![]() ![]() ![]() His life was one of financial calamity: his father had been dismissed from his post office employment on suspicion of corruption, leaving Charles to bear the financial burden of the family, not least those of his bankrupt brother, while the church – viewing Maturin's early efforts as a novelist with disfavour – barred him from advancement, so that he was reliant on a miserly stipend. He was fond of dancing, despite being of a Calvinist bent his sermons were heartfelt, compassionate and much admired though he was finely dressed in public, a visitor to his home might well encounter him in rags. The author who occasioned this response was the Rev Charles Maturin, the Protestant vicar of the Galway town of Loughrea. "If Melmoth had only been silly and tiresome," he wrote, "we should gladly have treated it with silent contempt but it unfortunately variegates its stupidity with some characteristics of a more disgusting kind." Resorting to capitals to convey the depth of his outrage, the reviewer spoke of the novel's "BLASPHEMY", "BRUTALITY" and "OBSCENITY", delineating at length all the ways in which the writer had revolted against social propriety, proper religious feeling and artistic integrity. Readers of the Quarterly Review in 1821 were warned that a certain "unhappy patient" had exceeded his past "ravings" in the "folly and indelicacy" of his third novel, Melmoth the Wanderer. ![]()
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