26. He watched him as he lessened in his flight, What shall I do?" (and then he scratched his head,) I'd ne'er again set leg across a bird.” 27 How long he staid upon his airy seat, I have not time at present to disclose; My readers fain would learn, I may suppose; MELMOTH THE WANDERER, &c. * We do not envy those who are incapacitated by extreme delicacy of taste, or, we should rather perhaps say, by extreme indulgence in the habits of strict criticism, from enjoying such works as those of Mr Maturin. They are all, prose and verse, full of faults so numerous, that it would be quite fatiguing-so obvious, that it would be quite useless to point them out. There is not one of them that a rigid disciple of the Aristotelian school of criticism would condescend to call by the name of any one given species of regular composition; for there is not one of them that has either beginning, or middle, or end. The author, in a very great proportion of every work he has written, has been contented with copying the worst faults of his predecessors and contemporaries, in the commonest walks of fictitious writing. In his best passages there is always a mixture of extravagancein the whole of his works there is not, perhaps, to be found one page of perfectly natural thought, or perfectly elegant language. And yet, where is the lover of imaginative excitement, that ever laid down one of his books unfinished-or the man of candour and discrimination, who ever denied, after reading through any one of hem, that Maturin is gifted with a genius as fervently powerful as it is distinctly original-that there is ever and anon a truth of true poetry diffused over the thickest chaos of his absurdities-and that he walks almost without a rival, dead or living, in many of the darkest, but, at the same time, the most majestic circles of romance? Encouraged by praise at once so high and so universal, it is no wonder that a young author of the true Milesian breed should regard with very considerable indifference the cavils of the hypercritical;-nay, that he should be contented to go on 66 sinning glorious sins"- -a sort of applauded rebel against all the constituted authorities of the literary judgment-seat. But, nevertheless, it is a very great pity that such should be the continued course of his career. He should remember, that although his faults are not able to deprive him of the admiration of the present time, they may bid very fair to shut him out altogether, or nearly so, from the knowledge of posterity. He should remember, that it is one thing to be an English classic, and another to occupy ample room and verge enough" in every circulating. library throughout the land. We are far from saying that Mr Maturin should write less-but we do say, that he should write a great deal more-observe a great deal moreand correct a great deal more. If he does not, he may depend upon it he will never fulfil the rich promise of Melmoth the Wanderer: a Tale. By the author of “ Bertram," &c. In 4 volumes. Edinburgh: Constable & Company. his MONTORIO; for that, we rather think, was the first-and, we are quite sure, is the best of all his perfor mances. Next to Montorio, however, we have no hesitation in placing this new romance of Melmoth the Wanderer, which, whatever faults may be discovered or pointed out, either in its conception or in its execution, or in both of these, cannot fail to be read universally, and to please universally. It is infinitely better than "Women, or Pour et Contre," or "Fredolfo" in "Bertram"-excellent as all these works are in their several ways and one reason for this is, that it is infinitely more horrible-for in horror, there is no living author, out of Germany, that can be at all compared with Mr Maturin. The chief fault of the story is, that there is too much uniformity in the sources of its horror-and yet, there is nothing more admirable than the variety of application by which the same cause of horror is made to diffuse its shadow over so many different walks of life. The error and the beauty go hand in hand together in this respect-no very uncommon circumstance, by the way, in regard to the works of Mr Maturin. a The truth is, however, that it is mere courtesy to call MELMOTH Romance;" for the four volumes contain as many or more stories which, with the exception of the agency of one character common to them all, have no sort of connexion with each other, their personages being otherwise quite different, and their scenes laid at different periods, and in quite different parts of the world. Successive pictures of human misery are presented in England, Ireland, India, Spain, and elsewhere, and between them there is no earthly connexion, except what arises from the one circumstance, that wherever exhibited, and however produced, the masterspring and moving cause of all this misery is JOHN MELMOTH the wanderer-A strange indefinable being something between a Faustus and a Mephistophiles-whose life appears to have been extended over the space of nearly two centuries, and his mind and body alike endued with no inconsiderable portion of the proper diabolical energy, all for the purpose of producing torture to human beings, men, women, and children, without, excepting in one instance only, the smallest item of profit or pleasure accruing to The Wanderer himself. The story of this demon of the piece is not very distinctly given, but, so far as we can gather, he has sold his soul to the devil, for the sake of the above-mentioned privileges and immunities; but, discovering after a time (like St Leon) the worthlessness of superhuman powers in human hands, he is very desirous to prevail upon some other child of earth, to take the infernal lease, with all its consequences of good and evil, off his hands. In order to find a person who will relieve him of his burthen, he explores from the time of Charles I. down to that of George III. all imaginable scenes of human suffering and calamity, always heightening, sometimes causing and originating the misery, amidst which it is his only business, and his only delight to move ;-exalting, casting down, exalting again, and again depressing, wearying out and buffeting with every instrument and art of torture the feeble spirit of humanity, in the hope of at last finding some one moment of wickedness or weakness, in which his great ultimate temptation may be offered and accepted. But it is all to no purpose. The ambition of the young, the avarice of the old, the love of the bride, the tenderness of the mother, all are alike assailed, and all in vain. No human passion excited to its utmost pitch of inflammation, is found capable of hurrying on the soul of man or woman to a deliberate renunciation of the hopes of eternal weal. Parents starve before the eyes of their starving children, but neither son nor daughter will purchase them bread at the price of perdition; the lover is struck with wild insanity, or wanders a drivelling ideot by the side of his mistress, yet she too resists the terrible temptation; the deserted mother lies famishing in a dungeon, and her child dies of hunger on her breast, because even her resolution can withstand the diabolical boon. For each of these situations of temptation there is here a separate tale, with separate time, incidents, and characters; but they are all connected by the perpetual intervention of those black eyes, lustrous with the brilliancy of hell, which reveal too surely, and too late, all the unhappy beings introduced, the fiend-like powers and purposes of the most unhappy Melmoth. There is an infinite display of genius in the conception of all and each of these tales; they are all sketches, but they are all sketches that could not be executed but by the hand of a master; and no eye can look on any one of them, without being satisfied that the same hand might produce things no less perfect than powerful, were such the good will and pleasure of Mr Maturin. Perhaps the finest design of the whole is that of the story of the Spanish Girl that has been wrecked, and preserved alone, upon an island of the Indian Sea, where she grows up to womanhood in the innocent companionship of flowers and birds, till her lonely loveliness attracts the notice of the wanderer, who woos her in her island, with human words and flatteries. Then her solitude becomes loathsome to her, and she cannot breathe its voluptuous air without agony, unless the wily tempter be there to walk with her beneath the leafy colonnades of her Banyan Tree, or sit with her when the breeze plays, to watch the moon-beams on the face of the midnight sea. Then he leaves her, and she is discovered by her relations,and carried back to Spain, where her heart pants and sickens in the midst of priests and duennas, for the luxuries of her old natural freedom, and the mysterious intellectual ardent visitant of her island solitude. Then Melmoth appears on the Prado, and she faints at his sight. He enters the garden, and speaks to her at her viranda by the moonlight. He weds her, deserts her, discovers himself the more deeply to betray her, sees her thrown into the caverns of the Inquisition with no solace but the company, of her child, the unhappy pledge of her unhappy love,-tempts her there, as never woman was tempted by man, and is baffled as never devil was baffled by the faith, the purity, the natural innocence of woman. We do think that, taking all things together, this tale of Immalee, or Isidora, which comes last in the series, has been judiciously selected by the Author to occupy that place of honour in his procession of terrors. But the chief beauty of this story consists in things of which it is almost VOL. VIII. impossible we should give our readers either specimen or description. Another very fine story is that of a young Spaniard, whom the sins of his mother, and the weakness of his father, have condemned to the conventual life, and who-his original aversion for that life having been aggravated by a thousand circumstances of minute intolerable oppression into total hatred and disgust-explores almost in vain every human resource of invention and boldness, in order to es-cape from its thraldom. The great merit of this tale lies in the Author's strenuous rejection of all those vulgar horrors by which the disciples of the Radcliffe School have been accustomed to deepen their portraitures of monastic misery, and the skill he has displayed in resting the interest excited in favour of his hero, not on these, but on the effect, slow, sure, and irresistible, of that far more cunning, and more common species of tyranny, which destroys its victims Non vi sed sæpe cadendo." The truth of this representation is indisputable-we speak of its historical, no less than of its moral truth; and, on every account, we recommend the whole of it to the study of our readers, who will indeed be very far from doing their duty to Mr Maturin, if they satisfy themselves with a single hasty novel-reading glance over this, and many other parts of the present perform ance. The Spanish manners, too, of this, and some other parts of the work, appear to us to be, in general, very felicitously given-and the Spanish scenery is sketched with a free, bold, masculine power, that is the more ef fective, by reason of the tender and touching nature of the sentiments with whose influence its enchantments are not unfrequently mingled. But neither the story of Isidora, nor that of the young Spaniard Juan di Monduça, is so great a favourite with us as that of "the family of Walberg;" and it is therefore from the last that we purpose to give a few extracts, by way of enabling such of our readers as have not read Montorio to see what Mr Maturin is capable of doing in his best moments of inspiration. An old rich Spaniard, by name Guzman, quarrels with his only sister, because she marries a German musician, a protestant, who has nothing but his ge Χ nius to recommend him. She goes therefore to Germany with her husband, where his abilities raise him to the situation of Maestro di Capella at the court of Saxony, and where, in a humble, yet comfortable manner, she rears her children till the eldest of them approaches the verge of manhood. About that time the old rich Spanish brother is taken very ill, and in his sickness and fear of death, he sends for his sister to come to him, with her family, saying that he is sensible he has treated her cruelly, and has already, by his Will, endeavoured to make the best reparation in his power. Walberg, his wife, and his children, therefore leave Dresden, and come to Spain; but, on reaching the place of the brother's residence, they find he has already recovered from his illness, and, although determined to provide abundantly for all their wants, will see no one of the family unless they become reconciled to the Catholic Church. Ines, the wife of Walberg, is sorely cast down on finding that the estrangement of her brother is thus to continue: yet affluence is made to surround them, and she enjoys much happiness with her husband and her children. Walberg's old father and mother, too, who had been invited to join them on the first news of their prosperity, leave Germany and come to live with them at Toledo. The following is a picture of the happy group on the evening of that day of their union. 66 6 I saw them,' said the stranger, interrupting himself, I saw them on the evening of that day of union, and a painter, who wished to embody the image of domes tic felicity in a group of living figures, need have gone no further than the mansion of Walberg. He and his wife were seated at the head of the table, smiling on their children, and seeing them smile in return, without the intervention of one anxious thought,-one present harassing of petty difficulty, or heavy presage of future mischance,-one fear of the morrow, or aching remembrance of the past. Their children formed indeed a groupe on which the eye of painter or of parent, the gaze of taste or of affection, might have hung with equal delight. Everhard their eldest son, now sixteen, possessed too much beauty for his sex, and his delicate and brilliant complexion, his slender and exquisitely moulded form, and the modulation of his tender and tremulous voice, inspired that mingled interest, with which we watch, in youth, over the strife of present debility with the promise of future strength, and infused into his parents' hearts that fond anxiety with which we mark the progress of a mild the mild and balmy glories of its dawn, but but cloudy morning in spring, rejoicing in fearing lest clouds may overshade them behad all the loveliness of their colder climate fore noon. The daughters, Ines and Julia, -the luxuriant ringlets of golden hair, the large bright blue eyes, the snow-like whiteness of their bosoms, and slender arms, and the rose-leaf tint and peachiness of their delicate cheeks, made them, as they attended their parents with graceful and fond officiousness, resemble two young Hebes ministering cups, which their touch alone was enough to turn into nectar. "The spirits of these young persons had been early depressed by the difficulties in which their parents were involved; and even in childhood they had acquired the timid tread, the whispered tone, the anxious and inquiring look, that the constant sense of children, and which it is the most exquisite domestic distress painfully teaches even to pain to a parent to witness. But now there was nothing to restrain their young hearts, that stranger, a smile, fled back rejoicing to the lovely home of their lips, and the timidity of their former habits only lent a grateful shade to the brilliant exuberance of youthful happiness. Just opposite this picture, whose hues were so bright, and whose shades were so tender, were seated the figures of the aged grandfather and grandmother. The contrast was very strong; there was no connecting link, no graduated medium, you passed at once from the first and fairest flowers of spring, to the withered and rootless barrenness of winter. "These very aged persons, however, had something in their looks to sooth the eye, and Teniers or Wouverman would perhaps have valued their figures and costume far beyond those of their young and lovely grandchildren. They were stiffly and quaintly habited in their German garbthe old man in his doublet and cap, and the old woman in her ruff, stomacher, and head-gear resembling a skull-cap, with long depending pinners, through which a few white, but very long hairs, appeared on her wrinkled cheeks; but on the countenances of both there was a gleam of joy, like the cold smile of a setting sun on a wintry landscape. They did not distinctly hear the kind importunities of their son and daughter, to partake more amply of the most plentiful meal they had ever witnessed in their frugal lives,-but they bowed and smiled with that thankfulness