The Gothic Romance, the school of fiction founded upon ‘the passion of supernatural fear,’ was already in disrepute at the time Montorio came out. In the preface, therefore, Maturin presents an eloquent defence of this style of writing, which, though much abused by ‘vulgar and unhallowed hands,’ he still maintains to be most fit for artistic treatment:
I question whether there be a source of emotion in the whole mental frame, so powerful or universal as the fear arising from objects of invisible terror. Perhaps there is no other that has been at some period or other of life, the predominant and indelible sensation of every mind, of every class, and under every circumstance. Love, supposed to be the most general of passions, has certainly been felt in its purity by very few, and by some not at all, even in its most indefinite and simple state.
The same might be said, a fortiori, of other passions. But who is there that has never feared? Who is there that has not involuntarily remembered the gossip’s tale in solitude or in darkness? Who is there that has not sometimes shivered under an influence he would scarce acknowledge to himself? I might trace this passion to a high and obvious source.
Here, in a few words, is expressed the peculiarity of the Gothic Romance.[25] Its soul is terror; terror, preferably, if not always, arising from a cause of supernatural import. It is often considered as a crude precursor of the magnificent revival of the English letters with the romanticism of the early 19:th century, nor can it be denied that in some instances the threads of the two currents are interwoven, and that certain details from the one are taken up and ennobled by the other. The Byronic hero, for example, who was to influence the poetry of Europe, has his prototype in the Gothic Romance. Yet in its essential nature this movement is different from all others, and, instead of coalescing with romanticism, it is developed apart from and alongside with it, Maturin’s Melmoth, which is unquestionably the greatest production of the actual Gothic Romance, appearing as late as 1820. According to this distinct character of its own, the present writer would be disposed considerably to restrict the range usually allotted to the Gothic Romance. Especially with regard to works in which the use of supernatural agency is eliminated, the limit has sometimes been fixed with obvious arbitrariness; if the occurrence only of startling incidents or violent and extraordinary characters[26] were to be the criterion in this respect, the Gothic Romance would include, not only a collection of rubbish, but a great many productions which English literature has cause to be proud of. It is the main and only purpose of the work which must be kept in view, and that, as in all Gothic romance, is to appeal to the reader’s sense of fear. The terrible and revolting elements are introduced entirely for their own sake—not, for instance, to lend force to the total impression, or give depth to the study of character; ghastly crimes, torture, and painful situations form the very aim of the book, that for which it was written. It is evident that this kind of composition was not likely to attain any artistic excellence. A good example of it is Shelley’s youthful story of Zastrozzi (1810), probably one of the most worthless things ever fabricated by a great poet in a moment of misdirected energy. A book like John Moore’s Zeluco (1786?), on the other hand, can hardly be classed among the productions of the Gothic Romance, although it is habitually mentioned together with them; it is a dispassionate, rather didactic display of a very vicious character, totally lacking those qualities that are calculated to make nervous readers afraid of going to bed.
The occurrence, however, of really or seemingly supernatural elements, is the chief characteristic of the Gothic Romance. These elements are always treated seriously; they form the part on which the reader’s attention is meant to be centred, the fearful sensations created by these means being, again, what the writer aims at—as expressed in Maturin’s preface quoted above. Another vital point there alluded to is that the ‘passion of supernatural fear’ is intended to come home to the reader by way of his own recollections of moments when he has involuntarily shivered in solitude or in darkness. In other words, the unearthly incidents about to be told are to take place among ordinary people, in environs more or less resembling real life. This, in fact, is admittedly a requisite to the Gothic Romance;[27] and, that being so, a tale like Beckford’s Vathek (1781?) ought to be excluded from the Schauerromantik, the meaning of this word being limited to the definite literary movement now in question. In Vathek the course of action is, from the beginning, raised to the realm of a fairy tale from the Arabian Nights; here, consequently, the supernatural becomes ‘natural,’ never being startling or unexpected in its mere capacity of supernaturalness, nor in any way connected with experiences which the reader might be familiar with.
