CHAPTER XV
355. Queenhoo Hall, a romance by Joseph Strutt (1749-1802),
completed by Sir Walter Scott and published in 1808.
356. sombrous: Sombre.
357. My friend lives under the water: An allusion to Milton's version of
Eve's narcissism in Paradise Lost, IV, 449-68; unlike Milton, Blake in
'Thel' and Mary Shelley in Frankenstein (1818), Maturin gives absolute
innocence to the speaker and thus subverts the myth of Narcissus as
an agency of the Fall.
358. his master when he visited paradise: Paradise Lost, IV, 358-75: Satan
contemplating Adam and Eve. Typically, it is the perverse moment
of emotional contradiction here that Maturin picks out from Milton.
359. the meaning of these words: The premise of an absolute innocence
in which language is matched to an unfallen consciousness is also
treated by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein.
360. what thinks…: Cf. Shelley, The Sensitive Plant: 'That garden sweet,
that lady fair,/And all sweet shapes and odours there/In truth have
never passed away…' Immalee here invents neo-platonic idealism
for herself.
361. wranglers: Disputants.
362. awless…purity: Shakespeare, King John, I, i, 266: Another
portmanteau allusion, the second half of which is unidentified.
363. my friend withdraws its rose: Cf. Paradise Lost, IV, 449-68, Eve's
account of the image in the water with which she fell in love, the
rhythm of which is echoed very closely here. Cf. Milton's 'I started
back,/It started back…', 462-6.
364. my friend withdraws its rose: Cf. Paradise Lost, IV, 449-68, Eve's
account of the image in the water with which she fell in love, the
rhythm of which is echoed very closely here. Cf. Milton's 'I started
back,/It started back…', 462-6.
CHAPTER XVI
364. Piu…speranza: I no longer have sweet hope. P. A. D.Metastasio,
Didone, Dramma serio in musica, 1795.
365. ranunculus: Buttercup.
366. whetted…purpose: Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 111.
whet': To sharpen. The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to Hamlet
in his mother's chamber to urge on his revenge against Claudius.
Melmoth is equally distracted from his purpose of damning her by
Immalee.
367. Ascend this hill…: The Wanderer echoes Milton, Paradise Lost,
XI,
368. Wonderful rocks: Intellige, Understand, i.e. [by which], under-
stand buildings.
369. Tippoo Saib: Tippu Sahib, Sultan of Mysore (1749-99). The
footnote suggests Maturin is both constrained by, and rebellious
against, historical probability. Tippoo Saib6 wished to substitute
the Mohamedan for the Indian mythology throughout his dominions.
This circumstance, though long antedated, is therefore imaginable.
370. cut themselves…etc.: i Kings xviii, 28. Elijah is mocking the false
prophets of Ba'al who seek to induce his presence by ritual sacrifices
of their own blood. The analogy with the Juggernaut reminds us of
the idolatry of the latter. Compare also the previous attack on
Catholic self-maceration.
371. St Bruno…St Lucia…St Ursula…Undecimilla: St Bruno (1033-
1101), founder of the Carthusian Order, who devoted himself to
solitude and penitence; St Lucy, martyred in the third century,
reputedly by having her eyes put out, often represented holding two
eyes in a dish; St Ursula, martyred before the fifth century: her
legend, Maturin implies, is the product of an error of transcription.
372. perfected the praise: Matt, xxi, 16. The phrase is a blasphemous
euphemism for the boy's action: after Jesus has thrown the money-
changers out of the temple, the children chant hosannas to the son
of David, perfecting his praise. The lingam or phallus, as an
independent object, is at the centre of the worship of Siva.
Presumably the boy is chanting; but the exact nature of the
'outrageous lubricities' is unclear. He may be washing the emblem,
a frequent daily part of the ritual worship of the phallus, according
to Maurice--an action perhaps suggestive to all eyes but Immalee's.
373. en parenthese: i.e. aside: note the use of the vocabulary of a
written text about an oral exchange.
374. Almahs: Egyptian dancing girls. Maurice gives an account of the
almai in Indian Antiquities (1806), v, 554-7.
375. of a stilled infant…tears: Joanna Baillie, Ethwald, Pt I, II, i (A
Series of Plays, 1821, ii, 112).
376. He fled…night: Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 1015. The direct
quotation brings to a climax the analogy between Melmoth and
Milton's Satan in this scene.
CHAPTER XVII
377. Blue Beard: First translated into English from the French of
Charles Perrault in 1729.
Cadi: Qadi, a magistrate.
378. no note of time: Edward Young, The Complaint; or, Night-Thoughts,
'Night the First'.
379. thought…moral world: Gen. iii, 11-14: Cain who was cursed of
God and doomed to wander: 'a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou
be in the earth'.
380. Semele: Semele, a Theban girl loved by Jupiter and destroyed by
the fire of his lightning when he appeared to her in his full
splendour. Cf. Marlowe, Dr Faustus, 5.i.114.