which is at once wounding and grateful to the hearts of affectionate children.They smiled also at the beauty of Everhard and their elder grandchildren,-at the wild pranks of Maurice, who was as wild in the hour of trouble as in the hour of prosperity ;-and, finally, they smiled at all that was said, though they did not hear half of it, and at all they saw, though they could enjoy very little-and that smile of age, that placid submission to the pleasures of the young, mingled with undoubted anticipations of a more pure and perfect felicity, gave an almost heavenly expression to features, that would otherwise have borne only the withering look of debility and decay. "Some circumstances occurred during this family feast, which were sufficiently characteristic of the partakers. Walberg (himself a very temperate man) pressed his father repeatedly to take more wine than he was accustomed to, the old man gently declined it. The son still pressed it heartfully, and the old man complied with a wish to gratify his son, not himself. 66 "The younger children, too, caressed their grandmother with the boisterous fondness of children. Their mother reproached them. Nay, let be," said the gentle old woman. They trouble you, mother," said the wife of Walberg. "They cannot trouble me long," said the grandmother, with an emphatic smile. "Father," said Walberg, "is not Everhard "The last time I saw grown very tall ?” him," said the grandfather, "I stooped to kiss him; now I think he must stoop to kiss me." And, at the word, Everhard darted like an arrow into the trembling arms that were opened to receive him, and his red and hairless lips were pressed to the snowy beard of his grandfather. "Cling there, my child," said the exulting father. "God grant your kiss may never be applied to lips less pure." "They never shall, my father!" said the susceptible boy, blushing at his own emotions; "I never wish to press any lips but those that will bless me like those of my grandfather. "And do you wish," said the old man jocularly, "that the blessing should always issue from lips as rough and hoary as mine?" Everhard stood blushing behind the old man's chair at this question, and Walberg, who heard the clock strike the hour at which he had been always accustomed, in prosperity or adversity, to summon his family to prayer, made a signal which his children well understood, and which was communicated in whispers to their aged relatives “Thank God,” said the aged grandmother to the young whisperer, and as she spoke, she sunk on her knees. Her grandchildren assisted her. "Thank God," echoed the old man, bending his stiffened knees, and doffing his cap" Thank God for this ⚫ shadow of a great rock in a weary land!" -and he knelt, while Walberg, after reading a chapter or two from a German Bible which he held in his hands, pronounced an extempore prayer, imploring God to fill their hearts with gratitude for the temporal blessings they enjoyed, and to enable them "so to pass through things temporal, that they might not finally lose the things eternal" At the close of the prayer, the fami ly rose and saluted each other with that affection which has not its root in earth, and whose blossoms, however diminutive and colourless to the eye of man in this wretched soil, shall yet bear glorious fruit in the garden of God. It was a lovely sight to behold the young people assisting their aged relatives to arise from their knees,— and it was a lovelier hearing, to listen to the happy good-nights exchanged among the parting family. The wife of Walberg was most assiduous in preparing the comforts of her husband's parents, and Walberg yielded to her with that proud gratitude, that feels more exultation in a benefit conferred by those we love, than if we conferred it ourselves. He loved his parents, but he was proud of his wife loving them because they were his. To the repeated offers of his children to assist or attend their ancient relatives, he answered, “No, dear children, your mother will do better, your mother always does best." As he spoke, his children, according to a custom now forgot, kneeled before him to ask his blessing. His hand, tremulous with affection, rested first on the curling locks of the darling Everhard, whose head towered proudly above those of his kneeling sisters, and of Maurice, who, with the irrepressible and venial levity of joyous childhood, laughed as he knelt. "God bless you!" said Walberg-"God bless you all; and may he make you as good as your mother, and as happy as your father is this night;" and as he spoke, the happy father turned aside and wept." But their sky is soon overcast. The old brother dies at length, and, after living for several years in all the enjoyments of luxury, it is not difficult to imagine the misery into which the whole family is thrown when it is made known that a new Will had been executed by the old man on his death-bed, by which the whole of his fortune is left to the church. Nothing can be finer than the way in which Maturin has conceived the effects of this intelligence on all the different members of the household-the stupified insensibility of the old people-the happy ignorance of the youngthe despair of Walberg himself and the quiet gentle resignation of his wife. Some hopes are held out that it may be possible to prove unfair dealing on the part of the old man's confessors-and a lawsuit is begunwhich, as might have been expected, is at last decided by the Spanish judges in favour of the church, and against the heretical family. misery then advances rapidly, and at length is such, that not a few readers, Their |