The denomination ‘Gothic story’ was invented and introduced by Horace Walpole, who furnished his Castle of Otranto with this sub-title. The wonders themselves, in this romance, are crude and primitive in the extreme, such as statues found bleeding, and portraits walking out of their frames. The Castle of Otranto was, however, greatly admired by Scott,[28] who points out that in this crudity lies a deliberate artistic purpose of re-calling the ideas of the distant times, when the things related would have been ‘received as matter of great credulity.’ In its attempt at time-colouring the Castle of Otranto really stands alone among the Gothic romances where, as a rule, personages of any time or country speak the language and express the ideas of 18:th century England. In the present age, indeed, the success of this effort seems very indifferent, and the tedious horrors of Walpole proved too much even for his direct imitators. Clara Reeve, in her Champion of Virtue (1777), afterwards called The Old English Baron, which she candidly confesses to have been inspired by Walpole, prudently keeps aloof from his copious use of supernatural elements. Yet the childish character of all these inventions could not long satisfy the public taste for horror, which grew very intense in the last decade of the century. Originality was soon sacrificed to the demands of power and suspense; The Monk (1795) of Matthew Gregory Lewis, which is the best known—and probably the worst written—of all the more famous productions of the school of terror, consists, for the most part, of plagiarisms from foreign sources. Only his manner of handling his readers’ nerves without gloves was, at that time, a novelty in English fiction. The unearthly elements in The Monk comprise popular legends of ghosts that find no rest in their graves, and one of the principal personages is a female demon sent forth by the devil himself to corrupt the morals of the monk Ambrosio. Compared to the nursery-bogeys of Walpole and Clara Reeve the preternatural world in The Monk is, of course, much more imposing in itself, although the author’s treatment of his subject-matter is exceedingly blunt and coarse. With regard to the occurrence also of situations physically revolting and disgusting, the school of terror celebrates one of its doubtful triumphs in the romance of Lewis.
About the same time, however, the movement took another course in a gentler direction, with the appearance of Mrs Ann Radcliffe within the province of imagination. She refrains altogether from representing anything actually supernatural; whatever is made to appear so throughout the tale, is finally explained as proceeding from some natural cause. This innovation in the mode of composition by no means marks an improvement from the artistic point of view. In a story written in the Radcliffe style a certain want of dignity is constantly felt, the reader being, to use the words of Scott,[29] ‘cheated into a sympathy’ with horrors shown, at last, to be connected with very petty and trivial circumstances, while the ‘explanation’ tendered is often as improbable as would be an appeal to supernatural forces. Nevertheless there still remains a sort of halo about the work of Mrs Radcliffe. She was indeed a far cleverer writer than either Walpole or Lewis, possessing, in a considerable degree, the rare art of suggestion, so important in novels of suspense. Another innovation introduced by Mrs Radcliffe into the Gothic Romance is an intense, romantic feeling for natural scenery. In her tales a moonlit landscape is as indispensable as a half-ruinous castle, and to the dreamy, sentimental atmosphere which prevails throughout her works, her enormous popularity was, no doubt, partly due. It was under her influence Maturin started his career as a novelist; Montorio is, as far as its construction is concerned, composed in the typical Radcliffe style. That he was entirely in sympathy with his subject is already seen from the preface, and the warmth with which he speaks of Mrs Radcliffe even twelve years later,[30] clearly demonstrates that he must have been, in his youth, one of her most ardent admirers, and thoroughly acquainted with her works and all their peculiarities. The following extract from Maturin’s article deserves to be quoted all the more so because of its being one of the ablest and most beautiful characterizations of the once famous authoress ever written:
— — — her romances are irresistibly and dangerously delightful; fitted to inspire a mind devoted to them with a species of melancholy madness. The very light under which she paints every object, has something fatally indulgent to such an aberration of mind in its early and innocent, but mournful stage: her castles and her abbeys, her mountains and her valleys, are always tinged with the last rays of the setting sun, or the first glimpses of the rising moon; her music is made to murmur along a stream, whose dim waves reflect the gleam of “the star that bids the shepherd fold”; the spires of her turrets are always silvered by moonlight, and the recesses of her forests are only disclosed by flashes of the palest lightning; a twilight shade is spread over her views of the moral, as well as of the natural world: her heroines are “soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair”; they have no struggles of energy, no bursts of passion—they are born to tremble and to weep;—their love, from its very commencement, has a tinge of despair, and their susceptibility of nature (which seems always their strongest feeling) has all the character of a religious resignation of its charms to the solemn duty of extracting melancholy from its scenes; they hang on the parting beauties of an evening landscape, and their tears fall in solemn unison with the dews of heaven; they are revived only by the toll of a sepulchral bell, and wander among the graves of their departed friends, as if the intercourse of human existence were suspended, and the living were to seek not only recollection, but society, among the dead. The works of this writer lead us for ever to the tomb; but the wand which she bore was gifted only to call up the milder and unalarming spirits: we listen to her charms as we would to the incantations of a benevolent enchanter, whose “quaint apparitions” may soften and solemnize, but neither terrify nor hurt us. Her spirits were those who
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe bites not, and those whose pastime