381. There came on…apartment: This remarkable passage indicts the
colonial exploitation of the East before the Empire had assumed its
final phase.
gold, and silver, and the souls of men: Rev. xviii, 12-13.
382. In order…duration: From anti-colonialism to vegetarianism.
drink: i.e. alcohol. For the connection between vegetarianism and
political radicalism in this period, see Shelley, 'Notes to Queen
Mab'.
383. unequal…existence: The satire of the logic of inequality is
impeccable here, quite worthy of Thomas Paine, or Blake. The
source maybe Rousseau, 'Discourse on the Origins of Inequality'
(1764).
384. As, by a mode of criticism equally false and unjust, the worst
sentiments of my worst characters, (from the ravings of Bertram to
the blasphemies of Cardonneau), have been represented as my own, I
must here trespass so far on the patience of the reader as to assure
him, that the sentiments ascribed to the stranger are diametrically
opposite to mine, and that I have purposely put them into the
mouth of an agent of the enemy of mankind.': Maturin alludes to
Coleridge's attack on his play, Bertram, in Biographia Literaria (1817),
sharply criticizing it on the gounds of immorality and impiety. Coleridge's
play, Zapolya, was turned down by the Drury Lane Committee in favour
of Maturin's. Maturin was so incensed that he attacked Coleridge in
his turn in the Preface to Women: or Pour et Contre, but was dis-
suaded from including these remarks by Scott. Coleridge was at this
time turning against his own earlier poetry, and adding in Christian
rationalizations, especially of the radical suggestions of 'The Ancient
Mariner'.
385. The Catholics and Protestants were thus distinguished in the
wars of the League.: The Holy League, the name taken by Catholics
under the Duke of Guise during the struggle with the Protestants in
France at the end of the sixteenth century. The Edict of Nantes,
signed by Henri IV in 1598, represented a pact of toleration whereby
Protestants were allowed to practise their religion in France.
Maturin's family, which was Huguenot, fled to Ireland when Louis
XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
386. speech…truth: Scott, Marmion, Intro, to canto II, 11.110-11: 'Just
at the age 'twixt boy and youth/When thought is speech, and speech
is truth.' Maturin changes the gender. The manoeuvre is a reversal
of Milton's encounter between Eve and the Serpent: here Immalee,
being absolutely innocent, does not understand irony at all, or even
the necessity of any form of circumlocution. Therefore it is
necessary to reduce things to first principles for her, a procedure
which implies a critique of fallen nature. Being absolutely innocent,
post-lapsarian meanings are to her unintelligible, and therefore, like
the children in William Blake's lyrics, she is a living satire on the
corruption which the Wanderer finds and indicts in the world. As
such, it is she who seduces him from his course: Eve seduces the
serpent into innocence even as he attempts to introduce her to the
corruption of the human species.
387. Stay with me: Here she openly (but unwittingly) tempts him into
Paradise, and thus into history.
388. I understand…but not your words: Shakespeare, Othello, IV, ii, 31-
2: Desdemona, faced with the 'horrible fancy' of Othello.
CHAPTER XVIII
389. Miseram…Apollinis: 'All things terrify wretched me, the noise of
the sea, and the rocks, and solitude, and the sanctity of Apollo'
(Sextus Turpilius, Leucadia, frag. XI). Maturin, who seems to be
quoting it from memory, gets the word-order slightly wrong; but the
substance is correct. The analogy is with Immalee's changed
perception of her island solitude.
390. Linnaus': Carl von Linne (1707-78), the founder of modern
botany. A 'non-descript: that which falls in between classifications.
391. alliance with all that is awful and ominous: The Fall brings both the
separation of the ego from nature and the Romantic sublime.
392. the arcades of the banyan-tree: Cf. Milton's version of the Indian
fig tree from Deccan and Malabar, whose roots are a matriarchal system,
Paradise Lost, IX, 1105.
393. sounds…serpent: The echo is of Milton's Eve's innocence, which,
'with rapine sweet bereaves his [Satan's] fierceness of the fierce
intent it brought' and he stands for a moment 'stupidly good', but
soon his evil intentions revive, IX, 455-71. She does not, however,
whisper to her flowers.
394. ocynum: i.e. ocymum: basil.
395. ears to hear: Matt, xi, 15.
396. not at his words…them: a paraphrase of Shakespeare, Othello, IV,
ii, 31-2.
397. Such…light': The Calvinist sense of the 'future state', in which,
providentially, all will be revealed as it is, not as it appears to be.
CHAPTER XIX
398. Magdaleniade: Father Pierre de St Louis, La Magdaleine au desert de
la Sainte Baume en Provence, 1668. Literally translated, the lines
read:
What does the world give most often to its own? The wind.
What must I unremittingly strive to conquer here? The flesh.
What was the cause of the miseries which have befallen me? Love.
