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Chapter IV - The Novel of Terror - Lewis and
Maturin
Lewis's methods contrasted with those of Mrs. Radcliffe; his debt to
German terror- mongers; The Monk ; ballads; The Bravo of Venice ;
minor works and translations; Scott's review of Maturin's Montorio;
the vogue of the Tale of Terror between Lewis and Maturin; Miss
Sarah Wilkinson; the personality of Charles Robert Maturin; his
literary career; the complicated plot of The Family of Montorio ;
Maturin's debt to others; his distinguishing gifts revealed in
Montorio ; the influence of Melmoth the Wanderer on French
literature; a survey of Melmoth; Maturin's achievement as a
novelist.
To pass from the work of
Mrs. Radcliffe to that of
Matthew
Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense," which
depends for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity,
for "the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the
even stronger and more primitive instinct of fear.
Those who find
Mrs. Radcliffe's
unruffled pace leisurely beyond endurance, or who dislike her coldly
reasonable methods of accounting for what is only apparently
supernatural, or who sometimes feel stifled by the oppressive
air of gentility that broods over her romantic world, will
find ample reparation in the melodramatic pages of "Monk"
Lewis.
Here, indeed, may those who will and
dare sup full with horrors.
Lewis, in reckless
abandonment, throws to the winds all restraint, both moral and
artistic, that had bound his predecessor. The incidents, which
follow one another in kaleidoscopic variety, are like the
disjointed phases of a delirium or nightmare, from which
there is no escape.
We are conscious that his story is
unreal or even ludicrous, yet Lewis has a certain dogged power of
driving us unrelentingly through it, regardless of our own will.
Literary historians have tended to over- emphasise the
connection between
Mrs. Radcliffe and
Lewis. Their purposes
and achievement are so different that it is hardly accurate to speak
of them as belonging to the same school. It is true that in one of
his letters
Lewis asserts that he was induced to go on with
his romance,
The Monk, by reading
The Mysteries of
Udolpho, "one of the most interesting books that has (sic)
ever been written," and that he was struck by the resemblance of
his own character to that of Montoni; but his
literary debt to
Mrs. Radcliffe is comparatively
insignificant. His depredations on German literature are much
more serious and extensive.
Lewis, indeed, is one of the
Dick Turpins of fiction and seizes his booty where he will in a
high-handed and somewhat unscrupulous fashion, but for many
of
Mrs. Radcliffe's treasures he could find no use. Her
picturesque backgrounds, her ingenious explanations of the
uncanny, her uneventful interludes and long deferred but happy
endings were outside his province.
The moments in her novels which
Lewis admired and strove to emulate were those during which
the reader with quickened pulse breathlessly awaits some startling
development. Of these moments, there are, it must be frankly owned,
few in
Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Lewis's mistake lay in
trying to induce a more rapid palpitation, and to prolong it almost
uninterruptedly throughout his novel. By attempting a
physical and mental impossibility he courts disaster.
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