by motives of friendship; but there is that in Maturin’s tragedy which reflects the spirit of the time with peculiar distinctness; from many of its wild effusions speaks the very Zeitgeist of romanticism, which was sure to find response with the best of the age as well as with the general public.

Before the play could be finally accepted, the approval of Kean had to be obtained. Kean had spent the greater part of 1815 on a tour extended to Dublin, where he appeared at the Crow-Street Theatre as Richard II, Othello, and Hamlet. In the beginning of 1816 the great man returned to London, and Bertram was submitted to his judgment. Kean did not share the enthusiasm of the committee; according to his biographer[66] he pronounced the play to be ‘all sound and fury signifying nothing,’ yet offering a welcome relief after the characters of Shakespeare. His principal reason, however, for undertaking to perform the part of the hero was the conviction that it would ‘serve to increase his reputation.’ After a few rehearsals he came to realize that the part of Bertram was but a secondary one; but there being, as he said, no Mrs. Siddons to eclipse him in the part of the heroine, he resolved to do his best to eclipse Miss Somerville. In this he succeeded so well that Bertram, by all accounts, really did much to increase his reputation as the leading tragedian of the time.—

Between the production and first performance of Bertram there was a lapse of more than two years, during which the monotony of Maturin’s existence was but seldom broken by occurrences worthy of notice. An instance of his poetical carelessness in practical matters is thus related in the Irish Quarterly Review 1852:

Whilst he was composing Bertram, and living amidst a confused sea of difficulties, a clergyman, high in the church, had called upon him in York-street for the purpose of making him an offer of preferment; he was requested to wait for a few minutes, and after the lapse of half an hour, Maturin entered, his hair in dishevelled masses, wrapped in a flowing morning gown, and bearing in one hand a pen, in the other a portion of the manuscript of Bertram, from which he was repeating some highly wrought sentence just completed; he threw himself on the sofa beside his starched visitor, who very soon retreated, leaving the poet to cultivate the muse, in poverty and at leisure.

An anecdote like this, whether true or invented, affords, no doubt, a glimpse of Maturin as he really was, and has a deeply tragical as well as a comical side. It marks the perpetual conflict between what he was inclined to do and what he, in the opinion of the world, ought to have been doing; and when the fit of inspiration had subsided, the bitterness of seeing his family imperfectly provided for was always there. That Maturin repeatedly received assistance from liberal friends is seen from the correspondence of Byron, yet at the same time there are recorded certain actions of Maturin himself, which display uncommon generosity towards others, at least in one in his position. He was prevailed upon to become security for a relation, who subsequently had recourse to the act of insolvency, leaving Maturin burthened with a heavy debt for many years to come. This new disaster possibly caused him again to take up his rejected drama. The fact of Maturin’s being acceptable as security for a considerable sum, however, would go to show that his circumstances were not all times absolutely desperate—which also might be inferred from the story of an alleged literary production of his, connected with the latter part of 1815. A poetical competition had been announced by Trinity College in order to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo. Here, according to the New Monthly Magazine 1827, Maturin easily carried off the prize with a poem which he, ‘in a most handsome manner,’ presented to a pupil of his called Shea[67] and declined all profit from the publication of it. The poem was printed in January 1816, when Bertram already had been accepted to Drury Lane and Maturin, no doubt, was full of sanguine expectations. This Mr. Shea was a pupil of Maturin’s to whom he appears to have been greatly attached; one of his letters to Murray, dated July 6:th 1816, ends with the following plea for him: