[ashton] MATURIN and DIDEROT 127 



ahead, are not enough to cause a thrill, Maturin adds generously a 

 dark night, a rushing river, sobbing winds, eerie trees, beetling crags 

 and a thunder-storm. There is enough correspondence between the 

 moods of humanity and those of nature to satisfy the most faithful 

 disciple of Jean- Jacques'. Subterranean passages, convents, mon- 

 asteries, castles, manor houses, hidden chambers, walled-up closets 

 with people inside them, dungeons, ruined chapels seen by night, 

 mysterious strangers with corpse-like hands and cold, cold eyes — ■ 

 not a single ingredient of the romantic novel is lacking; and, above all, 

 there is a hero ever driven by fatality, oft in contradiction to his 

 better nature. What Romanticist e'er breathed who did not yearn 

 towards a hero — ^or towards a villain for that matter — ^who is evidently 

 urged through life from thrill to thrill by some power greater than 

 mere human volition ? 



Maturin fitted exactly into the literary mosaic that was later 

 described as French Romanticism, and while the influence of his 

 plays on early romantic drama, and of his stories on the romantic 

 novel, is now taken for granted, it would be interesting to work out 

 in detail the various points of contact between the works of the Irish 

 clergyman and those of the literary revolutionists in Paris. ^^ 



III. 



We are not concerned here, however, with this particular aspect 

 of the question, but with one that is more curious. While the con- 

 ception of the novel Melmoth was, as has been stated, a combination 

 of two ancient legends, the borrowings of Maturin appear to have 

 been numerous. Had they been from German, English and Spanish, 

 they would have coincided with the reading of the young novelist, 

 Victor Hugo, and would have contributed naturally enough to the 

 foreign influences that helped to bring about the Romantic Revolt 

 in France. 



Such was not the case. The main "Spanish" episode in Melmoth 

 was borrowed from the French. In an excellent article in the Times 

 Literary Supplement, ^^ Mr. Bryson writes: "Maturin builds up his 

 efforts with a series of suggestive touches, those instinctive pre- 

 monitions of something strange in even ordinary affairs; and he 

 certainly describes powerfully and well; his descriptive power is, 



i^This is being undertaken by a student of the University of British Columbia. 



^«August 27th, 1920. It was this article that drew my attention to Maturin as 

 a fit subject for research. Mr. J. N. Bryson very kindly informed me that the 

 field was clear, as he did not intend to go further in the matter. 



