The poem being completed and sent to the publisher, it became clear to Wills that Maturin was determined not to reveal the secret. It came out, however, ‘with a celerity truly surprising;’ the literary circles of Dublin were divided in two contesting parties, the one standing by Maturin, the other by Wills, and the matter was eagerly discussed in the drawing-rooms of Lady Morgan and the Mrs. Smith mentioned by Moore. The former was also deeply impressed by the production; when assured by Wills that Maturin never wrote a line of it, she answered, ‘well, then, you must do something very considerable to convince the world you could have written it.’ Nevertheless Wills seems to have succeeded in convincing Lady Morgan, for it was she who, according to him, communicated the particulars to Colburn. When Wills some time afterwards met the publisher in London, he presented Wills with all the remaining copies of the stock, hinting that the affair ‘had been injurious to Mr. Maturin in his relations with him as a publisher.’—
In connection with this version of Wills it is not out of place to quote a passage from an unpublished letter of Maturin to Sir Charles Morgan, dated 1821:
— — Apropos to the cursed booksellers, you can render me a most essential service by simply making an inquiry. I have Mr. Colburn’s written engagement to give £ 500 for my present work. I wrote to Charles Phillips three months ago to request he would inform C. that the work was more than half completed, that I was willing to place the M. S. in his hands and depended on his fulfilling his engagement. I have never had a line from Phillips in answer, though I stated my distress to him repeatedly and in the most urgent terms. Now, my dear friend, if without committing me you could make C. speak out, it would relieve me from considerable anxiety.
This seems to prove that the £ 500 was not paid in advance, and that Maturin had written a large part of some work agreed upon with Colburn, before he received anything for it. Whether the manuscript here referred to was published as a constituent part of The Universe it is hazardous to decide; if it was, Maturin had probably lost all interest in the poem and entreated Wills to complete it—the alternative being that the manuscript was deemed unfit, and Wills supplied all the materials. The poem itself gives little clue to the mystery. When speaking of The Universe, Wills more than once alludes to the ‘effective passages’ and the ‘filling up;’ but to a modern reader it is not easy to distinguish which is which, the whole being extraordinarily ineffective. The subject resolves itself into something that cannot possibly be firmly grasped. A contemporary critic[158] says not inappropriately: ‘Where in the name of criticism and common sense, could he begin with a subject that had no beginning, or finish with that which, being infinite and eternal, can have no end? He has followed no plan—he has given his fancy the rein. His flight is wild and discursive, but indicates a bearing in no particular direction. — — — His poem is not a whole: any man might as well have tried to cram the solar system into a cockle-shell as to produce a complete and finished poem on such a subject.’ The following passage belongs, in the critic’s opinion, to the happiest in the poem:
So array’d
In manifold radiance, Earth’s primeval spring
Walk’d on the bright’ning orb, lit by the Hours
And young exulting Elements, undefil’d,—
And circling, free from tempest, round her calm
Perennial brow,—the dewy Zephyrs, then,