[ashton] MATURIN and DIDEROT 125 



II. 



Melmoth, the Wanderer is the novel that brought Maturin fame 

 at home and abroad. Publfehed in four volumes in 1820, it appeared 

 in Paris the following year, translated by J. Cohen. In 1835 Balzac, 

 in his Melmoth réconciliée^ contmneà. the story according to his own ideas. 



The plot of Melmoth, the Wanderer, if plot there be, is a combina- 

 tion of the legends of Faust and the Wandering Jew. Melmoth 

 bargains for a long lease of life; the price is his own soul, with a 

 possibility of escaping payment if he can find someone to relieve him 

 of his bargain on the same terms. The difficulty of handling such a 

 story is obvious, for the hero has to travel to various countries and 

 through several centuries. Maturin adopted the method dear to 

 Mile, de Scudéry — the tale within a tale — and the result is far from 

 satisfactory. 



The story opens in Ireland where John Melmoth discovers a 

 manuscript that gives us the story of Stanton and a story related to 

 him in Spain. A Spaniard, Monçada, arrives at the mansion in 

 Ireland and gives his biography with, as digressions, stories told to 

 him by a Jew. These have to do with Immalee, a girl to whose 

 father a mysterious stranger has told two stories — that of Guzman's 

 family and one announced as The Lovers' Tale. These are duly 

 repeated and then the story of Immalee is resumed and completed. 

 Then Monçada is interrupted and his own story goes no further but 

 the main tale is continued from the time he first began his narrative. 



This novel came, curiously enough, when the tale of terror was 

 waning in England. It not only revived interest in this type of work, 

 but actually proved to be the crowning achievement. It stands in 

 the same relationship to this stage in the development of the novel 

 as does Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac to the romantic drama. 



The novel of terror appears to have been one of the features of 

 the Romantic Revolt, and the Romantic dramatists never forgot, 

 unfortunately, that an appeal to the nerves is more easily prepared 

 and more effectively made than are more subtle, more elevated, 

 appeals to the mind. Whether this taste was indulged in because 

 readers of the day had peculiar cravings for such excitement, or 

 whether authors were merely possessed with an elfish desire "to 

 shock the bourgeois" is of no consequence. Whatever may have 

 been the incentive none can complain that Melmoth failed in its 

 attempt to furnish exactly the type of thrill sought after by the 

 Romanticists. 



'^^Etvdes philosophiques. 



