Endymion’s horror does not arise from any immediate realization of what she has heard; though she has attained a standpoint at which a continuation of the imposture would destroy her reason, the vital truth regarding herself becomes clear to her but by degrees. But she recollects having heard her mother say to Morosini: ‘should she ever learn she is a woman, she must live no longer,’ and this she at once applies to herself. The next day she rushes to Desmond and wildly implores him to save her, as she is to be sent away under the protection of the monk. Desmond fortunately remembers a clergyman called St. Austin, uncle to Armida’s friend Rosine, to whom they succeed in flying. He unites them and procures for them a solitary retreat, where they spend some idyllic months in perfect felicity.

On arriving at Dublin Connal learns that the eminent person in whom he has placed his hope is in Ireland no more. The only thing for him to do, under the circumstances, is to return to the island, where his presence indeed would be urgently necessary. He has confided Armida to the protection of a young man of the name of Brennan, who secretly hates him and, what is worse, cherishes a violent passion for Armida. He begins to harass her with his attentions, and they being met in a way that may be surmised, extends his hatred towards her as well, devising an exquisite mode of vengeance. He comes one night to the hut where Armida lives attended by a peasant woman, and requires her to accompany him, on the pretext that O’Morven has returned and wishes to see her. He then conducts her into a cavern where there really is an O’Morven: the old grandfather of Connal, who is now totally insane and appears to bear a particular malevolence against Armida. It is Brennan’s intention to have her murdered by the maniac, which undoubtedly would happen, did not Connal arrive at the very last moment. His journey thither has been much retarded by his being wounded by three men whom Brennan has sent out to waylay and assault him. Now, after a hideous fight, Brennan’s own life is ended. Yet Connal is wanted for more than one reason. The state of his band has, in his absence, grown utterly desperate; it is again seen how soberly and realistically Maturin conceived the business of the rebellion:

In proportion as this barbarization increases, the chances of any reconciliation with the government naturally diminish, and the final traces of Connal’s own enthusiasm for the cause disappear as well. Troops are now everywhere collected to march against him, and besides being daily beset by enemies, Connal is besieged by a terrible anxiety for the fate of Armida. One day a detachment of soldiers come over to the island. The officer at their head is wounded, and it is only with difficulty that Connal saves him from being killed by the rebels. He is taken care of, and to his horror Connal recognizes Desmond, who, to this moment, has been ignorant of the story of Armida and Connal. His own paradisiacal existence with Endymion—or Ines, as she is now called—has come to a sorrowful end. They have been traced to their retreat, and one night the door is burst open whereupon Morosini rushes in with two attendants. The monk pursues Ines as she flees out of the hut, while the attendants attempt to detain Desmond. He overpowers them, however, and follows in pursuit of his wife, whom he sees plunge herself into the river with the monk in hot haste after her. Some days later the body of Morosini is found, but no traces of Ines. Desmond, being now possessed of the sole desire to court death, joins his regiment, and Wandesford immediately takes care to command him to march against Connal.

Though disapproving of the rebellion, Desmond resolves to fight and perish with Connal. Before the decisive battle he conducts Armida away and places her at the house of St. Austin, where Rosine still resides, and then returns to the island. The battle is fought, and, contrary to all expectation, both Connal and Desmond survive it. The former finds his way to a remote and solitary cave, where he hides himself with his dying grandfather. Desmond, weak and wounded, goes back to the castle. He is carefully nursed by Lady Montclare, whose husband has recently died and who now conceives a plan concerning Desmond. Her whole life has been a struggle to keep in her family the estates of Montclare, and her last resort turns out to be a marriage between Armida and Desmond. To that end she has her daughter brought to the castle and imposes on her the fraudulent statement that Connal is in the hands of Wandesford, and is to suffer death unless she consents to marry Desmond. Of Armida there is, by this time, left but a faded beauty and a ruined mind; but seeing that she is only required to persevere in her self-sacrifice for Connal, she easily consents. Nor does Desmond oppose himself; both are too weary and apathetic even to enquire for the reasons of Wandesford’s singular resolution. The report of their intended marriage reaches Connal. He meets Lady Montclare who, in fear of her life, solemnly declares that it is Armida’s will and that he is to hear it from her own lips. She arranges an interview between them, and Armida has strength enough to stand to her resolution, the reasons for which she promises to disclose to Connal immediately after her wedding. The night of this very interview, however, Connal is plunged into despair at seeing how innocent people are punished for having given him shelter, and thus he straightway betakes himself to Wandesford to deliver himself up. Still he is not to die yet; Wandesford, to whom the whole affair is one of personal hatred and vengeance, orders five hundred lashes to be administered to him, whereupon he is to be set free, in case he survives the scourging. He does survive it, and is able to keep his last appointment with Armida. The night of Armida’s wedding Connal is wandering near the castle, when Wandesford rides past him. Connal challenges him and shoots him through the heart, and he expires repenting his crimes.—In the meantime Armida, having fulfilled what she imagines her last duty towards Connal, takes her fate in her own hands. Her late father has been an expert in, and also initiated his daughter into, the interesting science of preparing poisons. Immediately before the ceremony is to commence she swallows a dose of poison that has the power of dismissing life, without pain, in eight and forty hours. The marriage, however, is destined never to be contracted; just as the priest is opening his book, a piercing shriek rings through the chapel, and Ines appears in their midst. She has been saved from the river by the agents of Lady Montclare, and, since then, been secretly imprisoned in the castle. Her reason is irrevocably lost: she does not even recognize Desmond. Sick of horrors Armida retires to her apartment, whither Rosine brings Connal at the appointed hour. Everything is now explained; the conversation is interrupted only by a party of soldiers breaking into the castle, in quest of Connal. He is conducted to take his trial for rebellion, by martial law, and the sentence is death. At the moment the soldiers fire, Desmond rushes to Connal and falls with him. Armida and Ines likewise find their death beside the corpses of their respective lovers. Rosine and her uncle are left to inter the dead; Lady Montclare, it is stated, buries her crimes and her remorse in a convent.

The end, it is clear, somewhat lowers the level of the book and disturbs the final effect. From the rather unnatural idea of marriage between Armida and Desmond and onwards in the ensuing events there is much that is strained and stilted in the story; the circumstance of Armida’s extraordinary poison is too trivial and absurd to make any serious impression. The closing scene is entirely melodramatic: the eight and forty hours come to an end exactly at the time of Connal’s execution, and Ines expires at the same moment for the simple reason that everybody else does. But, strange to say, the chief incident itself, causing this conventional winding up of a highly romantic story, strikes one with its painful realism. One of the most remarkable features in The Milesian Chief is the mode of Connal’s death. In romances with tragical issue, of the time, the hero may die in a battle, he may die by accident, he may commit suicide or even be assassinated; but to let him first be flogged and then executed in consequence of the sentence of a court martial, is to excite terror and pity at the expence of the atmosphere of greatness and invincible superiority with which he is surrounded in the beginning of the tale. To reject everything conciliatory in the tragic, to bereave the death of a hero of every trait of sublimity and poetical splendour, to let his own person, as it were, be degraded by the ignominy he is exposed to, is certainly alien to the spirit and methods of the early 19:th century romanticism. The manner in which Scott allows the Master of Ravenswood to end his days is perfectly characteristic of the period, while the death of Connal O’Morven anticipates ideas much more modern. There is, in the end of Connal, something that brings to mind a very impressive Irish story of later date, the Maelcho (1894) of Emily Lawless, treating of the Desmond wars (1579-81), where the romantic halo in which the hero is enveloped is torn into shreds by degrees, until he is, both mentally and physically broken, hanged obscurely, en passant, like any of the countless victims of those troubled times.—

