Quoi de plus grand, quoi de plus puissant relativement à la pauvre humanité que ce pale et ennuyé Melmoth? Et pourtant, il y a en lui un côté faible, abject, antidivin et antilumineux. Aussi comme il rit, comme il rit, se comparant sans cesse aux chenilles humaines, lui si fort, si intelligent, lui pour qui une partie des lois conditionelles de l’humanité, physiques et intellectuelles, n’existent plus! Et ce rire est l’explosion perpétuelle de sa colère et de sa souffrance. Il est, qu’on me comprenne bien, la résultante nécessaire de sa double nature contradictoire, qui est infiniment grande relativement à l’homme, infiniment vile et basse relativement au Vrai et au Juste absolus.
The members of this pauvre humanité still represent the power of absolute Justice and Truth, the power so infinitely stronger than Melmoth. Theirs is the ultimate triumph.
Melmoth the Wanderer created, at its first appearance, a greater sensation than any of Maturin’s previous novels. Economically it also was something of a success: the profits it brought to the author are said[152] to have amounted to 500 pounds. A second edition appeared the following year as well as a French translation, Melmoth, ou l’Homme errant, by J. Cohen, and a ‘free’ German translation called Melmoth der Wanderer.—All the works of Maturin, except Manuel and Fredolfo, were translated into French soon after their appearance in English, and with the rendering of Melmoth his fame became definitely established in that country, where, in fact, it has always been greater than in England. A. A. Watts says[153] that his father, while travelling in France, possessed a passport to the romantic circles as the friend of that ‘triste et terrible Maturin.’—In 1823 the romance was published in the form of a melodrama in three acts, by B. West. This production is a combination of the Tale of Guzman’s Family and the Tale of the Indians; Isidora is represented as the daughter of Walberg, and has loved Melmoth in her youth. Walberg and Isidora are both, through the machinations of Melmoth, thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, whence they are rescued by another lover of hers, while Melmoth is killed by thunder. The play is without any literary value whatever, but shows clearly which two tales were most appreciated by the public.—The principal periodicals of the time also reviewed Melmoth at a considerable length, although, for the most part, with a negative result. In the Quarterly Review Croker raged against the book even more furiously than he had done against Women, pronouncing it to be the very acme of all that is execrable:
Indeed, Mr. Maturin has contrived, by a ‘curiosa infelicitas,’ to unite in this work all the worst particularities of the worst modern novels. Compared with it, Lady Morgan is almost intelligible—The Monk, decent—The Vampire, amiable—and Frankenstein, natural. We do not pronounce this judgment hastily, and we pronounce it with regret—we honour Mr. Maturin’s profession even when he debases it, and if ‘Melmoth’ had been only silly and tiresome, we should gladly have treated it with silent contempt; but it unfortunately variegates its stupidity with some characteristics of a more disgusting kind, which our respect for good manners and decency obliges us to denounce.
After declaring, in italics, that the hero of the book is the Devil himself, the reviewer solemnly accuses the author of nonsense, want of veracity, ignorance, blasphemy and brutality, and a dark, cold-blooded, pedantic obscenity; and finishes his article with a hint that it certainly is quite right that the Church does not provide subsistence for him.—That critics, upon the whole, spoke unfavourably of Melmoth is not to be wondered at. The school of terror had irrevocably had its day, and very different literary ideals were being established. The magic art of Scott held a strong sway over all minds, while the well-bred drawing-room adventures of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen were now, in their turn, felt as a relief and a liberation from the wilder forms of romanticism. The extravagances and horribly startling incidents in Maturin’s romance were enough to cover its powerful originality and lasting merits—which probably would be the case did the book appear to-day. Yet the author’s genius was unreservedly admitted even by most of those who disapproved of the style and contents of Melmoth; the end of the article in the Edinburgh Review is characteristic, its tone being as dignified as that of the Quarterly Review is base:
Let it not be imagined, from any thing we have now said, that we think meanly of Mr. Maturin’s genius and abilities. It is precisely because we hold both in respect that we are sincerely anxious to point out their misapplication; and we have extended our observations to a greater length than we contemplated, partly because we fear his strong though unregulated imagination, and unlimited command of glowing language, may inflict upon us a herd of imitators who ‘possessing the contortions of the sybil without her inspiration’ will deluge us with dull, turgid, and disgusting enormities;—and partly because we are not without hopes that our animadversions, offered in a spirit of sincerity, may induce the Author himself to abandon this new Apotheosis of the old Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, and assume a station in literature more consonant to his high endowments, and to that sacred profession to which, we understand, he does honour by the virtues of his private life.
The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany writes essentially to the same purport:
There is one point of resemblance between this author and his hero. They both, in a different way, possess very considerable powers, which seem to have some invisible and mysterious limit, beyond which they cannot pass. The wild and wonderful, the odd and eccentric, seems to be Mr. Maturin’s chosen province;—into the regions of nature and probability he is either unable or unwilling to penetrate. Perhaps this is saying too much, but, if he does make an advance into these quiet precincts, his love of extravagance and exaggeration immediately leads him back into his wonted path. — — It is difficult to understand the construction of a mind so pregnant with every aggravation of mental and bodily suffering, that it seems absolutely to luxuriate, not only in the pain it describes, but in that which he produces in his readers. Surrounded as he is with terrible objects, and gleams of sulphureous flame, which his hero is ever and anon presenting to our view, the reverend author appears to our imagination like some Vulcan of the anvil, assiduously labouring and forging shackles, bolts, and instruments of torture, with this difference, that with the poor mechanic it was not matter of choice, whereas Mr. Maturin, with all the flowery paths of fiction open to him, has preferred this tortuous and gloomy one.
The only one who expresses himself with unrestrained admiration is the critic in the Blackwood’s Magazine—also referred to once above. Even he, it is true, points out that there are faults and errors in Maturin’s writings; but he admits that they are more than atoned for by the merits: