I know thee holy Prior—I know ye, brethren.
Lift up your holy hands in charity.
(With a burst of wild exultation)
I died no felon death—
A warrior’s weapon freed a warrior’s soul—
It will be remembered that in Montorio the last words of the hero were an expression of joy at the fact that he did not perish on the scaffold. Here the sentiment is repeated, but it is clearly not fortunate to put it in the mouth of the hero himself; if there is any relief brought about by his nobler mode of dying, the spectator ought to feel it spontaneously.—
It has already been seen, more than once, that the merits of Maturin’s works are not in their composition. The traces of his power which there admittedly[75] are in Bertram, are to be sought in richness of language and originality of style. Now and then, amid the ‘sound and fury’ of the whole, passages stand out where Maturin’s blank verse attains a sombre beauty of its own, while it expressively strikes the note of the time, vibrating with a genuinely romantic sense of loneliness, melancholy, and grandeur. Lines such as these, from the first interview of the hero with the heroine, doubtless did much to decide the partiality for Bertram of critics like Byron and Scott:
Imo. Strange is thy form, but more thy words are strange—
Fearful it seems to hold this parley with thee.
Tell me thy race and country—