The conclusion of Melmoth the Wanderer is very impressive; the descriptions are well-balanced, suggestive, and not too furious, although, in certain details, not decidedly original in invention. As in the transformation of Melmoth by an apparent death an influence from a contemporary work of the school of terror can be discerned, his real death can be traced back to the Faustus of Marlowe.[145] The preparations of Faustus and Melmoth for the dreadful last night are carried on in the same way:
Faustus. Aye, pray for me—pray for me—and whatever noise soever you hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.
Melmoth says:
Leave me—I must be alone for the few last hours of my mortal existence—men retire—leave me alone—whatever noises you hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not near this apartment, at the peril of your lives.
The final fulfilment of the bond, however, is only suggested by Maturin, while in Marlowe the devils who come to fetch Faustus are actually brought to the stage. In this respect the end of Melmoth the Wanderer differs, much to its advantage, from the end also of The Monk,[146] where the enemy in person takes hold of Ambrosio, soars with him in the air and dashes him to pieces against a sharp point of rock.
When the story of Melmoth, on one of the last pages of the book, turns back to the Irish country-house, the author expresses a fear that the reader has, perhaps, forgotten the existence of young John Melmoth. If he has not, he would at least have had plenty of time to do so; for the whole fabric of the work is nothing but a gigantic digression from the first action, in the form of tales within tales, told and read and read and told by somebody to somebody else, in an exceedingly intricate way rendering a general view of them a matter of considerable difficulty. The construction of Melmoth the Wanderer is extravagant beyond any degree reached by Montorio or The Wild Irish Boy, and has been subjected to severe criticism. Saintsbury[147] calls the arrangement ‘execrably bad,’ wondering ‘how anything quite so bad in form can have been put forth by anybody so clever.’ One explanation would be that this form implies an intentional disregard of the rules of composition, rather than a failure of ability to adhere to them, in other words, that the general effect is not calculated to rest upon regularity of construction, any more than in, for instance, the second part of Faust. But even if—which is more probable—Maturin really sat down to compose a story of ‘ordinary’ proportions and was unconsciously carried away on the wings of his ungovernable imagination, the general impression left by the book is such as to make the defects in its arrangement decidedly appear a question of secondary importance, just as the many literary reminiscences which present themselves during the perusal, cannot detract anything from the originality of the hero. Little as he actually appears, he is the locomotive power without which the whole would collapse, and he is remembered still when everything else is forgotten. From behind the various and manifold scenes of this amazing labyrinth, there arises the pale figure of the Wanderer, terrible and diabolical, yet suffering and despairing, to bear witness to his own defeat and the victory of human nature, so weak and yet so invincible, the object of at once his hatred and his adoration; and is it not, when we stand face to face with this wonderful creation of a great genius, indifferent where and when and by whom the separate tales are related? That the Wanderer, however, is capable of making so powerful an impression, is due to this curious fact, that the book, in its most essential feature, does not at all correspond to the passage in Maturin’s sermon which he maintains to have inspired it.
Several writers, from the most worthless to the most competent, have expressed their wonder at the very poor success Melmoth, with all his supernatural endowments, can boast of. The savage critic in the Quarterly Review[148] sneers that Melmoth ‘during his peregrination of two centuries, does less mischief than a clever mortal would have done;’ and Edgar Allan Poe[149] observes that Melmoth ‘labours indefatigably, through three octavo volumes, to accomplish the destruction of one or two souls, while any common devil would have demolished one or two thousand.’ The common devils certainly are more fortunate, and their difference from Maturin’s hero is conspicuous enough. In Balzac’s half-parody, Melmoth Reconcilié (1835), the Wanderer is delivered of his curse by a criminal, a cashier who has committed a fraud and is desirous to escape his sentence, and afterwards it passes from hand to hand among similar individuals. In Stevenson’s story of The Bottle Imp (1893); which has the same motive, the miracle-working and soul-destroying imp is at last, without subsequent repentance, purchased by a drunken boatswain who reckons he is going to hell anyway. The cause of Melmoth’s failure, and the precise character of his uncleverness, which consists in his strange ignorance whom to address, is in obvious contradiction to the sermon, where the final sin is declared to be too frightful even to those who have ever so much
departed from the Lord, disobeyed His will, and disregarded His word.
Now the persons who are subjected to the temptations of Melmoth the Wanderer have done nothing of the kind: on the contrary, most of them come as near perfection as poor human nature can possibly do. The tempter invariably takes care to accost those with whom he is least likely to succeed. He leaves unnoticed a character like the parricide, who is said to be beyond the redemption of a Saviour, and who, it must be assumed, would most joyfully accept the bond—to waste his time and energy on Alonzo di Monçada, whom he perceives to be as firm as any rock. Of Stanton, of Walberg, of Isidora, of Elinor, not one single wrong deed is recorded which would speak for the probability of their succumbing to his seductions. To all the tales, it has finely been observed,[150] can be applied a motto from Faust: ‘ein guter Mensch in seinem dunkeln Drange ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst;’ but it is not the good instinct in the good, but the good instinct in the bad, which Maturin, in the preface, promises to demonstrate. In consequence, however, of this ‘blunder,’ the character of Melmoth the Wanderer becomes so impressive, so impassioned, so distinct from all common men and common devils. The attraction exercised upon him by the good has its root in what there is human in him; what causes him his keenest sufferings is not that he is shut out of paradise but that he is shut out of the community of the good among human beings; and what he insists on trying, amid rage and despair, is that some one of those good would voluntarily share his fate and relieve his bitter loneliness. The relation of Melmoth to mankind is marked by that intense sense of loneliness, that sense of being ‘among them, but not of them,’ or, as Maturin says, ‘mingling with, yet distinct from all his species’—which goes through the romantic literature of the period and which indeed is genuinely romantic in its implication of something exceptional, something outside the common rules of life. The anguish of loneliness is shared alike by good and bad, by all whom adverse circumstances or else their own bodily or mental deformities have placed in a solitary position in the world. In Montorio, Ippolito is undeservedly overtaken by the fate which Melmoth deliberately invokes upon himself; but their anguish is the same. It is felt by St. Leon, the moment he attains earthly immortality and understands that those whom he has loved can mean nothing to him any longer; it is felt by the Black Dwarf when he contemplates the happiness of the strong and the beautiful, which he is never to share; and even the miserable monster created by Frankenstein prays for one being of the same species as himself, who might smile upon him and not answer his approaches with curses and maledictions. It was Maturin’s desire to dwell upon this emotion that in the long run decided the mould of the characters in Melmoth the Wanderer in a way, perhaps, not intended by him from the first. Viewed in the light of this same emotion, the contempt of Melmoth for his victims is only half-real, nor is it probable that Maturin meant him to appear so superior to humanity as he is shown by Baudelaire[151] in his well-known Essay de l’essence du rire: