Blackwood's Magazine 8, No. XLIV (November, 1820), 161-168.
{P 162} [compared with Maturin’s previous works] it is infinitely more horrible -- for in horror, there is no living author, out of Germany, that can be at all compared with Mr Maturin.
We do not know whether all our readers may sympathise with us when we say, that to us "The Mysteries of Udolpho" has been, is, and must always be, one of the most delightful books in the English language. Of those that might be somewhat ashamed, however, to confess admiration such as ours for that masterpiece of Mrs Radcliffe, not a few may perhaps think themselves at liberty (protected by the classsical name of Godwin) to think and to speak almost as highly as we should be inclined to do concerning "St Leon." Now, there is no occasion for instituting comparisons on the present occasion; but we are pretty confident that the most enthusiastic admirers of Udolpho or St Leon will pause ere they assign to the very best passages of either of these works a higher place than may justly be claimed for not a few of the sketches in this wild story of The Tempter Melmoth. Mr Maturin is, without question, one of the most genuine masters of the dark romance. He can make the most practised reader tremble as effectually as Mrs Radcliffe, and what is better, he can make him think as deeply as Mr Godwin. We cannot carry the commendation sought for by this species of exertion much higher than we do when we say, that in our opinion, a little more reflection and labour are all Mr Maturin wants in order to enable him to attain a permanent eminence, not inferior to that long acquired by the magnificent imagination that dictated the tale of Caleb Williams.
The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register 14 (December 1820), 662-668
The question repeatedly solved in the romance seems to us not one of religion but of nerve. A naked proposition by a direct emissary of Hell to deliver a man from present wretchedness on the terms of his suffering worse anguish for all eternity, is an experiment not on the religious tendencies of the heart, but on its mere strength to bear present pain as balanced {P 663} against its capability to anticipate future agonies. Men neglect their salvation, not from a calm choice of present delight and endless woe in preference to self-denial and Heaven, but from a lurking disbelief of eternal punishment, or from a vague idea of the divine mercy, or from an intention to repent at a future period, or from utter thoughtlessness of all beyond the grave; -- and if these refuges can be taken from them; if things unseen can be forced on their thoughts as assured realities; if they can be made to feel that in committing wilful sin they do in effect make the terrible election to which our author refers; the best moral result may be expected. But is there one step gained towards this end by the wild fiction of "Melmoth?" Needs "a ghost come from the grave to tell us" that if Satan were so infatuated as to tempt by a distinct proposition of which everlasting woe was a part he would be rejected? The position is even put as a truism by the author, who writes four volumes to expound it. A metaphysician might as well compose a folio to demonstrate that whatever is is, or an adept in mathematics attempt to shew in a thousand ways that a part is less than the whole!
A moral, in the technical sense, is not, however, necessary to a good romance. When obtrusively forced on the reader, it defeats its own purpose; and when merely deduced at the end, produces no effect at all. If admiration is excited by excellence whether suffering or triumphant -- if the heart is touched by noble pity -- if the mind is enriched with pure images and lofty thoughts -- the tale is truly moral, though no one precept is lectured on through its pages, or forced into its conclusion. We are afraid this praise cannot be rendered to the work before us. Nothing vicious is ever recommended or palliated by its author; but its evil consists in the terrible anatomy of vice -- in the exhibition of super-natural depravity -- in the introduction of blasphemous expressions, though they are introduced to be hated. Alas! the pollutions of the imagination too soon find their way to the heart "out of which are the issues of life." The best purity is that of him who thinks no evil. The very sentiment of peculiar detestation fixes black thoughts on the memory -- the soul recurs to them with a kind of morbid curiosity -- till they grow familiar to it, and lose their horror. Mr. Maturin has not only put appropriate blasphemies into the mouth of his fiend, but has himself too often borrowed illustrations from objects which ought to be shut out from the soul as infected merchandize from a city. We will not stigmatize these instances as some of them may appear to deserve, because our allusions would assist the evil, and because we believe the author to be entirely innocent of an intention to seduce or to defile. His besetting tendency, as an author, is a love of strength and novelty in thought and expression, for which he appears willing to make any sacrifice. He will ransack the forgotten records of crime, or the dusty museums of natural history, to discover a new horror. He is a passionate connoisseur in agony. His taste for strong emotion evidently hurries him on almost without the concurrence of the will, so that we can scarcely help thinking that his better nature must be now and then shocked when he calmly peruses his own works.
