Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes. No sculptor ever modelled a more majestic image of repose.

Romance was continued on somewhat the same lines which had made Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis so popular. The grisly story of Melmoth the Wanderer, by Maturin, with its horrible commerce with demons, and its

[graphic][merged small]

scenes of bombastic passion, dates from 1820.

Mrs. Percy Shelley, as befitted the wife of so great a magician of language, reached a purer style and a more impressive imagination in her ghastly romance of Frankenstein, which has given an image (usually misquoted) to everyday English speech, and may still be read with genuine terror and pity. A very spirited and yet gloomy novel, the Anastasius of Hope appeared at a time when the public were ablaze with the pretensions of Byron; the hero of this daring, piratical romance is all that the noble poet desired himself to be supposed to be. James Morier opened a series of tales of Oriental manners. by the publication of Hajji Baba; the satire of Persian manners was brilliant enough and keen enough to call forth-so at least it was alleged-a remonstrance against this "very foolish business" from the Shah himself.

Morier was anxious to turn the enormous success of this his first book to account, but in further publications he was less successful. He tried to be serious, while his genius led him to the laughable.

Native talent and a hopeless absence of taste and judgment were never more strangely mingled than in John Galt, who, after vainly essaying every department of letters, published in middle life an admirable comic novel, the Annals of the Parish, and set all Scotland laughing. It is the autobiography of a country minister, and describes the development of society in a thriving lowland village with inimitable humour and whimsicality. Galt went on pouring forth novels almost until his death, but he never hit the target again so plainly in the bull's eye.

Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824) was born obscurely in Dublin and entered Trinity College in 1798. He was ordained curate of Loughrea, and was then presented to a curacy at St. Peter's, Dublin. Here he attracted attention by his eccentricity and eloquence. He was very poor, and to eke out his income he began to publish preposterous "blood and thunder" romances, under the pseudonym of Dennis Jasper Murphy. In 1816, through the influence of Byron, his tragedy of Bertram was acted with great success at Drury Lane. His best novel, Melmoth the Wanderer, appeared in 1820. His life, which was very odd and wretched, closed in Dublin on the 30th of October 1824. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the daughter of William Godwin, by his first wife. She was born in London, ten days before the death of her mother, on the 30th of August 1797. She was under the age of seventeen when Shelley persuaded her to elope with him to France. After the suicide of Harriet, Shelley married Mary Godwin, at the close of 1816. After Shelley's death his widow returned to London and adopted literature as a profession. she had already, in 1818, published her best work, Frankenstein. Valyerga appeared in 1823 and The Last Man in 1826. writings during the lifetime of Sir Timothy Shelley were, by an agreement, all anonyOn the death of Sir Timothy, however, her son succeeded to the baronetcy, and her position became easy. She lived with her son until her death, 21st of February 1851, and was buried at Bournemouth.

[graphic]

mous.

C. R. Maturin

After a Drawing by W. Brocas

FROM "FRANKENSTEIN."

I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation, but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude

succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on to the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain. I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror, a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed, and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he uttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

John Galt (1779-1839) was the son of a captain in the West India trade, and was born at Irvine on the 2nd of May 1779. He became a Custom-house officer

and then a journalist at Greenock,

coming up to London to seek his fortune in 1804. For several years he led a wandering and uneasy life in Turkey, Greece, France, and finally Canada. He came back at last to Greenock, and died there on the 11th of April 1839. His life was one tangled skein of embarrassment and misspent activity. His best novels were the Annals of the Parish, 1821, and The Entail, 1823. James Justinian Morier (1780?-1849) was born at Smyrna, it is believed in 1780. He entered the diplomatic service, and was secretary of embassy in Persia, and long afterwards special commissioner in Mexico. He wrote many books, of which The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, 1824-28, has alone remained famous. He died at Brighton, March 19, 1849. The great rival of Hajji Baba in popularity was Anastasius, 1819, the author of which was Thomas Hope (1770?-1831), a Dutch merchant, born in Amsterdam, who came early to England and made a great fortune here. Each of these three novelists identified themselves more or less with the Oriental adventures of Byron, who declared that he wept bitterly when he read Anastasius, partly because he had not written it, partly because Hope had.

[graphic]

John Galt

After a Portrait by G. Hastings

FROM GALT'S "ANNALS OF THE PARISH."

But the most memorable thing that befell among my people this year was the burning of the lint mill on the Lugton water, which happened, of all days in the year, on the selfsame day that Miss Girzie Gilchrist, better known as Lady Skimmilk, hired the chaise from Mrs. Watts, of the New Inns of Irville, to go with her brother, the major, to consult the faculty in Edinburgh cencerning his complaints. For, as the chaise was coming by the mill, William Huckle, the miller that was, came flying out of the mill like a demented man, crying, Fire! and it was the driver that brought the melancholy tidings to the clachan. And melancholy they were, for the mill was utterly destroyed, and in it not a little of all that year's crop of lint in our parish. The first Mrs. Balwhidder lost upwards of twelve stone, which we had raised on the glebe with no small pains, watering it in the drouth, as it was intended for sarking to ourselves, and sheets and napery. A great loss indeed it was, and the vexation thereof had a visible effect on Mrs. Balwhidder's health, which from the spring had been in a dwining way. But for it, I think, she might have wrestled through the winter. However, it was ordered otherwise, and she was removed from mine to Abraham's bosom on Christmas Day, and buried on Hogmanay, for it was thought uncanny to have a dead corpse in the house on the New Year's Day. She was a worthy woman, studying with all her capacity to win the hearts of my people towards me; in which good work she prospered greatly, so that, when she died, there was not a single soul in the parish that was not contented with both my walk and conversation. Nothing could be more peaceable than the way we

[graphic]

Thomas Hope

After a Portrait by G. P. Harding

lived together. Her brother Andrew, a fine lad, I had sent to the college at Glasgow, at my own cost. When he came to the burial he stayed with me a month, for the manse after her decease was very dull. It was during this visit that he gave me an inkling of his wish to go out to India as a cadet; but the transactions anent that fall within the scope of another year, as well as what relates to her headstone, and the epitaph in metre, which I indicated myself thereon; John Truel the mason carving the same, as may be seen in the kirkyard, where it wants a little reparation and setting upright, having settled the wrong way when the second Mrs. Balwhidder was laid by her side. But I must not here enter upon an anticipation.

Lytton Byron was scarcely dead before his influence began to display itself in the work of a multitude of writers of "fashionable" novels, dealing mainly with criminals of high birth, into the desperate texture of whose lives there was woven a thread of the ideal. In this school of fiction two young men rose to the highest distinction, and "thrilled the boys with dandy pathos" in a lavish profusion. Of these elegant and fluent novelists the vounger made his appearance first, with Vivian Grey, in 1826, but his rival

was close behind him with Falkland and Pelham. Through the next twenty years they raced neck by neck for the suffrages of the polite. In that day EDWARD LYTTON BULWER, afterwards the first Lord LYTTON, seemed a genius of the very highest order, but it was early perceived that his dandiacal attitude was not perfectly sincere, that the graces of his style were too laboured and prolix, and that the tone of his novels fostered national conceit and prejudice at the expense of truth. His sentiment was mawkish, his creations were unsubstantial and often preposterous. But the public liked the fastidious elaborateness of a gentleman who catered for their pleasures "with his fingers covered with dazzling rings, and his feet delightfully pinched in a pair of looking-glass boots"; and Bulwer Lytton certainly possessed extraordinary gifts of activity, versatility, and sensitiveness to the requirements of his readers. What has shattered the once-glittering dome of his reputation is a reaction against what early readers of Zanoni called his "fearfully beautiful wordpainting," his hollow rhetoric, his puerile horrors. Towards the end of his glorious career Lord Lytton contrived to prune his literary extravagances, and his latest works are his best.

[graphic]

Edward Bulwer

From an Engraving of the Portrait by D. Maclise at Knebworth

The first Lord Lytton (Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, afterwards Bulwer-Lytton), 1803-1873, was the third and youngest son of General Bulwer of Heydon Hall, Norfolk; his mother was a Lytton of Knebworth in Herts. He was born in London on the 25th of May 1803. He was privately educated, under the eye of his gifted mother; at the age of seventeen he published Ismael, a collection of Byronic poems. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at Easter 1822, but removed later in the same year to Trinity Hall. He published Delmour anonymously in 1823; in 1825 he won the Chancellor's medal with a poem on Sculpture. It was after taking his degree, in 1826, that Bulwer wrote his first romantic novel, Falkland. In 1827 he married Rosina Doyle Wheeler, settled at Pangbourne, and devoted himself to literature, producing, in quick succession, Pelham, 1828; The Disowned and Devereux, 1829; and Paul Clifford, 1830. henceforth one of the most active and popular authors of the day, and he moved into London to be at the centre of his interests. He entered Parliament in 1831. The most prominent of his next batch of publications were Eugene Aram, 1832;

« AnteriorContinuar »