Of the principal personages in The Milesian Chief Armida and Ines are the most remarkable as types of some novelty in the fiction of the time. The latter is not without parallels in Maturin’s own work, but her originality lies in the absence of all reflection or principle: she acts solely by instinct, never expending a thought upon the moral standard of her feelings, and guided only by the nature contrary to whose intentions she has been reared up. A young lady answering to the description of Armida is uncommon in all romantic literature. The Radcliffe heroine, as has been pointed out by a critic,[55] is but a slight variation of the one favoured by Richardson: weak and sentimental, only calculated to move pity, never doing anything for her lover, who gladly sacrifices his life for her. As for the heroines of Scott, many of them, no doubt, display activity and courage and accomplish wonders for others, yet none would, in all likelihood, take the step Armida does, were they in her position; none have the independence of mind and superiority of intellect which render her perfectly regardless of the opinion of the world. The pride and the accomplishments, the grandezza and the accustomedness to obedience and admiration with which she is invested, usually distinguish females of a maturer age, like Lady Ashton in The Bride of Lammermoor and Lady Montrevor in The Wild Irish Boy. But though Armida entirely lacks that girlish docility and inexperience which seems to require manly protection, Maturin has succeeded in making her young and natural, and it is described with great beauty and power how her stateliness melts away before an overwhelming passion, and how the burning heart of youth demands its due when opportunity arises.

The characterization of Connal and Desmond, as has already been pointed out, is not equal to that of Armida and Ines. The best-drawn male character in the book is Wandesford, who is surprisingly real. He is a man of the world of the selfish and unfeeling kind, retaining some outward dignity by displaying a sort of conventional courage, that, ‘stimulated by witnesses, or by military tumult, could rush on death: the courage of the senses rather than the mind.’ When the latter is required, as on the occasion of his being well-nigh drowned with Armida and Connal, he proves to be a coward at heart. He is incapable of generosity towards his enemy, and his bad qualities always grow worse when met by adversities; thus in his strife with Connal, whom he hates as a rival and dislikes as an Irishman, he continually sinks deeper into the quagmire of crime and dishonour, which process is quite plausible and recounted without exaggeration. The narrow, unimaginative side of his character is well illustrated by his discussion, especially with Armida, whose superiority he cannot avoid instinctively to feel:

In the case of certain other personages Maturin’s sovereign contempt for a secondary character comes to light. This is, indeed, one of the most conspicuous flaws of the book. All delineation, for instance, of the wonderful mind of Lady Montclare is omitted. She is perfectly stereotyped; it is only evident that her every thought runs upon keeping the estates of her husband, and that she is, to this end, ready to commit the most atrocious crimes with an ever-smiling countenance—but in the reality of her being it is impossible to believe. Another character of whom much might have been made is the elder O’Morven, Connal’s father, who has gratefully accepted the situation of land-steward to Lord Montclare. He might be all the more interesting as he is expressly said to represent the worst kind of Irish character, being intent upon ‘unfeeling, unworthy self-enjoyment, not destitute of affection, but wholly without dignity.’ He receives Armida and her father on their arrival at the castle, and his conversation is expressive enough:

Upon this, however, he is all but dropped out of the plot; he is very seldom brought into contact with his sons, and, upon the whole, plays no part in the story. Towards the end it is told that he is married by Lady Montclare, and shortly afterwards dies, wearied by her ‘violence’—of which the reader is not favoured with one single instance.

The Milesian Chief could not be better characterized than Talfourd[56] does in his much-quoted phrase: ‘There is a bleak and misty grandeur about it which, in spite of its glaring defects, sustains for it an abiding place in the soul.’ The defects are glaring indeed. The composition, here as always the blind side of Maturin, is anything but flawless. The development of the intrigue is sometimes primitive, sometimes rough and rhapsodical. Repetition occurs frequently in the adventures—the saving of lives especially is an actual habit with the brothers O’Morven; Connal’s journey to Dublin is so long as to be a digression, and not particularly interesting; the end is forced and theatrical, and some of the characters are made nothing of. These faults were, at all times, counterpoised by plenty of good characterization and impressive narrative; but now, at a distance of a hundred years, they appear so unimportant just because the whole is wrapped up in that ‘bleak and misty grandeur.’ The absence of technical defects is, after all, but a negative merit which swiftly loses its charm, while the creations of a truly poetical imagination are never entirely defaced by the wear and tear of time. The romantic atmosphere about the best scenes in The Milesian Chief, in so far as such a thing can be defined, arises from a close affinity between the human emotions and the sombre scenery around, effected by the instrumentality of a suggestive, passionate, and musical style. In point of description The Milesian Chief shows a great advance from Maturin’s earlier works; the nature of Western Ireland had, perhaps, never yet been depicted with a power and accuracy like this. Hence it is difficult to embrace the opinion of a critic[57] that in the description of scenery the influence of Mrs. Radcliffe is discernible. In Montorio it was, and it is easy to perceive that neither was acquainted with the Mediterranean nature which they painted in such glowing colours. But here there is quite a different strain, Northern and familiar; or what is to be said, for instance, of this sonorous passage:

