vales,-bewitching in its climate. Nothing ever equalled it,―no pen can describe it, no pencil can portray it!"

Our traveller returned to Cambridge in 1802, bringing with him in triumph the colossal bust of Ceres for the university, a choice collection of Greek MSS., another of mineralogy, and the premices of Haüy's new system of crystallography, which was then nearly unknown in England. The first of these acquirements engaged him deeply in antiquarian researches, and the last induced him to undertake an annual course of lectures on mineralogy, which have ultimately awakened in Cambridge a spirit of scientific investigation in the different branches of natural science, highly creditable to the university. These pursuits, added to the publication of his travels, would, it might be thought, have sufficiently occupied the time and expended the activity of any one individual. Dr Clarke, however, found leisure to embark in the Bible question, to fulfil the duties of a college-tutor and of a parish-priest, (having taken orders to hold the college-living of Harlton,) to preach occasionally at St. Mary's, to enter into all the antiquarian and scientific polemics of the day, and to conduct personally all the analytical researches incidental to his lectures. In the course of these experiments he was led to the important discovery of the gas blow-pipe, which in its turn became the cause of new researches and new trains of inquiry, which not only cost him his time, but nearly cost him his life;-the apparatus (as yet imperfect) having, according to Sir H. Davy's prediction, exploded with tremendous violence. In one of his letters to a friend, in September, 1816, he says: "I sacrificed the whole month of August to chemistry. Oh, how I did work! It was delightful play to me; and I stuck to it, day and night. At last, having blown off both my eye-brows and eye-lashes, and nearly blown out both my eyes, I ended with a bang that shook all the houses round my lecture-room. The Cambridge paper has told you the result of all this alchemy, for I have actually decomposed the earths, and attained them in a metallic form."

Dr Clarke's character for versatility and application was a frequent theme of admiration in the university; and we remember, says a writer in the New Monthly Magazine,' to have seen some verses attributed to Professor Smyth, in which his numerous occupations are made to accumulate on his hands, and to throw him into the most ludicrous and provoking embarrassment. The melancholy consequence, however, of this great subdivision of mental labour was, that it operated unfavourably on Dr Clarke's reputation: for, with more concentration in his pursuits, he could not but have taken his place in the very first line among the great inventors and benefactors of mankind. Vast, moreover, as were his powers of application, he in the end completely exhausted them; and he embittered by disease, and cut short his valuable life, by exercise of the mind greater than the body could endure.

In return for his labours and liberal donations to the university, he successively received an honorary degree of LL.D. the professorship of mineralogy, (a chair founded expressly for himself,) and the appointment of sub-librarian to the university library. Shortly after taking orders, he married; and at his death he left seven children. For the purposes of health and tranquillity he had latterly retired to Trumpington, where he appears to have lived in the bosom of his family in great

affection and philosophical simplicity. "No bipeds," says he, "ever lived more happily than we. I am now sitting in a room six feet square, with a notable housewife, three sprawling brats and a tame squirrel; in the midst of which this letter tells how I chirp." On another occasion he says, "I do assure you we have long lived to see the absurdity of keeping what is called an establishment: we have neither carriage, cart, horse, ass, nor mule; and if I were ten times richer I would live as I now do, in a cockchafer-box, close packed up with my wife and children. We never visit, consume only wine of our own making, and breed nothing but rabbits and children.'

In the midst of these pursuits and enjoyments, Dr Clarke died on the 9th of March, 1822. Of his character, his amiable and affectionate biographer, Mr Otter, thus speaks: "The two most remarkable qualities of his mind were enthusiasm and benevolence, remarkable not more for the degree in which they were possessed by him, than for the happy combinations in which they entered into the whole course and tenor of his life; modifying and forming a character, in which the most eager pursuit of science was softened by social and moral views, and an extensive exercise of all the charities of our nature was animated with a spirit which gave them a higher value in the minds of all with whom he had relation or communion. His ardour for knowledge, not unaptly called by his old tutor literary heroism, was one of the most zealous, the most sustained, the most enduring principles of action, that ever animated a human breast; a principle which strengthened with his increasing years, and carried him at last to an extent and variety of knowledge infinitely exceeding the promise of his youth, and apparently disproportioned to the means with which he was endowed; for though his memory was admirable, his attention always ardent and awake, and his perceptions quick and vivid, the grasp of his mind was not greater than that of other intelligent men; and in closeness and acuteness of reasoning, he had certainly no advantage, while his devious and analytic method of acquiring knowledge, involving as it did in some of the steps all the pain of a discovery, was a real impediment in his way, which required much patient labour to overcome. But the unwearied energy of this passion bore down every obstacle and supplied every defect; and thus it was, that always pressing forwards, without losing an atom of the ground he had gained, profiting by his own errors as much as by the lights of other men, his maturer advances in knowledge often extorted respect from the very persons who had regarded his early efforts with a sentiment approaching to ridicule. Allied to this was his generous love of genius, with his quick perception of it in other men; qualities which, united with his good nature, exempted him from those envyings and jealousies which it is the tendency of literary ambition to inspire, and rendered him no less disposed to honour the successful efforts of the competitors who had got before him in the race, than prompt to encourage those whom accident or want of opportunity had left behind. But the most pleasing exercise of these qualities was to be observed in his intercourse with modest and intelligent young men; none of whom ever lived much in his society without being improved and delighted,—improved by the enlargement or elevation of their views, and delighted with having some useful or honourable pursuit, suitable to their talents, pointed out to them, or some portion of his own enthusiasm imparted to their minds."

Charles Maturin.

BORN A. D. 1786.-DIED A. D. 1824.

"SOME twenty or thirty years before the French revolution, a lady of rank attached to the court is said to have been driving through a retired street in Paris, when the cries of an infant child caught her attention. The singularity of the circumstance in so lonely and remote a spot naturally induced her to inquire into the cause, and she drew up her horses, desiring her servant to ascertain from whence the cries proceeded. The man returned, after a very short search, with a basket containing a child newly born, which he found in an obscure corner of the street. The infant was dressed in the richest clothing, and seemed to belong to parents of distinction, whose motives for that inhuman abandonment there can be no great difficulty in guessing at; but although many exertions were afterwards made to discover who they were and the causes of their conduct, the whole matter still remains, and is likely to continue, an impenetrable mystery. The street in which the child was found was called the Rue de Mathurine, in honour of a convent which then stood in it dedicated to a French saint of that name; and the foundling, consequently, was called Mathurine, Anglicè Maturin. The lady to whose maternal fosterage the child was thus providentially committed, sent it at a proper age to the convent to be educated, and never neglected an opportunity of promoting the future objects for which she designed it. But the boy, born under the caprice of fortune, grew up under its inflictions, and was doomed to the trials of a very fluctuating life. He had scarcely reached manhood, when he became a victim to the political fury of the times, and was thrown into the Bastille, from which, after a long incarceration, he escaped into England at the period of the revolution. Here he married and naturalised. From this individual, with whom the name of Maturin originated, the poet descended."

So writes an apparently well-informed contributor in the New Monthly Magazine," and he traces to this incident some of the exciting sources of Maturin's ambition. He lived to cherish the idea that the lady of rank who rescued the foundling was actually its mother, and that he would one day be able to trace his ancestry to a noble stem. His father held a situation in the Dublin post-office. Charles was the seventh child of the family. "In common with almost every man of genius," says the writer already quoted, "the first indications of his taste were exhibited in sundry temporary verses upon local and personal subjects, which were, as all such premature tokens of talent are, read with avidity and admiration, and quoted, and copied in the circle of 'domestic friends. Nor did his friends forget that fatal fondness of excessive praise to which the heart too often gives way,-which arrests the growth of solid information and the progress of improvement, by filling the precocious aspirant with undue notions of his powers, and giving him sufficient excuse for thinking he is already perfect, and can perform by intuition, what others have done by labour. The tenderness of his parents towards him, however, was in some measure drawn from circumstances of household sorrow, as he was the only child left of many who lived beyond the term of boyhood, and who seemed to have

been preserved to their love like a solitary relic of early years: he was therefore treated with extraordinary fondness, and every new instance of ability was a fresh motive to that natural and lavish affection: his appearance, too, was a justification of their anxiety, for his frame was delicate and fragile, and a cast of melancholy and reserve overspread his features, which at that period were exceedingly interesting. Some of these verses were, as a matter of course, published in the newspapers, but I am not aware that they excited any attention beyond that of the immediate friends to whom the secret of publication was made known. His earliest passion, notwithstanding the applause bestowed on his authorship, was for the acting drama: here he was the director, the manager, the prompter, the arranger of scenes, and the overseer of the wardrobe. The spirit and genius he threw into his plans naturally gave him the supremacy amongst his juvenile companions; and an authority, equal to a dictatorship, was universally conceded to him on those occasions of holiday pageant and pastime. He ingeniously seized upon opportunities, when his parents were from home, to construct his private theatricals, which he did by converting folding-doors into a green curtain, the back apartment into a stage, and the front into pit, boxes, and gallery for the accommodation of his imaginary, or, at best, scanty audience. It may be remarked as a singular type of the turn of his mind, as afterwards developed in his writings, that his favourite play was Lee's 'Alexander,' in which he enacted the principal part himself. The mad poetry of that piece was his favourite recitation, and it would have been difficult to discover an actor who could give a greater force to the tempestuous passage of his Bucephalus' than young Maturin. But who could have beheld the germ of so much talent in the boy dressing and instructing his young sisters and companions? Yet even in that subordinate department he exhibited an adherence to truth, and a desire for effect, that subsequently expanded into delineation of costume and character, to which the delight of thousands has borne testimony. Inappropriate and meagre as were his dresses, they were, nevertheless, disposed gracefully; and if his queen wore a shattered turban of his mother's, and flounced in a French silk or an Irish tabinet, yet she was redeemed by some slight ornament, or some peculiar fold of the drapery, that gave an air of antiquity or extravagance to her appearance: and comical as he must have looked in a double-breasted waistcoat of his father's, and perhaps a scratch-wig, with old Spanish shoes, and some of his mother's frills round his neck and wrists, still he contrived to throw over the ludicrous personation a semblance of reality of manner and earnestness of delivery, that quickly dissipated that which was ludicrous in the effect."

At the age of fifteen young Maturin entered Trinity college, Dublin, where he won many academic honours, and finally gained a scholarship. Having taken orders he obtained the curacy of Loughrea, and subsequently that of St. Peter's, Dublin; but his ruling passion was for the belles lettres," his profession drew him one way,—his genius another, -and necessity both."

His first appearance as a novelist was under the uninviting appellation of Jasper Murphy; his next succeeding brochures bore the almost equally unpropitious names of Montorio,' The Wild Irish Boy,' and 'The Milesian.' None of these works procured him either profit or fame

It was the tragedy of ' Bertram,' presented and performed at Drury Lane, through the influence of Lord Byron, which first brought him favourably before the public. The profits of the representation, and the copyright of that tragedy, exceeded, perhaps, one thousand pounds, while the praises bestowed upon its author by critics of all classes, convinced Mr Maturin that he had only to sit down and concoct any number of plays he pleased, each yielding him a pecuniary return, at least equal to the first. Unfortunately the brightest hopes of genius are often the most fallacious, and so it proved in the present instance. A few months produced a second tragedy, which failed, and with it faded away the dreams of prosperity, in which the author of Bertram indulged. Time enabled Mr Maturin gradually to extricate himself from embarrassments, occasioned by the failure of his hopes; and having thus had the wings of his ambition somewhat shortened, he in future pursued a safer flight. His eccentricities, however, remained in their former vigour, and in the coteries of Lady Morgan, or the romantic solitudes of Wicklow, the vain oddities of the curate of St. Peter's continued as remarkable as during the height of his tragic triumphs. Latterly his pen was chiefly employed on works of romance, in which he evinced great powers of imagination and fecundity of language, with evident and lamentable carelessness in the application of both. He wrote rather for money than for fame, and drew a considerable revenue from the sale of his productions. His most extraordinary production is his romance of Melmoth.' "It is a most characteristic epitome of all his productions. Genius and extravagance-nature and prodigies-angels and devils-theology and libertinism, contest every line of every page of these volumes, and leave us in doubt, at last, whether we should most admire, or deplore, the perverted talent which they indisputably discover. The idea of the work, we are told in the preface, is taken from a passage in one of the author's sermons-the passage runs thus :-'at this moment is there one of us present, however we may have departed from the Lord, disobeyed his will, and disregarded his word—is there one of us who would at this moment accept all that man could bestow, or earth afford, to resign the hope of his salvation? No-there is not one,—not such a fool on earth, were the enemy of mankind to traverse it with the offer!' And thus those sacred truths, which, as the ambassador of Christ, he has but just promulgated from the pulpit, the moment he descends from it, are converted into the theme of a romance! The novel is not taken from any sermon, but from the Faustus' of Goethe. Melmoth is Doctor Faustus, under the title of the 'Wanderer,' and closely resembles him, not only in his life and fate, but in many of his adventures. It is a much closer imitation even than the Manfred' of Lord Byron, who, though he borrowed the idea, has clothed it in a magnificence which is all his The story is that of a wretched being, who has sold himself to the enemy of man for the sake of a protracted existence, during which he is to be omnipotent on earth-gifted with unfading youth-with boundless wealth-with the faculty of traversing an hemisphere at a wish -with a spell of persuasion which is perfectly irresistible, and, in short, with every thing except dominion over memory, which embitters all, by perpetually recurring to the price at which they have been purchased."

own.

See a paper On the Writings of Maturin,' in the 3d volume of the London Magazine.'