We cannot give a minute analysis of the various processes by which Melmoth endeavours to seduce his victims. Suffice it to say, that Stanton is assailed amidst the horrors of a madhouse -- the Spaniard in the cells of the Inquisition -- one of the objects of temptation amidst a starving family -- another by the side of a lover sunk into idiocy -- and the last, a most beautiful girl, whom the Stranger had married, and who had borne him a child, in the dungeon when her infant is about to be taken from her for ever. All the tales are full of terrible pictures, which exhibit a power like that of Salvator. In the first tale, there is a view of a receptacle for lunatics most appalling, and yet, amidst its terrors, displaying traits of nature which are really and tearfully affecting. The Spaniard's story includes a short tale of the punishment of two lovers detected in a convent, who were closed up in a small recess, and there left to perish. It is told by the wretch who watched from choice at the outside, and heard the progress of their agony in language which we shudder to recal. The tale of the lady who marries the fiend, sets out very beautifully with a description of a forsaken Indian isle, where the girl had been left in infancy, and had grown up in utter solitude, but amidst Nature's choicest luxuries. All the rest, however, is too revolting to be dwelt on. A picture of starvation in the story of Walberg is also frightful.
Quarterly Review 24 (January, 1821), 303-31
On the occasion of Mr. Maturin's former novel, we veiled our disgust, and, out of respect for the clerical character, coveyed our censure under the appearance of irony; we endeavoured castigare ridendo, anxiously hoping by that lenient method of treatment to be spared the necessity of having recourse to the more violent remedies: -- but we have been disappointed, and the new ravings of the unhappy patient exceed the old in folly and indelicacy. Indeed, Mr. Maturin has contrived, by a 'curiosa infelicitas,' [careful incompetence] to unite in this work all the worst particulars of the worst modern novels. Compared with it, Lady Morgan is almost intelligible -- The Monk, decent -- The Vampire, amiable -- and Frankenstein, natural. We do not pronounce this judgment hastily, and we pronounce it with regret -- we honour Mr. Maturin's profession even when he debases it, and if 'Melmoth' had been only silly and tiresome, we should gladly have treated it with silent contempt; but it unfortunately variegates its stupidity with some characteristics of a more disgusting kind, which our respect for good manners and decency obliges us to {P 304} denounce. Mr. Maturin means, we hope and are ready to believe, no harm -- he seems, indeed, like the Pythia of old, to be but a very imperfect judge of the meaning of any thing which he utters in the fury of his inspirations; and he will, perhaps, be himself surprised to learn that, during his convulsions, he makes the most violent assaults, not merely on common sense and the English tongue, -- these are trifles -- but on decency, and even religion: -- whether Mr. Maturin be or be not conscious of what he is doing, it is equally our duty to endeavour to counteract the mischief of what he has done.
We shall not waste our time in endeavouring to unravel the tissue of stories which occupy these four volumes: they are contained one within another like a nest of Chinese boxes; but instead of being the effect of nice workmanship, Mr. Maturin's tales are involved and entangled in a clumsy confusion which disgraces the artist, and puzzles the observer.
{P 305} We shall now proceed to give some idea of the merit of his performance in its details. Some of these details may, perhaps, offend the delicacy of our readers; but we trust it will be recollected, that the work under notice is a romance written by a clergyman, and that, if its true character be not fairly shown, it may find its way into hands where such trash, however contemptible, may yet be capable of doing mischief: we shall not insult our readers, however, by one quotation more than we think necessary to correct the misguided, or to expose the depraved intellect of the author.
