II. (continued 3)
Reading edition
Like all Irishmen, I reserve the most important part of my letter for the last. Mr. Shea, my pupil, of whom you have heard me talk so highly and justly while in London, has produced a poem on the marriage of the princess, I want you to publish it—I am satisfied of its merits and the certainty of its success.—
His friends are numerous and wealthy, and the work would have a most rapid sale. I am sure you will not decline encouraging this young Muse, when I make her introduction through you a matter of personal and particular obligation to—Yours most truly C. Rob. Maturin.
There is, indeed, no positive proof of Maturin’s being the author of Lines on the Battle of Waterloo, except the categorical statement in the New Monthly Magazine, besides the circumstance that the name of Shea, despite the wealthy and numerous friends, was destined never to adorn the history of English poetry. The poem is, however, furnished with a few notes written in a half-playful tone, where the author makes a reservation to eventual accusations of plagiarism, which notes, on account of the style alone, must be concluded to flow from the pen of Maturin. Of a passage like this, a student of Maturin can hardly doubt the authorship:
A Poem written by one who owed nothing to communication with other minds, would be original in every sense of the word—but the paucity of its materials would probably ill atone for the novelty of the structure; it would be perhaps like the Indian love-song mentioned I think in Ashe’s travels, where all the varieties of sentiment, and modulations of language, that the passion might be supposed capable of inspiring, are compressed into three short sentences, strongly resembling the monotonous chirp of their native birds—I love you—I love you dearly—I love you all day long.
The value of the poem itself is very moderate. Though endowed with a highly poetical temperament, Maturin was not a poet in the strictest sense of the word. Rhyme was an instrument of which he never became a master; the writer in the New Monthly Magazine says that he had ‘a natural distaste to the constant return of sound arising from the restraints it threw upon his luxuriant fancy.’ He mentions the Waterloo as a singular example of Maturin’s being able to overcome his rooted aversion to the labours of versification, and cites two or three instances where he strove in vain to conquer the insurmountable difficulties it used to cause him. In 1821, when Ireland had the doubtful honour to receive a visit from George IV, Maturin, among many others, thought the occasion to demand a versified homage to the monarch. After the laborious production of three lines, however, he destroyed the paper ‘in a transport of rage.’ From Montorio, which abounds with indifferent poetry, it was already seen which way Maturin’s powers lay. His poetical prose is always fine and rhythmical in form, and very often original in ideas, whereas his rhymes are trivial, and usually make the thoughts so. The poem on Waterloo treats, in an obscure and bombastical style, less of the battle itself than of the glory of those who won it; the opening lines are, perhaps, the most worthy of quotation:
’Tis night, her dim and dusky veil Falls o’er creation’s aspect pale, In deep repose lie town and tower, Embattled steep, and foliaged bower— The stilly forms of things unseen Waver in twilight’s dubious screen,— And mount, and vale, and earth, and sky In grey confusion mock the eye, Like features of some absent face, That anguished Memory pains in vain to trace.
What Maturin was capable of achieving in blank verse, remains next to be seen.