Romantic, in the highest degree, is Maturin’s next work, his tragedy of Fredolfo, which was written in the course of the year 1818. The economic success of Women had bettered his circumstances, and the alluring prospect of a successful drama once more began to loom before his fancy. As early as January 28:th Maturin communicates to Murray that he has been made ‘a very liberal offer to write a tragedy for Covent Garden;’ Fredolfo, in all probability, was the fruit of this offer, though it was not acted there until April 1819. Maturin’s correspondence with Murray—that part, at least, which is extant—breaks off in August 1818, and there is little to tell of his life until the appearance of Fredolfo, except that he was fortunate enough to form another of those literary friendships he always desired. Alaric Watts became, at that time, editor of the New Monthly Magazine or Universal Register, where he published his admiring article on Maturin. This article, according to some autobiographical notes of Watts,[111] brought him the acquaintance of the novelist:
I have no distinct recollection of the occasion of my introduction to this remarkable man; but I have little doubt that it originated in my having written a memoir of him in the first series of the New Monthly Magazine, to accompany a fantastic-looking portrait of him in that periodical. He was at that time in the zenith of his fame. At all events, I was solicited by him, in 1819, to superintend the production, at Covent Garden Theatre, of a tragedy from his pen, entitled “Fredolpho.”
The tragedy turned out a failure as complete as it was undeserved: Fredolfo is not only the best of Maturin’s dramatic compositions, but a work of considerable poetic value.
The scene in Fredolfo is laid in Switzerland, which country had, through Byron, become as popular with the romantic writers as Sicily and Spain had been during the bloom of the Gothic Romance. Fredolfo the hero is an ancient and respected Swiss lord, who has gallantly pleaded his country’s cause against the tyranny of Austria:
He was his country’s idol—Switzerland,
Through all her rescued cantons, blessed her champion;
For, when he sat in council, from his head
Sprang Liberty, a living goddess arm’d!
Nor lack’d his hand the thunder to defend her.—