London Magazine 3 (May, 1821), 514-524
If all this be done to prove the versatility of his talent, we admit that he has succeeded, but most earnestly do we deprecate such a triumph. There is, indeed, a terrible fidelity -- a murderous consistency in his delineations -- but they have no prototype except in his own brain -- nature disowns them, and history holds up the monsters, whom every brow has frowned on, and every age abjured, as angels in the comparison. It is a serious fault, we had almost said crime, in Mr. Maturin, that he should not only body forth such creations, but inspire them with such potency of evil; that he should give them talent in proportion to their crimes, and energy commensurate with their malignant dispositions. By way of preserving their consistency, he not only fills them with demoniac propensities, but {P 518} demoniac powers, and seizes upon every opportunity, to put both in ferocious and active operation. His manifold demons have a restlessness of mischief, which not even the author of all mischief could surpass, and genius quite adequate to their horrible ambition. To be sure, all this may be consistent. But why create such characters at all, and then, for the purpose of their foul consistency, collect all that infidelity has poured out against religion, all that desperate sophistry has urged for vice, and all that discontented depravity has flung upon the institutions of civilized society, and give them additional circulation and publicity through such perverted and culpable instrumentality. That those characters are contradistinguished from others, who endeavour to oppose and contravene their tenets, is no apology at all. There is no use in raising such disquisitions. The scaffold and the dungeon exhibit every day to crime the practical tendency of its doctrines; and if these and the pulpit are not sufficient, there can be no use in combating them through the medium of romances, -- and not merely combating them, but taking care to provide them with weapons for the conflict, sufficient almost to endanger victory. There is a burning eloquence -- a sarcastic bitterness -- an insidious plausibility about all Mr. Maturin's murderers and demons which well might have been spared.
Having said this much, generally, on Mr. Maturin's writings, we will proceed to consider his romance of Melmoth; and if any one should regard our criticism as unmerited, to that work we refer for its justification. It is a most characteristic epitome of all his productions. Genius and extravagance -- nature and prodigies -- angels and devils -- theology and libertinism, contest every line of every page of these volumes, and leave us in doubt, at last, whether we should most admire, or deplore, the perverted talent which they indisputably discover.
[Quotes several passages, including the lovers in the dungeon]
{P 522}
Now we would ask the reader, who has had nerve enough to peruse the preceding extract, whether we have been unwarrantable in the comments which we made on the tendency of such a production? If this was a solitary passage, shocking as it is, we should have been inclined to hesitate -- but it is not -- it is only one monster out of a den, all animate with the same creation. Melmoth teems with this unsightly progeny -- there is scarcely a page on which crime is not written in letters of blood, and in language of desperate and ferocious exultation.
Edinburgh Magazine, New Series 8 (May, 1821), 412-416
{P 413} Those, whose first recollections were of revolutionary horrors which we can scarce yet think possible, after having witnessed their atrocity; and which seem to have been permitted as a tremendous experiment to show what man could be, after trampling on human laws, and extinguishing to himself the light of religion: those who, after seeing "Chaos thus come again" in their earliest years, have since witnessed in breathless suspense the rapid course of successive victories, demolished thrones, and new dominions, rising suddenly amidst the raging conflict, like volcanic islands from a troubled sea; -- then the progress of victorious armies, in an opposite direction, and the downfall of that mighty spirit for which Europe seemed too narrow: -- And, after all this, like the sudden shifting of a scene, the breaking loose of that evil genius of the age, who, like his precursor in the Apocalypse, was permitted to come in great wrath, because his time was but short: Those, we say, to whom such marvels have been familiar from their infancy, cannot easily now reduce their imaginations within the vulgar "visible diurnal sphere" of common existence. Add to this, the excitement of the fashionable poetry of the day, and the restlessness of mind that is encouraged by that rage for travelling which has succeeded to the tumult of war.
But, all this is not sufficient to sanction Mr Maturin's bold attempt to carry us, not above, but below this visible diurnal sphere; -- to bring home to our imagination, in the most familiar, yet repulsive form, the Enemy of mankind, who has been so long banished from boudoirs and fashionable drawing-rooms, and whose influence is as universally denied, as certainly experienced. To be sure, the appetite for absurdity, not to say impiety, that swallowed Frankenstein, did afford some encouragement to show how much ability might be wasted on a very disgusting and improper subject. But yet, Mr Maturin's profession should have done something more to prevent him from touching the brink of all we hate. But it is vain to give the least idea of this extraordinary performance, without a skeleton of the story, and some extracts as specimens of the style.
Document created November 2nd 2009