These forebodings were, indeed, soon fulfilled: Maturin died on October 30:th in his home in Dublin whither he, for some reason or other, had returned from the country. There was a story afloat of his having caused, or at least precipitated, his death by some mistake about his medicine;[178] however this may have been, it is evident from the letter of Sir Charles that the case was sufficiently alarming already some four weeks before.—The death was briefly announced by the local papers; in The Morning Star of Nov. 3 there was this necrology:
In him the poor have lost a kind friend; our religion a firm supporter; and literature one of its brightest ornaments.—
In the summer of 1825 Walter Scott made his journey to Ireland, which he had long been planning. He had looked forward, with pleasure, to the prospect of becoming personally acquainted with Maturin, and had intended to invite the latter to accompany him during the tour. Now he could only pay a visit to the family,[179] for whose profit he is said to have contemplated a new edition of Maturin’s works, as well as the publication of some manuscripts found among his literary remains,[180] to which he would have prefixed a biography of his deceased friend; but his own pecuniary embarrassments, commencing just at this time, prevented him from realizing the project—and Maturin’s works soon began to fall into oblivion. Montorio was, in 1841, republished by William Hazlitt as vol. I in the Ballantyne’s Romancists and Novelists Library which he edited; Bertram appeared in The British Drama in 1865 and in Dick’s Standard Plays in 1884; and, lastly, Melmoth the Wanderer was reprinted in 1892, with no very distinct success.
To Charles Robert Maturin’s life and to his works, as such, the present study must be confined; his influence on later literature, above all on French romanticism, can here only be pointed out as a subject not yet exhaustively inquired into.[181] The work through which this influence was exercised is Melmoth the Wanderer, chiefly, yet not exclusively, inasmuch as Bertram also was immoderately admired in France and hailed as one of the foremost productions of contemporary literature. Melmoth, the great and concluding outburst of the English school of terror, stands there as at once its lasting monument and an outlet through which some of its peculiarities were, directly or indirectly, revived by the movements succeeding the downfall of 19:th century naturalism. The place in literary history of Women, Maturin’s other masterpiece, is more isolated. So far from belonging to any definite movement of the time it foreshadows, in a striking manner, the school of Dickens in its descriptions of middle class life, manners and characters, while its minute researches in the abysses of the human heart anticipate the analytic fiction of the very latest periods. In Maturin’s production Women is of an importance equal to that of Melmoth, nor is his literary physiognomy complete if The Milesian Chief is not remembered for its purely romantic qualities and its patriotic enthusiasm. These three works, which are Maturin’s best, afford ample illustration of the versatility of his genius, which versatility itself is an exponent of the spirit of freedom and experiment prevailing during the romantic revival. What they all have in common is the style of writing, the art of dealing with language as the sculptor deals with clay. Maturin’s part in the renewal of the imaginative English prose has been asserted by the latest authorities,[182] and the excellence of his style doubtless did much to obtain for him the appreciation of his brothers in the trade. It was the custom of contemporary reviewers to speak of Maturin’s novels as something particularly suited to the frequenters of circulating libraries, and it is true that with the large bulk of respectable, educated readers Maturin never was very popular; but then there was a small fraction of the public whose taste, in this respect, closely coincided with that of the former: most of those writers, great or small, whom Maturin admired, eagerly repaid the compliment. Lewis used to revel in the gloomy pages of Montorio[183] and was, as has been seen, pleased even with Manuel. Godwin, to whom so many of Maturin’s writings are indebted, is recorded[184] to have uttered: ‘if there be any writer of the present day, to whose burial-place I should wish to make a pilgrimage, that writer is Maturin.’ The Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) of James Hogg—one of the favourite poets of Maturin—seems to be not uninfluenced by Melmoth the Wanderer. The high opinion which Scott and Byron entertained of Maturin has more than once appeared in the foregoing pages—and among later romancists who are known to have delighted in the adventures of the Wanderer, or upon whose work he has even left an unmistakable print, we find names such as Balzac, Hugo, De Vigny, Baudelaire, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Poe, Thackeray, Rossetti, Stevenson, Oscar Wilde. Thus, if Maturin is not always—as he would deserve to be—remembered on his own account, he is at least mentioned in connection with, as he was acknowledged by, a great many of those writers who unquestionably form the ‘upper ten’ in the world of 19:th century letters.
Notes.
The references to pages after names of reviews and magazines indicate the page on which the respective article begins.
I.
[1] Henry A. Beers, A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, London 1899, p. 222.
[2] William Monck Mason, The History and Antiquities of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, Dublin 1820, note p. 445.