How far I may have succeeded, is not for me to judge. I put forwards my present work with diffidence. No one can think more moderately of his powers than I do of mine; but I must demand of my reader’s consideration, that the opinions and errors of my imaginary characters shall not be transferred to my own. In what singularly severe and injurious spirit this has been hitherto done, I need not say. No man less disregards public opinion; no man is less disposed to offer an insolent defiance to sincere criticism: but if an unoffending life cannot protect a writer from those dangerous imputations, I disdain defence, and leave them to their judgment by all generous and unprejudiced minds.
Maturin’s journey to Canossa was graciously acknowledged by all critics except one. In the newly established Westminster Review[170] there appeared an uncommonly intelligent and well-written article, showing an understanding of Maturin and a penetration into his talent, which far surpasses that of all other contemporary critics. To the general verdict of this unknown writer on The Albigenses nothing could be added, nor can its rightfulness be questioned by any one acquainted with Maturin’s works:
We are a little disappointed in finding that Mr. Maturin’s new work is not of a character that either entitles or entices us to make it the occasion of a general examination of his literary pretensions. For we could not do this effectually, without adducing various examples of the faults and the good qualities that are peculiar to his writings; and it so happens, that the work now before us is almost entirely deficient in either of these. It is, perhaps, not very difficult to account for this. Mr. Maturin, though now a tolerably practised writer, is far from having acquired that command over the efforts of his pen which the time that he has exercised it would, under ordinary circumstances, have given him: for his mind is not one that will submit to be “constrained by mastery,” either in its strengths or its weaknesses. It may be led, we sincerely believe, to perform very valuable services to the republic of letters; but it may not be driven to do either good or evil. And if it be driven, the results will be a something between the two, and bearing no distinctive character whatever. Now, we conceive the work before us to have proceeded from an artificial and ill-considered impetus of the above kind. Mr. Maturin has publicly stated, as an excuse (that is the form under which he most unnecessarily puts it) for writing Romances at all, that his necessities oblige him to do so; and yet all the Romances he has hitherto written have subjected him to the most virulent abuse from several of those critical tribunals, on whose fiat the popularity of works of this class mainly depends—or, at all events, by which that popularity can be greatly advanced, and still more greatly retarded. And this abuse, too, when it has descended to detail, has, in almost every instance, been levelled at precisely those portions of the work in question in which the author must have felt, and every one else must have admitted, that the beauties, if beauties the work contained, were to be found. What could a writer, but little acquainted with the nature of his own powers, and avowedly employing them with a view to present distinction, be expected to do under such circumstances, but resolutely set himself to avoid the errors that seemed to lay in the way of his object? And in doing so, what could be expected as the first result of this effort, but what we, in fact, meet with in the work, the title of which stands at the head of this paper?—namely, a production in which all the most glaring faults that existed in his previous ones are in a great degree absent; and in which all the beauties which more than redeemed those faults, are absent too. The truth is, Mr. Maturin did not seek instruction from the right source. Instead of feeling contempt for those who expressed a contempt which they did not feel towards him, he flew to them for that counsel which he should have taken of his own good sense, and his own heart.
