Scott’s benevolent review is one of the most pleasant specimens of his literary criticism. Cordial praise from the man whom he considered the greatest writer of the age, must have occasioned much satisfaction to Maturin, so much the more as the two other critiques which Women directly gave rise to were to a very different purpose. Anything more unintelligent than an article in the Monthly Review[109] it would be difficult to find. The writer ever probes for the moral reasons of the author’s describing this or that, and of Maturin’s treatment of the Methodists he comes to this wonderful conclusion:
To expose the repellent and unsocial manners of this sect, who are called in derision, levelled at their own presumption, ‘evangelical,’ seems the main moral object of the writer; and we grant that his design, had it been executed judiciously, and fairly, would have been praiseworthy: but it is obvious that, to attain this purpose of discountenancing spiritual pride and gloomy superstition, the author must not on the one hand grossly overcharge the picture which he wishes to hold up to reprobation; nor, on the other, must he omit to present a rational and amiable contrast, in the person of at least one specimen of pure and social Christianity. In both these points, Mr. Maturin has entirely failed.
Of what the writer so strongly feels the loss of, Maturin has, in fact, given not one but three instances: what is there of spiritual pride in Eva? or what of gloomy superstition in Montgomery and Mrs. Wentworth? Still more stupid is another charge against the author’s fairness, which the writer tries to make much of. De Courcy receives, while in Paris, a letter from his guardian—an old and conservative clergyman who, in principle, disapproves of dramatic art and those who practise it—in which he eagerly dissuades De Courcy from marrying an actress. This letter, the reviewer says, he has read ‘with equal surprise and displeasure,’ and continues: ‘We cannot conceive how Mr. Maturin, as the countryman of Miss O’Neil, whose virtues are the groundwork and the glory of her talents, can have brought himself to pronounce such a sweeping condemnation of the characters of actresses. If he should say, “These are only arguments in the mouth of an advocate against an imprudent marriage,” he who has been so unusually connected with the stage should have taken some opportunity to counteract, or to modify, the unmitigated censure.’ But is not the whole life of Zaira a modification of any censure? and is it not shown at almost every page to what a moral superiority and greatness of soul an actress is capable of rising? Unjust as this critique is, it is nothing to the savage attack delivered upon the book in the Quarterly Review.[110] At this time the famous literary warfare between Croker and Lady Morgan was at its hottest, and Maturin’s friendship with the authoress—she is admiringly spoken of even in Women—had, no doubt, its share in the extraordinary venomousness of the article, which there is no difficulty in recognizing as a production of Croker himself. He treats the book as an intentional parody on novels in general; but the satirical tone is often broken by bursts of great vehemence, and ignoble allusions to Maturin’s profession are by no means spared:
Parodies, as we once before said, should be short—Mr. Maturin’s, though admirably sustained, is too long, and we may venture to say also that the mask is never sufficiently removed—we know that the reverend author means to be merry at the expense of novel writers and portfolio pedants, but we regret to say that we have heard that some persons, mistaking his book for a serious production, have censured it as degrading, by its folly, its ignorant pedantry, its constant fustian, and its occasional blasphemy, the character of a clerical author; while others, equally well disposed, but more simple, have looked upon it not only as serious but as meritorious, and have praised it as having all the qualities of an excellent novel.
That Maturin’s Women has never been reprinted cannot but be regarded as one of the curiosities in the history of the English novel.
In the February number of the British Review 1818 appeared an article, by Maturin, on Miss Edgeworth’s tales of Harrington and Ormond. It was originally intended for the Quarterly Review; in his letter to Murray from Sept. 27, 1817, Maturin says that his article is ready, and only waits an order for transmission. His first contribution to the Quarterly, the critique of Sheil’s Apostate, which had not met with a favourable reception, was, however, to be also his last. In another letter, dated Nov. 17, Maturin writes: ‘I can easily comprehend a truth which your politeness would conceal, that the inferiority and not the lateness of my article was the cause of its rejection. I am extremely obliged by your kindness in suggesting an application to the British Review; I have availed myself of it and must entreat your pardon for the trouble it imposes on you.’ At that time Maturin was still anxious to have a place in the Quarterly, little as his own production harmonized with the views advocated by the literary staff of that periodical—though the exceedingly inimical criticism which both Women and Melmoth afterwards received there, probably made an end of his desire to have any connection with it. Whatever might have been the cause of the rejection of the article, it appears that Murray later mediated in Maturin’s behalf with the British Review, which was induced to accept it. The article is composed after the same pattern as the critique on Sheil—though it is far more interesting—: the development and history of the novel is traced from its earliest beginnings up to the new stories of Miss Edgeworth. Several quotations have been made, in the foregoing pages, from this typical essay of Maturin, where the Gothic Romance is happily and enthusiastically characterized, and the great novelists of the 18:th century mentioned with an astonishing lack of appreciation. Miss Edgeworth, however, is highly panegyrized; but it is quite evident that Maturin’s opinion of his celebrated countrywoman is more akin to respect and esteem than to ardent and genuine admiration. He cannot conceal that she is deficient in those romantic qualities of passion and feeling for nature, which to him mean the highest pitch of inspiration:
Such is Miss Edgeworth’s sacred horror of any thing like exaggerated feeling, or tumid language; such her anxiety for reducing her characters, where they are not meant to be heroes, to the level of ordinary feelings and occupations, and lowering the intoxications of romance to a “sober certainty of waking bliss,” that she appears as averse from the enthusiasm of nature as from the enthusiasm of passion. — — — We do “grievously suspect” that Miss Edgeworth is one of those who would have joined with Johnson in his laugh against the pastoral prosers who “babble of green fields;” and we rather fear that she speaks her own sentiments in the person of Lord Glenthorne in Ennui, when he gives all the “Beauties of Killarney to the devil.”
Maturin’s criticism of the two particular, tales now under discussion is very severe, of Ormond decidedly too much so. This well-known Irish story being the very antipode of the patriotic novels produced by Lady Morgan and Maturin, it is no wonder it did not appeal to him. There are no soul-stirring adventures, no breath of romance, and the ancient glory of Ireland is not even alluded to. —