It has been hinted before that The Milesian Chief seems indebted to Miss Owenson’s Wild Irish Girl. The germ of the plot may have been taken from the latter: an Irish family of princely descent have sunk into poverty and lost their lands to an Englishman whom they regard as an usurper—the complications this circumstance leads to form the incidents in both tales. These, however, are quite differently developed. Miss Owenson’s story has the character of an idyll rather than a tragedy, being brought to a happy and harmonious end. Nor is there any communion between the principal personages. The venerable figure of the prince of Inismore Maturin had already borrowed in The Wild Irish Boy; here, presumably to avoid repetition, the burden of chieftaincy is placed upon younger shoulders, and the old Milesian, who is but once brought upon the scene of action, is represented as a complete ruin. Connal, then, as an Irishman, is a new type in the fiction of his country. Reminiscences of the antiquarian enthusiasm of Miss Owenson crop up in some of the conversations between Armida and Connal, where particularly the poetry and music of the ancient Irish is extensively discussed and warmly striven for.—The Radcliffe school—through the medium of Montorio—is slightly recalled only by the trio of Lord and Lady Montclare and Morosini. From Maturin’s first romance proceed the figures of the dark, melancholy-looking nobleman whose conscience is weighed down by an evil deed, and of the diabolical monk who is his confidant and tormentor at the same time. Yet Lord Montclare shows a development from the genuine Gothic Romance, represented by count Montorio. The latter has committed a bloody and terrible crime, the remembrance of which confines him within the walls of a gloomy castle, where he sits brooding over his deeds and starting at the slightest sound. The offence which Lord Montclare is guilty of is of a less violent kind and has the opposite effect of driving him restlessly from land to land. With him a step is taken towards the type of the Wanderer.

A great many passages in The Milesian Chief anticipate the manner of Scott rather than recall Mrs Radcliffe and Lewis. Very characteristic is the well-written episode where Brennan conducts Armida to the old O’Morven. The silent desolation of the night; Brennan’s sudden appearance in the hut and the alarm of the peasant woman, who in vain dissuades Armida from following him; his conversation on the way; the impotent rage of the maniac, and lastly the furious fight between Connal and Brennan: all this is horrifying, certainly, but in the same way horrible as are innumerable scenes in Scott. The difference, in this respect—apart from the question of the supernatural—between the school of Scott and the school of Radcliffe, is, that the thrilling, the exciting, is removed from the vaults of a castle and the dungeons of the Inquisition out into the open air under a Northern sky. But there is even a more obvious reason to mention Scott in connection with The Milesian Chief. Talfourd adds to his phrase quoted above: ‘Yet never perhaps was there a more unequal production—alternately exhibiting the grossest plagiarism and the wildest originality.’ From where the plagiarism is suggested, unless from The Wild Irish Girl, the present writer is unable to say; Maturin’s novel is, on the contrary, alleged to have been a subject for imitation for no less a man than Walter Scott himself. The resemblance of The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) to The Milesian Chief is, in fact, far more detailed than that of the latter to the story of Miss Owenson. Edgar Ravenswood, like Connal O’Morven, is the heir of a once powerful family whose dominions have passed into the possession of an Englishman. Like his Milesian counterpart he lives in an old tower in great poverty, profoundly discontented with the supposed oppressor. The new owners, in both cases, have a daughter, and the two heroes of the respective tales have occasion to begin their acquaintance with the fair ones by saving their lives. Both fall in love, and the love of both is reciprocated. Connal becomes the leader of a rebellion which his love to Armida would induce him to suppress; Ravenswood, too, is involved in a conspiracy against the government, from which his attachment to Lucy Ashton urges him to withdraw. Both love-stories finally end in a tragic way, the heroines being first, by fraud, brought to the point of union with another.—With all these likenesses, it is of interest to note how differently the two novelists work up the subject-matter they have in common. Maturin, as usual, is for the extreme, making the conditions of his hero desperate from the first, and the contrast between the two families as striking as possible. Connal lives in the remote and unknown West of Ireland, hated and despised by the new lord—relatives as they are—and supported only by a handful of peasants. All paths are practically closed to him; he is, as it were, predestined to his fate. In The Bride of Lammermoor, constructed with the temperate and easy skill of Scott, no such contrarieties are felt. Edgar Ravenswood is acknowledged and entertained by Sir William Ashton, he possesses powerful friends, and would, no doubt, advance far in the world but for his fatal love for Lucy. The course of events, here, runs smoother but is, at the same time, more varied and less easy to guess beforehand; compared with The Milesian Chief, the book seems to contain almost an infinite variety of characters and episodes. Ravenswood himself is rather a solitary figure in Scott, being destitute of the light-heartedness and sunny good-humour of his youthful heroes in general. Yet he has his faults, and in comparison with Connal, seems almost real. But if Scott was more successful with the male characters, Maturin was more so with the feminine. There is no denying that Armida is far more interesting than Lucy. The latter is, in fact, nothing but the weak and passive type from the preceding century, merely ennobled by the hand of Scott, and would never be able, like Armida, to support the central part of a story. That the emotional element in The Milesian Chief outweighs the ruggedness of the construction and the poverty of the action may be ascribed to the skilful characterization of Armida; and a chapter like the twentieth in The Bride of Lammermoor seems quite tame and colourless after the fiery love-scenes described by Maturin.

To how high a degree the resemblance of the one romance to the other is a result of direct influence and intentional imitation, it would be purposeless to discuss. It may even be quite accidental, for in a country with the history of Scotland and Ireland, a theme like this must have been both natural and lent itself profitably to the novelist. That the outlines were furnished by actual life is made more than probable by their continued appearance in Irish literature. They are made use of, as late as 1845, in Charles Lever’s story of The O’Donoghue. During nine hundred years, the heads of this family have been kings of that part of Ireland where their castle stands. Towards the end of the 18:th century they fall into a state of decay and are compelled to part with their castle and their estates, which are sold to a wealthy English baronet who has a beautiful daughter. The old O’Donoghue, with his two sons, is reduced to the state almost of peasants. The elder of these sons is, like Connal O’Morven, a proud and impetuous character, whom a deep sense of his own and his country’s wrongs prompts to embrace the insurrection of ’98; the younger, a counterpart of Desmond, turns Protestant and enters Trinity College. Otherwise the tales of Maturin and Lever contain no elements in common—the elder O’Donoghue succeeds in escaping to France, the younger finally marries the baronet’s daughter—and thus imitation is entirely out of the question. But from an intended preface to The O’Donoghue, where Lever tells[58] how the story occurred to him while on a tour in the South of Ireland, it appears how conspicuous these impoverished descendants of noble families were in Irish society:

Now in the preface to The Milesian Chief Maturin had promised to apply his powers to scenes of actual life. The actual life of the class of society he was choosing for his subject had, according to the sentence of Lever, also a sordid and prosaic side, nor could they all be regarded as martyrs for their country without any fault of their own. As Maturin’s peculiar powers were, above all, in ‘painting life in extremes,’ he described not so much what is, as what would be, under given circumstances, exceptional indeed, but not impossible; and even in so doing he was, as has been pointed out, most attracted by the phenomena in the ‘recesses of the human heart.’ Thus the promise of actual life, in the usual sense of the word, is but imperfectly fulfilled. Yet beneath the delineations of human passions of general applicability, there is, however, a perceptible glimpse of a certain aspect of unmistakable Irish life—in the absence of which Mangan[59] would hardly have called The Milesian Chief the most intensely Irish story he knew of.

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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