That Maturin did not take counsel of his own heart means that he wrote without inspiration; and that is why the adventures and hair-breadth escapes fail to excite, and the characters appear so hopelessly conventional. The characterization is, in fact, the weakest side of The Albigenses, and that of the principal personages the least worthy of Maturin’s powers. Paladour and Amirald simply possess every chivalrous virtue imaginable, neither being subject to any faults whatsoever, nor is there one single individual trait to distinguish them from others. The description of these two paragons is pervaded by a deadly seriousness and an unbroken solemnity, all the more causeless as both are destined to become perfectly happy in the end. The influence of Scott, which otherwise is perceptible throughout the story, in no instance extends itself to the treatment of the heroes. The different methods of the two novelists can be compared in the openings of The Albigenses and Quentin Durward (1823). Both works begin with a brief account of the state of France in the respective periods—after which the heroes are introduced as solitary travellers and knight-errants. Quentin Durward, a merry light-hearted youth, appears on a bright summer morning, carelessly joining company with the first people he encounters, committing various indiscretions, being on the point of getting hanged, and going through it all with imperturbable good-humour. Paladour travels through an autumnal night, engaged in sombre thoughts, recollections and anticipations, meeting beings unearthly and mysterious and preserving all the time the same sepulchral gravity. The one way, of course, can in itself be as good as the other, and the beginning of The Albigenses is not without merit; but as the story advances it would not be out of the place to make a counterpoise to this lugubrious hero in the person of the younger Sir Amirald. Yet he is but a repetition of his brother, as grave and as blameless. There is nothing of the contrast so finely brought forth in Montorio between Hippolito and Annibal, and in The Milesian Chief between Connal and Desmond: Amirald, no more than Paladour, does anything rash or thoughtless; they never laugh; they are never even present in comical situations. Now one of the secrets of the perennial freshness of the Waverley novels is a manner the author has of ‘dealing sly digs at his own stateliest heroes.’[171] He never takes them too seriously; he exposes their human weaknesses with obvious satisfaction, and finally allows them to be united with their lady-loves much because he does not think them worth writing tragedies about. This method being extremely foreign to Maturin, his surest way of succeeding with his heroes is to make them really tragic and treat them with the terrible pathos and passionate sympathy which breathes from the pages of The Milesian Chief. In The Albigenses neither condition is fulfilled, and the personages, consequently, do not live. The same is equally true of the heroines; there are no traces of the psychological mastery which had created Eva and Immalee. Isabelle and Genevieve are as superlative with regard to exalted qualities as are their lovers: the former, being a high-born lady, is supplied with a just amount of pride, while the latter, as suits her station, is all humbleness and self-denial. How horribly fustian and melodramatic the description occasionally becomes, can be seen from the scene where the outlaw, whose prisoner Isabelle is, makes her a proposal of marriage:
Isabelle sprang on her feet—both hands were compressed on her left bosom, as if expecting her heart would burst, and her eyes inflamed and dilated seemed starting from their sockets. She directed them right onward for some moments, as if they could have pierced her prison-walls; at length she turned them full on the outlaw and that look said as audibly as language, “Begone this moment, or stay and see me driven to frenzy!”
The comic figures in the story—most of whom are invariably comic—are hardly less stereotyped and without charm. An exception must be made for the well-drawn Sir Aymer, an old knight who continually affects a tone of youthful gallantry but is, at bottom, a man of honour and delicacy. The drunken abbot of Normoutier with his eternal mal-a-prop Latin quotations, and the foppish Sir Ezzelin de Verac, are, on the other hand, very heavy and tiresome. The best drawn character in The Albigenses is the bishop of Toulouse. There is something truly imposing in his ambitious schemes, and his scepticism and clear-headedness form a salutary contrast to the superstitious fanaticism of his fellow-crusaders. The speech with which he tries to dazzle and seduce the inexperienced Genevieve, while she is his prisoner in Beaucaire, is one of the most eloquent passages in the book, and shows once more what Maturin was capable of achieving on his favourite topic, the unlimited power and the soul-destroying influence of the Catholic church:
The vast system of which I am no feeble or inert engine, hastens to the summation of its working—the conquest of the world. That old and mighty Rome, of whom pedants prate, subdued but the meaner part of man—his body; but our Rome enslaves the mind—that mind, which, once enslaved, leaves nothing for opposition or for defeat. Look round thee—a peevish dotard in the seven-throned palace tramples with his palsied foot on the necks of the crowned kings of earth, from the shores of the Orcades to the cliffs of Calpe. He stamps with it, and their blood, their treasures, and their vassals are poured on Asia, making the eastern world tremble to its centre: for ours is the power that not only binds the spirit but makes it clasp its chain; ours are the powers of the world to come; all that is potent in life, all that is mysterious in futurity, the fears, the hopes, the hearts of mankind, all are ours; and shall we not wield the weapon their credulity has put into our hands for our own behoof? — — — All knowledge is ours—to the laity the book is closed—the key is lost—every avenue to science, every loophole through which light might wander, is barred up or sternly sentinelled; the tomes of ancient wisdom are buried in monkish libraries, unfolded, save by daring hands like mine. Under the old tyrants of the earth the decree of a senate might desolate a province, and the frolic of an emperor consume a city; but when did it chain up the arm of man, or wither his soul within him, like a papal interdict, at whose reported sound the bridegroom drops the hand of the betrothed, the mourner quits the unburied corse, and the priest flies from the altar? I tell thee, maiden, the eagles of Ancient Rome would be blasted if they dared to grasp the thunder that is now wielded by the hand of every busy legate.
