Chapter V (5)

Of Maturin’s third book, any more than of his second, no contemporary reviews are extant, but its immediate success--at least where the author was known--seems to have been considerable. The writer in the _New Monthly Magazine_ 1827 tells us that the book ‘received encomiums from many of the leading critics,’ and that ‘several individuals, inspired perhaps by the highly-wrought and poetical feeling of “The Milesian,” composed sundry “complimentary verses” upon it.’ Yet a second edition never appeared, and that Maturin’s circumstances continued to be distressing, all biographers agree.[60] His delicacy in concealing himself behind a pseudonym was of no avail to him regarding his chances of religious preferment; according to the aforesaid writer these were completely destroyed by the publication of his novels. So far, however, from abandoning the Muses, Maturin turned his poetical inspiration in another direction, still more contradictory to his profession. He became a dramatist, probably encouraged by the success bestowed upon a new play of no very remarkable merit. In 1813 Richard Lalor Sheil, the celebrated Irish barrister, produced a tragedy called _Adelaide, or the Emigrants_, written for the highly talented Miss O’Neill, who, after many hardships in obscure provincial theatres, had been engaged at the Old Crow-Street Street Theatre in Dublin. The decided success of Sheil--who also had composed his play in order to defray some necessary expenses--incited Maturin to follow his example. He sat down to write a drama in good earnest, as in his juvenile years he had often done for amusement. Already in the latter part of the year he was able to send in his _Bertram_, but the management of the theatre, for some reason or other, thought it advisable to reject it. Nearly a year afterwards Maturin hit upon it among his manuscripts, and, on the advice of a friend, sent it over for the perusal of his literary correspondent Walter Scott. The kindness of Scott was never appealed to in vain; he read the play and warmly recommended it to John Kemble, as he relates[61] in a letter to Daniel Terry, dated Nov. 10:th 1814, observing that _Bertram_ is ‘one of those things which will either succeed greatly, or be damned gloriously, for its merits are marked, deep, and striking, and its faults of a nature obnoxious to ridicule.’ With every allowance for Scott’s desire to help Maturin, it seems unquestionable that he was really impressed by the play. After a few critical remarks upon the last act, he concludes his letter to Terry: ‘With all this, which I should say had I written the thing myself, it is grand and powerful: the language most animated and poetical; and the characters sketched with a masterly enthusiasm.’

Notwithstanding these eulogies Kemble refused the play, and its fate seemed as doubtful as ever. Fortunately for Maturin, however, the committee of management of the Drury Lane Theatre were, in the following year, wanting something new for their repertory. The members of that body were, in 1815, men of high literary aspirations; the procurement of plays devolved on Lord Byron, who states[62] that the number he was supplied with amounted to five hundred, not one of which he could think of accepting. His attempts to exact a new play from some of the foremost writers of the day remained without effect, but Scott, to whom he also addressed himself, faithfully referred him to Maturin. A correspondence ensued, in consequence of which, Byron says,[63] ‘Maturin sent his _Bertram_ and a letter _without_ his address, so that at first I could give him no answer. When I at last hit upon his residence, I sent him a favourable answer and something more substantial. His play succeeded; but I was at that time absent from England.’

The answer must indeed have been a favourable one, for, to judge from a letter from John Murray[64] to Scott, dated Dec. 25:th 1815, _Bertram_ created quite a sensation in the committee:

I was with Lord Byron yesterday. He enquired after you, and bid me say how much he was indebted to your introduction of your poor Irish friend Maturin, who had sent him a tragedy, which Lord Byron received late in the evening, and read through without being able to stop. He was so delighted with it that he sent it immediately to his fellow-manager, the Hon. George Lamb, who, late as it came to him, could not go to bed without finishing it. The result is that they have laid it before the rest of the Committee; they, or rather Lord Byron, feels it his duty to the author to offer it himself to the managers of the Covent Garden. The poor fellow says in his letter that his hope of subsistence for his family for the next year rests upon what he can get for this play. I expressed a desire of doing something, and Lord Byron then confessed that he had sent him fifty guineas.

In a letter to Moore, written from Venice in 1817, Byron again expresses[65] his satisfaction at having been able to promote the ‘first and well-merited success’ of this ‘very clever fellow.’ There is no reason to doubt that Byron’s admiration was genuine. The high opinion he entertained of _Bertram_ may, of course, have been biassed by his regard for Scott, like that of Scott by motives of friendship; but there is that in Maturin’s tragedy which reflects the spirit of the time with peculiar distinctness; from many of its wild effusions speaks the very _Zeitgeist_ of romanticism, which was sure to find response with the best of the age as well as with the general public.

Before the play could be finally accepted, the approval of Kean had to be obtained. Kean had spent the greater part of 1815 on a tour extended to Dublin, where he appeared at the Crow-Street Theatre as Richard II, Othello, and Hamlet. In the beginning of 1816 the great man returned to London, and _Bertram_ was submitted to his judgment. Kean did not share the enthusiasm of the committee; according to his biographer[66] he pronounced the play to be ‘all sound and fury signifying nothing,’ yet offering a welcome relief after the characters of Shakespeare. His principal reason, however, for undertaking to perform the part of the hero was the conviction that it would ‘serve to increase his reputation.’ After a few rehearsals he came to realize that the part of Bertram was but a secondary one; but there being, as he said, no Mrs. Siddons to eclipse him in the part of the heroine, he resolved to do his best to eclipse Miss Somerville. In this he succeeded so well that _Bertram_, by all accounts, really did much to increase his reputation as the leading tragedian of the time.--

Between the production and first performance of _Bertram_ there was a lapse of more than two years, during which the monotony of Maturin’s existence was but seldom broken by occurrences worthy of notice. An instance of his poetical carelessness in practical matters is thus related in the _Irish Quarterly Review_ 1852:

Whilst he was composing Bertram, and living amidst a confused sea of difficulties, a clergyman, high in the church, had called upon him in York-street for the purpose of making him an offer of preferment; he was requested to wait for a few minutes, and after the lapse of half an hour, Maturin entered, his hair in dishevelled masses, wrapped in a flowing morning gown, and bearing in one hand a pen, in the other a portion of the manuscript of Bertram, from which he was repeating some highly wrought sentence just completed; he threw himself on the sofa beside his starched visitor, who very soon retreated, leaving the poet to cultivate the muse, in poverty and at leisure.

An anecdote like this, whether true or invented, affords, no doubt, a glimpse of Maturin as he really was, and has a deeply tragical as well as a comical side. It marks the perpetual conflict between what he was inclined to do and what he, in the opinion of the world, ought to have been doing; and when the fit of inspiration had subsided, the bitterness of seeing his family imperfectly provided for was always there. That Maturin repeatedly received assistance from liberal friends is seen from the correspondence of Byron, yet at the same time there are recorded certain actions of Maturin himself, which display uncommon generosity towards others, at least in one in his position. He was prevailed upon to become security for a relation, who subsequently had recourse to the act of insolvency, leaving Maturin burthened with a heavy debt for many years to come. This new disaster possibly caused him again to take up his rejected drama. The fact of Maturin’s being acceptable as security for a considerable sum, however, would go to show that his circumstances were not all times absolutely desperate--which also might be inferred from the story of an alleged literary production of his, connected with the latter part of 1815. A poetical competition had been announced by Trinity College in order to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo. Here, according to the _New Monthly Magazine_ 1827, Maturin easily carried off the prize with a poem which he, ‘in a most handsome manner,’ presented to a pupil of his called Shea[67] and declined all profit from the publication of it. The poem was printed in January 1816, when _Bertram_ already had been accepted to Drury Lane and Maturin, no doubt, was full of sanguine expectations. This Mr. Shea was a pupil of Maturin’s to whom he appears to have been greatly attached; one of his letters to Murray, dated July 6:th 1816, ends with the following plea for him:

Like all Irishmen, I reserve the most important part of my letter for the last. Mr. Shea, my pupil, of whom you have heard me talk so highly and justly while in London, has produced a poem on the marriage of the princess, I want you to publish it--I am satisfied of its merits and the certainty of its success.--

His friends are numerous and wealthy, and the work would have a most rapid sale. I am sure you will not decline encouraging this young Muse, when I make her introduction through you a matter of personal and particular obligation to--Yours most truly C. Rob. Maturin.

There is, indeed, no positive proof of Maturin’s being the author of _Lines on the Battle of Waterloo_, except the categorical statement in the _New Monthly Magazine_, besides the circumstance that the name of Shea, despite the wealthy and numerous friends, was destined never to adorn the history of English poetry. The poem is, however, furnished with a few notes written in a half-playful tone, where the author makes a reservation to eventual accusations of plagiarism, which notes, on account of the style alone, must be concluded to flow from the pen of Maturin. Of a passage like this, a student of Maturin can hardly doubt the authorship:

A Poem written by one who owed nothing to communication with other minds, would be original in every sense of the word--but the paucity of its materials would probably ill atone for the novelty of the structure; it would be perhaps like the Indian love-song mentioned I think in Ashe’s travels, where all the varieties of sentiment, and modulations of language, that the passion might be supposed capable of inspiring, are compressed into three short sentences, strongly resembling the monotonous chirp of their native birds--I love you--I love you dearly--I love you all day long.

The value of the poem itself is very moderate. Though endowed with a highly poetical temperament, Maturin was not a poet in the strictest sense of the word. Rhyme was an instrument of which he never became a master; the writer in the _New Monthly Magazine_ says that he had ‘a natural distaste to the constant return of sound arising from the restraints it threw upon his luxuriant fancy.’ He mentions the _Waterloo_ as a singular example of Maturin’s being able to overcome his rooted aversion to the labours of versification, and cites two or three instances where he strove in vain to conquer the insurmountable difficulties it used to cause him. In 1821, when Ireland had the doubtful honour to receive a visit from George IV, Maturin, among many others, thought the occasion to demand a versified homage to the monarch. After the laborious production of three lines, however, he destroyed the paper ‘in a transport of rage.’ From _Montorio_, which abounds with indifferent poetry, it was already seen which way Maturin’s powers lay. His poetical prose is always fine and rhythmical in form, and very often original in ideas, whereas his rhymes are trivial, and usually make the thoughts so. The poem on Waterloo treats, in an obscure and bombastical style, less of the battle itself than of the glory of those who won it; the opening lines are, perhaps, the most worthy of quotation:

’Tis night, her dim and dusky veil
Falls o’er creation’s aspect pale,
In deep repose lie town and tower,
Embattled steep, and foliaged bower--
The stilly forms of things unseen
Waver in twilight’s dubious screen,--
And mount, and vale, and earth, and sky
In grey confusion mock the eye,
Like features of some absent face,
That anguished Memory pains in vain to trace.

What Maturin was capable of achieving in blank verse, remains next to be seen.

III.

1816-1817.

’Tis true, said I, not void of hopes I came,
For who so fond as youthful bards of fame?
But few, alas! the casual blessing boast,
So hard to gain, so easy to be lost.

Pope.

On the 9:th of May 1816 Maturin’s _Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand_ had its first performance at Drury Lane and ran, under general acclamation, for twenty two nights in succession.

With similar distinctions, however, were then received a great many other plays, nowadays equally unknown and obscure. The disproportion between the enduring merits of a literary production and the admiration lavished upon it by its contemporaries was, at the time in question, most conspicuous in the field of the drama. The history of the whole 18:th century drama in England is, with a few brilliant exceptions, a history of decay. From the shock that the drama had suffered at the triumph of Puritanism in the preceding century it recovered but slowly, and in the meantime the cultivated public was strongly decided in favour of the novel; while an undreamed revival was taking place within the last-named branch of literature, the theatre long remained a meeting-place of ordinary pleasure-hunters. Even the advance of the actor was injurious to the drama, the excellence of the acting offering ample excuse for the inferiority of what was acted.[68] Yet the English drama of the latter 18:th century, viewed in broad outlines, followed the fiction. The spectator is taken into scenes of domestic life where the absence of the grander elements of tragedy is compensated with tender and always well-bred sentimentality. Out of this _milieu_, but under the freshening influence of classical comedy, there arose the dramatic masterpieces of the age, the comedies of Sheridan and Goldsmith.

The romantic drama which came after the sentimental, displays a spectacle still more unexhilarating. The fascination exercised by Shakespeare upon the young romantic movement bore fruit in the interpretations of great actors and, a little later, in the enthusiastic comments of eminent critics; but the playwrights could do nothing with a model that admitted neither approach nor imitation. This was realized by some of the dramatists themselves. Maturin wrote,[69] with reference to the sorry state of the English drama, which he calls a phenomenon unparalleled in the history of literature:

While in every other department of literature, all means have been employed to excite and to satiate the appetite for novelty; while history, philosophy, and theology have contributed to enrich and diversify poetry, while it has sought to interest us not only by painting man in every situation in which he has yet been discovered, but in situations in which the vivid creations of fancy alone could give a habitation and a name, while the passions have been depicted not only in their visible operation on life, but in the silent and unwitnessed workings of the heart, the drama still rests her claim on the merit of her earliest productions, and the efforts of competitors or of imitators have only served to establish the triumphs of Shakspeare.

At the same time there came an influence from very different quarters. If it was not possible to enter into competition with the Elizabethans, there was no difficulty in imitating writers like Kotzebue, who left his mark upon much in the English drama of the time. Yet nothing remains even of those who aspired higher. Joanna Baillie was the most admired of them; Maturin quotes her often and calls her the greatest dramatist of the age; but in our days ‘no man reads her unless he must.’[70] Until the appearance of _The Cenci_ (1819), the early 19:th century romanticism produced not a single drama worthy of the glorious traditions.

Considering this desert-like state of the then English drama, the _éclat_ roused by _Bertram_ is not surprising. Still it was less due to any of its dramatical qualities than to its closeness to the poetical standard in vogue just at the time of its performance; the point was made by the admirers as well as by the slanderers of the play, that it was conceived quite ‘in the taste of Lord Byron.’ If Maturin’s first romance had appeared a little too late, with regard to the style in which it was written, his first drama thus appeared at the right moment and met with the right interpretation. Whatever the opinion of Kean may have been of the play, he certainly realized the intentions of the poet with a skill that left nothing more to be desired. In an account of the first night we read:[71]

-- -- -- it will be observed that the part of Bertram is peculiarly adapted to the powers of Mr. Kean, by whom it is represented with extraordinary energy and effect. He is a mixture of ambition, pride and revenge; a character ashamed of the feelings of ordinary men, who has little in common with them, but his passion for a lovely woman, and in whose sorrows ordinary men of course cannot sympathize--in short, a character who like Milton’s Satan is “himself alone.”

Such is count Bertram when presented to the spectator. Once he has been of wholly different character, while living in the kingdom of Sicily as

The darling of his liege and of his land,
The army’s idol, and the counsil’s head--
Whose smile was fortune, and whose will was law--

When his power, however, has become too great, and his plans turned out to be too ambitious for the safety of the state, Lord Aldobrand has contrived to overthrow him. Deprived of name and fortune he has only saved his life by flight; and the admired and accomplished courtier has subsequently been changed into a captain of a gang of robbers, of uncommon ferocity. In the meantime his betrothed bride, Imogine, a lady of comparatively humble birth, has been induced to give her hand to the selfsame Aldobrand, for the (not very original) purpose of saving an aged parent from ruin.--

By the coast of Sicily, then, in the vicinity of the castle of St. Aldobrand, the brotherhood of a convent are, at the opening of the play, roused from their sleep by a violent storm. At a short distance a vessel, to which they are unable to render assistance, is seen to go to pieces. One wild-looking and incoherently-speaking man alone is rescued and conducted to the prior in a state of utter exhaustion.--At the castle, too, the inmates are disturbed by the rage of the elements. Lord Aldobrand himself appears to be absent, and his lady is sitting in her apartment, contemplating a miniature picture of Bertram. She is joined by one of her maidens, to whom she now discloses the story of her life, assuring her that her heart still belongs to Bertram. The conversation is interrupted by the entrance of a monk, coming to request that the shipwrecked of whom, contrary to all expectation, many have been saved, might have, according to the wonted hospitality of Lord Aldobrand, free access to the castle. Upon Imogine answering that they are welcome, the whole band take up their residence at the castle; before that, however, Bertram--the stranger who was first saved--reveals his identity to the prior and vows vengeance on Aldobrand, the originator of his misfortunes. At the castle the majestic form and stern demeanour of Bertram attract the notice of Imogine, and she summons him to her presence. A scene of recognition takes place. Imogine explains her reasons for becoming the wife of Aldobrand; Bertram breaks out into furious accusations, but at last, when Imogine’s little boy runs in, he relents and kisses the child.

These are the contents of the first two acts. In the third Imogine arrives to the convent to confess to the prior that she has yielded to the temptation offered by the unexpected appearance of Bertram, and clandestinely met him several times. The prior--who, in the foregoing scene, has been exhorting Bertram to give up his companions and leave the country--is much horrified and recommends the most severe penances. While still at the convent, Imogine encounters Bertram and is made to promise him one further interview, after which he is to disappear from her life. The act is again closed by the entrance of the child, who comes to inform his mother that Lord Aldobrand has returned.

At the meeting intended to be their last, Bertram then appears to have taken advantage of Imogine’s weakness in a manner which even he is ashamed to recollect. Before he has time to execute his design of departing, he is informed by one of his gang that his being in Sicily has become known and that Lord Aldobrand holds a commission from the king to seek his life throughout the country. Bertram is again filled with inexorable rage towards his enemy, and remembers his determination to have revenge upon him.--In the meantime Aldobrand arrives at his castle where Imogine receives him in an agitated manner which he in vain endeavours to fathom. On her declaring that she has some penance to do, he leaves her alone; after a while Bertram enters, and she understands, with horror, that he is resolved to destroy her husband. Aldobrand has, indeed, just been summoned to the convent to share a feast in celebration of St. Anselm, but, owing to a flood which obstructs his way, he is compelled to turn back. On his return he is attacked by Bertram, and dies at the feet of Imogine.

In the fifth act the tidings of the murder of Aldobrand are brought to the convent by Imogine, who, in a frantic state of mind, rushes in which her child. The monks and the knights of St. Anselm hasten to the castle. Bertram has locked himself up in a chamber where he has passed all the night with the dead body; at the summons of the prior, however, he opens the door and suffers himself to be arrested.--The last scene is laid in a dark wood where Imogine, who has lost her reason, is lingering in a cavern. The way which leads Bertram to the place of execution passes by the cavern, and he, who has up till now shown no repentance, sinks down when he hears the piercing shrieks of Imogine. She comes out and expires at the sight of him, whereupon Bertram snatches the sword of one of the knights and stabs himself.

* * * * *

As a drama, _Bertram_ is not well constructed. The plot is curiously void of consistency and inner logic; when the talk is interrupted by action, it seems to happen more or less at random. The effect of the shipwreck in the first act is destroyed by the sudden appearance of all the banditti who are saved in a manner altogether inexplicable and whose preservation, moreover, is quite unnecessary. They do not in any way interfere in the events; Bertram kills Aldobrand with his own hands, and when the deed is done, he receives no help from his companions: they disappear from the play as mysteriously as they enter it. The final determination of Bertram to take Aldobrand’s life is very imperfectly accounted for. He must, surely, have been aware that Aldobrand, if cognizant of his presence, would adopt vigorous measures for his persecution, whence his sudden rage when informed of this is rather surprizing. He exclaims, with reference to the calamity he has brought over Imogine:

’Twas but e’en now, I would have knelt to him
With the prostration of a conscious villain;
I would have crouched beneath his spurning feet;
I would have felt their trampling tread, and blessed it--
For I had injured him--

but then he forgets that Aldobrand knows nothing of his relation to Imogine, or his repentance, or even of the fact that he has promised the prior to give up his trade and retire where the voice of man is never heard. Here, however, it must be mentioned that in the original manuscript of the play, Bertram is prompted to the committal of his crimes by an evil spirit who dwells in the forest and whom he insists on visiting. After his visit to the demon he seems so altered, and the stamp of an intercourse with a supernatural being is so visible upon him, that his own robbers shrink from him. These passages Maturin expunged on the advice of Scott, and, accordingly, made respective alterations in his play, though he consented to do so with great reluctance. The scenes in question were afterwards published by Scott in another connection;[72] he bestows high praise on their poetical beauty and hints, by way of comparison, at the effect produced upon Macbeth by the appearance of the witches. His motive for recommending Maturin to suppress them was that they were, in his opinion, unsuitable on the stage.[73] Generally speaking, a psychological argumentation certainly is, in a drama, preferable to a direct interference of a supernatural being who never appears himself; but here this argumentation is so weak that there also is some truth in the remark of another critic,[74] that without those scenes ‘the change from the Bertram of the second act to the Bertram of the fourth is inexplicable.’ Thus in either version the decisive point in the action is unsatisfactorily motived. Nor is it difficult to detect other implausibilities and makeshifts of a clumsy kind. The road of Aldobrand to the convent, for instance, is stopped by a flood which he is unable to cross even on horseback--because he must, some way or other, be brought back to the castle; but the flood does not hinder Imogine, the same night, from making the same journey on foot, carrying her child to boot. The child is introduced into the play in order to make an end of the second and third acts; what it has got to say sounds very unnatural. All the finales are ineffective, not least that of the fifth act. When Bertram has stabbed himself the prior rushes to him:

_Ber._ (_struggling with the agonies of death_)
I know thee holy Prior--I know ye, brethren.
Lift up your holy hands in charity.
(_With a burst of wild exultation_)
I died no felon death--
A warrior’s weapon freed a warrior’s soul--

It will be remembered that in _Montorio_ the last words of the hero were an expression of joy at the fact that he did not perish on the scaffold. Here the sentiment is repeated, but it is clearly not fortunate to put it in the mouth of the hero himself; if there is any relief brought about by his nobler mode of dying, the spectator ought to feel it spontaneously.--

It has already been seen, more than once, that the merits of Maturin’s works are not in their composition. The traces of his power which there admittedly[75] are in _Bertram_, are to be sought in richness of language and originality of style. Now and then, amid the ‘sound and fury’ of the whole, passages stand out where Maturin’s blank verse attains a sombre beauty of its own, while it expressively strikes the note of the time, vibrating with a genuinely romantic sense of loneliness, melancholy, and grandeur. Lines such as these, from the first interview of the hero with the heroine, doubtless did much to decide the partiality for _Bertram_ of critics like Byron and Scott:

_Imo._ Strange is thy form, but more thy words are strange--
Fearful it seems to hold this parley with thee.
Tell me thy race and country--

_Ber._ What avails it?
The wretched have no country: that dear name
Comprizes home, kind kindred, fostering friends,
Protecting laws, all that binds man to man--
But none of these are mine;--I have no country--
And for my race, the last dread trump shall wake
The sheeted relics of mine ancestry,
Ere trump of herald to the armed lists
In the bright blazon of their stainless coat,
Calls their lost child again.--

_Imo._ I shake to hear him--
There is an awful thrilling in his voice,--
The soul of other days comes rushing in them.--
If nor my bounty nor my tears can aid thee,
Stranger, farewell; and ’mid thy misery
Pray, when thou tell’st thy beads, for one more wretched.

The omitted passages relative to Bertram’s dealing with the fiend of the forest are interesting for their novelty in Maturin. The supernatural element is here conceived in a manner quite alien to the Gothic Romance; it serves, in fact, to bring home a characteristic difference between the last-named movement and romanticism. It was the business of the ‘terrific’ school to trace the fear and horror aroused by unearthly apparitions in ordinary men; while in romantic poetry men of uncommon mould (like Byron’s Manfred) are, in consequence of their intercourse with spirits, made to grow still more distant from their neighbours and become themselves an object of awe in their unapproachable grandeur. Such is the case with Bertram after his visit to the demon, the description of which Scott found to be ‘executed in a grand and magnificent strain of poetry:’

--How tower’d his proud form through the shrouding gloom,
How spoke the eloquent silence of its motion,
How through the barred vizor did his accents
Roll their rich thunder on the pausing soul!
And though his mailed hand did shun my grasp
And though his closed morion hid his feature,
Yea all resemblance to the face of man,
I felt the hollow whisper of his welcome,
I felt those unseen eyes were fix’d on mine,
If eyes indeed were there--
Forgotten thoughts of evil, still-born mischiefs,
Foul fertile seeds of passion and of crime,
That wither’d in my heart’s abortive core,
Rous’d their dark battle at his tempest-peal:
So sweeps the tempest o’er the slumbering desert,
Waking its myriad hosts of burning death:
So calls the last dread peal the wandering atoms
Of blood and bone and flesh and dust-worn fragments,
In dire array of ghastly unity,
To bid the eternal summons--
I am not what I was since I beheld him--
I was the slave of passion’s ebbing sway--
All is condensed, collected, callous now--
The groan, the burst, the fiery flash is o’er,
Down pours the dense and darkening lava-tide,
Arresting life and stilling all beneath it.

The achievements of Bertram, as represented on the stage, bear, indeed, too much resemblance to the doings of a common ruffian, and he stands, both morally and poetically, on a lower level than any of Byron’s personages, though maintained, by reviewers,[76] to be ‘that same mischievous compound of attractiveness and turpitude, of love and crime, of chivalry and brutality, which in the poems of Lord Byron and his imitators has been too long successful in captivating weak fancies and outraging moral truth.’ Yet he undoubtedly is a hero; and though Maturin later calls him one of his worst characters, he ought not, at the time, to have been surprised at being accused[77] of ‘exciting undue compassion for worthless characters, or unjust admiration of fierce and unchristian qualities;’ It is, above all, in his capacity of a fallen angel that Bertram had old-established claims upon the interest and indulgence of the English public. Of his fall this account is given by Imogine:

High glory lost he recked not what was saved--
With desperate men in desperate ways he dealt--
A change came o’er his nature and his heart
Till she that bore him had recoiled from him,
Nor know the alien visage of her child.

This dismal change is regarded in a very ‘Miltonic’ light especially by the prior, who, himself represented as well-nigh a saint, could not but be supposed to express the view of the author. The impression that the hero makes upon the mind of the prior finds voice in eloquent outbursts:

High-hearted man, sublime even in thy guilt,
Whose passions are thy crimes, whose angel-sin
Is pride that rivals the star-bright apostate’s.--
Wild admiration thrills me to behold
An evil strength, so above earthly pitch--
Descending angels only could reclaim thee--

This is uttered before Bertram has murdered Aldobrand; but that being done, the exaltation of the venerable prelate remains the same:

This majesty of guilt doth awe my spirit--
Is it th’embodied fiend who tempted him
Sublime in guilt?
-- -- -- --
Oh thou, who o’er thy stormy grandeur flingest
A struggling beam that dazzles, awes, and vanishes--
Thou, who dost blend our wonder with our curses--
Why didst thou this?

It is the great fault of Bertram as a dramatic character, that he so poorly upholds the high attitude assigned to him by others, and that his imposing qualities chiefly rest on declamatory effects. As a poetical figure he occasionally becomes, thanks to life antecedents, surrounded with a gloomy splendour exciting the kind of admiration so keenly resented by critics who felt themselves called upon to extend their verdict to the moral side of the question. The heroine was, though unjustly, comprised[78] in the condemnation of the pernicious tendency of the play:--‘it is too much the taste of the present day, to bring forward the guilty passion of a wife for her paramour -- -- -- not, indeed, with direct admiration, but in such a manner, and with such a mixture of virtuous remorse and high-toned feeling, that we cannot hate the crime. Now a heroine who commits adultery certainly was a startling phenomenon on the English stage, and it was the occurrence of this offence which is said[79] finally to have caused _Bertram_ to be put aside. Yet in the play there is no connivance at the frailty of Imogine. When she comes to unburthen her heart to the prior, this arbiter of morals has nothing but harsh words for her; he sees nothing sublime in _her_ guilt, which at the end plunges her into the deepest misery. In the preface to his next play Maturin says, with reference to the shock he had given with the story of Imogine: ‘If Tragedy is not allowed to exhibit crimes and passions, what is left for her to exhibit?--If crime is attended with punishment as its consequence, I conceive the interests of morality are not compromised’--but he was not aware that it is sometimes the criminal more than the crime that the guardians of the interests of morality desire to hate.--Otherwise Imogine is sketched with something of Maturin’s skill at depicting female character, and hers is, as Kean observed, the principal part in the play as far as histrionic powers are concerned. Her reviving passion for Bertram, her misery and repentance are developed in a language comparatively free from the tinge of melodrama, and sometimes pervaded with a deep and natural feeling, like her confession to the prior:

Last night, oh! last night told a dreadful secret--
The moon went down, its sinking ray shut out,
The parting form of one beloved too well.--
The fountain of my heart dried up within me,--
With nought that loved me, and with nought to love
I stood upon the desert earth alone--
I stood and wondered at my desolation--
For I had spurned at every tie for him,
And hardly could I beg from injured hearts
The kindness that my desperate passion scorned--
And in that deep and utter agony,
Though then, than ever most unfit to die,
I fell upon my knees, and prayed for death.

The character of Aldobrand, little as he appears, is drawn with peculiar skill. He is an excellent man and has brought about the ruin of Bertram out of disinterested zeal for state and sovereign; in private life he is kindness itself and greatly revered by all, not least by his wife. It might seem as if the author had unnecessarily hazarded the _sublime_ element in Bertram by making his enemy a man of worth; but where, then, would be the _guilt_ in knocking down a rascal? Considering the character Bertram is intended to support, Aldobrand could hardly be otherwise, and he is, in all his respectability, somehow made clearly to display a total want of those brilliant and interesting traits the absence of which is his only disadvantage by the side of the hero.--Other characters to speak of there are not in the play. It is incomprehensible how Charles Nodier[80] could ascribe so important a part to the prior: ‘cependant c’est le Prieur qui est le héros de la tragédie, et son calme sublime contraste avec le désordre et les passions des corsaires, comme l’immobilité de ses antique murailles avec l’agitation des flots, domaine inconstant de ce peuple désespéré.’ The prior really presents an extraordinarily sorry figure. His calmness--which asserts itself only when action is required; in words he is as tempestuous as Bertram--is most akin to inertness, not to say imbecility. He is from the first initiated into Bertram’s vindictive designs against Aldobrand--who is a great friend of his--and does nothing to prevent them except talking in a way which gives vent to his fantastic admiration for Bertram, very unnatural in a person of his character and situation. His high-flown comments upon the hero are, throughout the play, nothing short of ridiculous, which they by no means are meant to be. It was, however, quite in keeping with the romantic spirit to introduce the convent into the turbulent scenes as an asylum of peace, inhabited by good and holy men--in contradiction to the Gothic Romance, where a convent usually is described as a nest of all sorts of devilry. This is the only instance in Maturin’s work where the milder view prevails; he was, in _Melmoth_, soon to return to the terrific style again with a force seldom equalled in literature.

* * * * *

The motive of adverse circumstances driving a high-souled man to become a captain of robbers is most famous from _Die Räuber_ (1781) of Schiller. In that drama Gustave Planche[81] finds the ‘idée mère’ of _Bertram_, though he prefers the latter play:--‘les mêmes idées, qui dans Schiller resemblent à une dissertation, prennent dans Maturin la forme vivante et animée d’une légende surnaturelle, et cette différence suffirait pour établir la supériorité de _Bertram_ sur les _Brigands_.’ It is, however, difficult to see where, in _Bertram_, the ideas of _The Robbers_ come in at all. The drama of Schiller is, despite its bombastic language, a typical 18:th century production with a social tendency. The hero and his followers are--as in the case of the theorizing ‘Arcadian’ robbers in Godwin’s _Caleb Williams_--revolting against the constituent principles of society, the perverseness of which alone has occasioned their desperate enterprise; but the enterprise is, after all, discovered to be an unjustifiable means of changing the existing state of things. In _Bertram_ there is nothing of the 18:th century. The adventure presented to the spectator is of a quite individual character, the case being applicable to the hero and no one else. He does not want to reform society; he does not place himself at the head of a gang of robbers on any ideal grounds; he falls. Nor are his companions robbers of the chivalrous type who keep a court of honour among themselves and take from the rich to give to the poor. Bertram himself says to some of them:

--ye are slaves that for a ducat
Would rend the screaming infant from the breast
To plunge it in the flames.

The play thus aims at nothing but the poetical exhibition of a man blending sublimity in guilt. The catchword of Karl Moor expresses his determination to surrender himself to justice, that is, voluntarily to meet the ‘felon death’ which Bertram, in his last cry, rejoices at having escaped. In all this there would appear, in _Bertram_, not a formally different application, but a total absence, of the ideas of _The Robbers_, and any influence from Schiller seems uncertain.--In some detached passages of _Bertram_ critics tried to detect loans from several obscure plays, from Shakespeare, and even from Scott; but excepting the fact that _The Tempest_ necessarily is called to mind by any play opening with a shipwreck, these loans are unimportant. The treatment of the other principal motive, the marriage of Imogine to the enemy of her lover, shows less originality. Its model, as pointed out in the _Irish Quarterly Review_ 1852, is to be found in a play called _Percy_ (1778), by Miss Hannah More. This was one of the first English dramas where the action is placed in romantic surroundings, although it resolves round the favourite topics of the day.[82] Percy, Earl of Northumberland, is the lover and destined husband of Elwina, daughter of Earl Raby. For some offence Raby breaks off all relations with Percy, who subsequently joins a crusade. During his absence Raby compels his daughter to marry Earl Douglas, an inveterate foe of Percy, and shortly after that the hero returns to England. Elwina, on one occasion, relates the story of her misfortunes to her maid, which passage has a direct correspondence in _Bertram_. The most conspicuous resemblance, however, is afforded by the scene where Elwina meets Percy and discloses to him that she is the wife of Douglas. Percy, like Bertram, is seized with a violent fury, and his words:

And have I ’scap’d the Saracen’s fell sword,
Only to perish by Elwina’s guilt?

are distinctly echoed in Bertram’s:

And did I ’scape from war, and want, and famine
To perish by the falsehood of a woman?

The further development of the conflict is, as easily can be imagined, totally different in the two dramas--a heroine of Hannah More was the least likely of any to suggest the character of the lady Imogine.

* * * * *

It is generally asserted by biographers[83] that contemporary critics--with the single exception of Coleridge--were ‘enraptured’ about _Bertram_; but this, undoubtedly, is to say too much. Its supposed immoral tendency, as has already been seen, roused a storm of indignation in the columns of the reviews, where the passing acknowledgments of the author’s talent almost vanished. The opening lines of the criticism in the _Eclectic Review_ are characteristic of the way in which the play was treated of:

This tragedy has obtained, upon the stage, a popularity that would seem altogether undeserved. That the Author has strong powers no one can doubt; and as we are not uncandid, the reader will find in the course of our extracts, passages that prove him to have _very_ strong powers. The piece might be objected to for its want of dramatic interest, for the bad taste of its poetry, but its principal fault, (in the absence of which objection indeed, we should quietly have left it to its fate,) is its vicious and abominable morality.

Nor were the opinions even of those very strong powers always undivided. While the _British Review_ makes mention of ‘vivacious touches of a very glowing pencil’ and pronounces that ‘the description as well as the pathetic force of many passages is admirable, and the rhythm and cadence of the verse is musical, lofty, and full of tragic pomp’--the _Monthly Review_ maintains that the language is ‘strained, inverted, and bombastic on many occasions,’ and that ‘the versification, also, is often rough and imperfect; and a want of _keeping_, of harmonious _colouring_, and, we fear, of just _design_, is visible throughout.’ The severest attack upon Maturin’s play, however, was delivered by Coleridge[84] in an article uniting much cutting sarcasm with savage and indiscriminating abuse. It was supposed that Coleridge was irritated by the rejection of his _Fall of Robespierre_ in favour of _Bertram_; in that light the article was, at least, regarded by Byron,[85] who refers to it in a letter to Murray, dated October 12:th 1819:

In Coleridge’s Life, I perceive an attack upon the then Committee of Drury Lane Theatre for acting Bertram, and an attack upon Maturin’s Bertram for being acted. Considering all things, this is not very grateful nor graceful on the part of the worthy autobiographer; and I would answer, if I had _not_ obliged him. Putting my own pains to forward the views of Coleridge out of the question, I know there was every disposition on the part of the Sub-Committee to bring forward any production of his, were it feasible. The play he offered, though poetical, did not appear at all practicable, and Bertram did--and hence this long tirade, which is the last chapter of his vagabond life.

It is not quite clear in what manner Coleridge had been obliged, his play never appearing on the stage. If his criticism of _Bertram_ was dictated by disappointment, that must have been galling indeed, for the tone prevailing in it is exceedingly acrimonious.[86] Every blunder in the composition, and unhappy turn of phrase in the impetuous style--not over-difficult to expose--is made the most of and the whole play torn to fragments, scene by scene, cleverly enough, but with a rancour which really conveys the impression of proceeding from a personal cause. The critic’s virtuous horror at the incidents is worked up to a pitch that leaves all other reviewers far behind; even the circumstance of Imogine, before she has recognized Bertram, sending for him and speaking to him, _alone_, is represented as a piece of gross indelicacy!--and if any spectator felt inclined to take a fancy to the hero, it certainly was no fault of Coleridge’s, who characterizes him, in a single breath, as ‘this _felo de se_, and thief-captain, this loathsome and leprous confluence of robbery, adultery, murder, and cowardly assassination, this monster -- -- --.’

However, some nonsense though these reviewers utter, their opinion of Maturin’s first play comes nearer to its final valuation than that of many later writers who boldly prophesied the author’s lasting immortality on account of _Bertram_. Among admiring biographers whose verdict was unsupported by any literary authority, there were critics of some reputation; Gustave Planche, writing in 1833, does not hesitate to say that _Bertram_ contains scenes worthy of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_. In opposition to this enthusiasm of the French, it is interesting to note the very sound judgment of Goethe. He had, in 1817, read the play and written a kind of advertisement of it, in which he reaches in a few words the kernel of the matter and explains the secret of its success: ‘Das neuste englische Publikum ist in Hass und Liebe von den Dichtungen des Lord Byron durchdrungen, und so kann denn auch ein _Bertram_ Wurzel fassen, der gleichfalls Menschenhass und Rachegeist, Pflicht und Schwachheit, Umsicht, Plan, Zufälligkeiten und Zerstörung mit Furienbesen durcheinander peitscht und eine, genau besehen, emphatische Pose zur Würde eines tragischen Gedichtes erhebt.’[87]

* * * * *

One result of the success attending _Bertram_ was--the play being produced anonymously--that several individuals began to make claims for the authorship. This circumstance contributed to Maturin’s determination to emerge from his anonymity and publicly take his place among the men of letters of his day. With regard to any further professional preferment this was definitely to burn his boats: a clergyman of the established church the writer of a play whose morality was generally pronounced to be an abomination. On the other hand the dream of his life now seemed realized, and the way open to the circles to which he felt himself to belong. He took the step; and, in order to make the most of it, accepted an invitation from London to come over to witness the triumph of his production. This was the only journey of any length ever undertaken by Maturin; if not very adventurous, it still was something of an enterprise at that time, when a crossing between Dublin and Liverpool could take up to 36 hours. Maturin’s stay in London did not exceed a month. He arrived there in the latter part of May, and the 22:nd of June he wrote, from home, his first letter to Murray, in acknowledgment of the kindness shown him by the publisher. In the _New Monthly Magazine_ 1827 we read that Maturin was, while in the metropolis, ‘suddenly elevated to the most dizzy and flattering distinction,’ being ‘caressed by the first men of the day, recognized by the audience during the performance of his play, and received with acclamations.’ The language, however, in Maturin’s own letters referring to his reception is very different, and suggestive rather of a disappointment. Even in his first letter, when sending his respects to Mrs. Murray, he assures his correspondent that ‘to your friendly and hospitable attention I am indebted for the only pleasant hours passed during my sojourn in London.’ In another letter, from July 6:th, he returns to the theme with marked bitterness:

I should be particularly obliged by your letting me know at your leisure, and as a _friend_ (in which light I shall always consider, and feel my obligations to you) whether the impression I made in London was favourable or otherwise, or, whether _I made any impression at all_. My reason for urging this strange question is, _the marked coldness of my reception at every house but yours and Lord Essex’s_, and the singular circumstance of my never being invited to Mr. Lamb’s. I am aware that long struggle with distress and difficulty will not only cloud the mind, but degrade the manners of the sufferer, but still I cannot but think that my habits and conduct could not justify my exclusion from the line of society to which I was born, and in which till latterly I have always lived.

When you have time to write, tell me if my apprehensions are true, and if I was really though unfit for the company of men who invited me over and on whose hospitality and courtesy I had therefore some claim during my very short stay.

In spite of a soothing answer from Murray, the idea that he had not appeared to advantage continued to haunt Maturin. It ought to be mentioned, however, that in the letter quoted above there is an allusion to a member of the fair sex upon whom the impression made by the Irish guest seems to have been even more favourable than he could have wished--yet at the same time something to gratify the vanity of which he had, perhaps a little more than the usual allotment:

I have received a letter from--since my return to Ireland. I really would be glad of your advice in this unpleasant business. I dread her resentment if provoked, and _I am determined not to answer her letters_. I wish it could be intimated to her that I was in the country and never received her Epistle--you know what Congreve says of “woman spurned.”--

_Bertram_ was the first of Maturin’s works that appeared with his name. It was published by Murray, and ran through seven editions in the course of 1816; the current price of 3 sh. for a new play was on this occasion raised to 4 sh. 6 d.[88] Together with the profits of the performance, the sum cleared by Maturin for his tragedy is said to have amounted to £ 1000. The consequences, however, of the unhappy transaction in which he had been involved some years before, disagreeably asserted themselves at this piece of good luck, and he speaks of his affairs in a pessimistic tone. In a letter to Murray dated August 19:th he says:

_There is not a shilling I have made by Bertram that has not been expended to pay the debts of a scoundrel for whom I had the misfortune to go security_, so here I am with scarce a pound in my pocket, simpering at congratulations on having made my fortune.