The best things in The Albigenses are to be found in certain vividly narrated episodes and brilliant descriptions, which are quite other than the hackneyed adventures of the actual dramatis personæ. Among them is the story of the heretic deacon Mephibosheth. He is taken, by some Catholic travellers, to the abbey of Normoutier, where the monks, in the absence of the abbot, have elected an ‘abbot of misrule’ and arranged a carousal on a large scale. The deacon is compelled to become one of the company and take part in a wild dance; he first refuses, but then, being sufficiently drunk, he for a while becomes the jolliest of them all, until his feelings as suddenly reverse themselves and he starts smashing costly windows and figures of saints. The monks decide to hang him, but the cord breaks, and he is finally spared on condition of procuring them a beautiful heretic damsel. The deacon, remembering Genevieve, readily complies, but she is brought there by the two robbers before he has time to fulfil his promise. The deacon, however, remains at the abbey and, having turned Catholic, becomes a follower of the bishop and is, at last, hanged in good earnest by the men of count Raymond, after the battle of Tarascon. The feast of the abbot of misrule, which presents a phase of monastic life seldom described,[172] is depicted with superabundant vivacity and humour, and in a true mediaeval spirit:
— — “Surely I will not dance,” quoth the deacon, whose courage rose with opposition; “it is an abomination more befitting the daughter of the harlot Herodias than a deacon of the holy congregation. All dancing is evil, exceedingly evil, and not good—but to dance in the tents of Kedar and the tabernacles of the idolaters, to be set up on high among the ungodly, and dance in the high places, were an utter abomination:—wherefore I say, Down with the filthy squeaking of pipes, and the lewd jarring of crowds, and—” “So please you, my lord abbot,” said one of the monks, “let us drown this peevish fellow’s noise, and cause him to dance with us:—your true sour heretic (and your lordship perceives he is no better, though I shame to name such vermin before your lordship) needs no other martyrdom than the sight of free honest mirth.”—“Thou sayest well,” said the abbot; “he shall dance and die the death of the spleenful: for the rest, let such of the nine worthies as be sober, lead forth Deborah, Judith, and Queen Dido—the three children in the furnace shall dance with Nebuchadnezzar to make up their old grudge—Susanna shall pace with one of the elders, and the goddess of Chastity with the other—ourself, the Abbot of Misrule, will lead the lady of loose-delight, with her paintings and her pouncings, her mincings and her mockings—and the heretic shall dance with the devil, and there is a company meetly sorted. Strike up, my masters.”—Here the hapless Mephibosheth was seized on by a hideous figure enveloped in a black garment, with cloven feet of flame colour, a tail that swept the ground, a mask equipped with “eyes that glow and fangs that grin,” and a huge pair of horns starting from the forehead. All his struggles availed nothing with his frightful partner: he was dragged into the circle, compelled to perform numerous pirouettes, which were more remarkable for velocity than grace, and if he relaxed for a moment in his exertions, a swinge of his partner’s tail, a kick of his cloven foot, or a blow with his horns, set him prancing again with pain and terror till his strength was exhausted, and he fell to the ground. At this moment the cook was seen entering the hall, attended by the lay-brothers groaning under the heavy dishes they bore, and shouting in unison the monastic chorus—
Caput apri defero,