What should one say after such a betrayal? Shame on
her. (trans.
399. Ireland…causes: This aside is a joke, alluding to the serious
problem of Irish emigration. Purporting to come from a
'Continental' point of view, it may also be interpreted as a jibe at
English mismanagement of Irish affairs.
400. theta: The eighth letter of the Greek alphabet. Spaniards do not
find it difficult to pronounce: they simply write TH as Z: Melmoth is
written Melmoz, but pronounced exactly the same (Hayter).
401. torpedo: Electric ray, known as the torpedo fish.
402. the manner…half-feudal: Maturin uses a satirical pastiche of the
language of Shakespearean comedy (the overlap of terms from Love
and War) to portray the 'artifice' of Spanish manners in 1683. But
the critique is made from Immalee's Rousseauist point of view of
'the Natural'. There may be an implied post-Act of Union resonance
with garrison Ireland here.
CHAPTER XX
403. Thomas Moore, 'Come, Rest in This Bosom' (Irish Melodies).
404. saturnic: Saturnine; sluggish, cold, and gloomy.
405. the gay creature of the elements: Milton, Comus, I, 299. Comus's
seductive description of the Lady's brothers, adapted to Immalee's
former life on the island.
406. defalcations: Cutting down, abatement, curtailment.
407. cereus: i.e. lit. 'resembling wax'; a large South American species of
cactus, the Torch-thistle.
408. 
Here the breezes
blow around the isle of the blessed; adapted from Pindar, Olympian Odes,
ii, 72.
409. Ireland: Maturin's friend, the Nationalist author Lady Morgan
(1776-1859), author of The Wild Irish Girl (1806), created a craze in
the early nineteenth century for 'wild and sweet' songs on the harp.
410. Polish saint: St Casimir (d.1484), who was an exemplary child.
411. pax vobiscum: Peace be with you. Having mistaken his first
exclamation for an item of reported speech, the puritanical
Madonna now mistakes his address to her as an indecorous
exclamation, and supplies him with a periphrasis more suitable to
his priestly condition.
412. Scire…timeri: See above, note 48 to Chapter V.
413. aurum potabile: 'Potable gold': the analogy is between the
hierarchy of alchemical metals and the hierarchy of races. Re--ects
the Spanish obsession with the purity of blood.
414. irrefragably: Irrefutably.
415. Sorites: A series of linked syllogisms, or logical statements of
major and minor premises and conclusion (Hayter).
416. Excacavit…viderent: 'He blinded their eyes so that they did not
see' --a contraction of John xii, 40: 'He hath blinded their eyes and
hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes nor
understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal
them.' This is the prophecy of Esiaias: 'I' refers to God. Again, the
theme is heavily providential. Father Jose quotes a Latin text
because the Catholic gospels were translated from Greek into the
Latin Vulgate: the implication is that he had no access to the
original text.
417. mollia tempora fandi: Happy moments for speech. (Adapted from
Virgil, Aeneid, iv, 293): Aeneas seeks the most diplomatic opportunity
to tell Dido he is leaving.
418. toujours perdrix: Partridge yet again! Disapproving remark
attributed to the Confessor of Henry IV of France.
419. Sixtus himself: Probably Sixtus V. But I can find no evidence of
his pride.
420. Xeres: Sherry.
421. and of…Bengal: He dreams of an extension of the Spanish
Inquisition (a rival, presumably, to the Portuguese one in Goa, on
the Western coast), to the Eastern seaboard of India.
422. heterodoxy of the heart: Heterodoxy: a combination or a conflict
of different beliefs. This is a brilliant phrase, which yokes belief
systems ('heterodoxy') to the psychology of romantic love ('heart')
in a form of mutual comparison.
423. that instrument: The Aeolian harp, a metaphor for the human
heart. The craze for these was late eighteenth-century and romantic.
424. nature…ways: Despite Isidora's former life, her attitude here is
not seventeenth-century: it is Rousseauistic and therefore anachron-
istic. But nature is also culture here: 'torture' is an eloquent
metaphor which recalls the distortions of this society, including the
Inquisition.
425. Toledos: Swords made and decorated in Toledo.
426. limner: Painter, especially a portrait painter.
427. a new heaven…earth: Rev. xxi, 1.
428. bagatelles: Trifles, things of no importance.
429. a marvellous proper man: Shakespeare, Richard III, I, iii, 253.
Said by the deformed Richard of himself, after manipulating the Lady
Anne into a declaration of her love for him over the dead body of
her husband. The analogy confirms the Wanderer's cruelty.
430. dole: Grief, sorrow, mental distress.
431. anti-catholic objection: She is named after Saint Isidore of Seville
(c.560-636), author of, amongst many other things, the treatises
Concerning the Catholic Faith Against the Jews and Concerning Heresies.
Canonized in 1598.
432. Dejanira: Killed her husband, Herakles, by giving him Nessus's
poisoned tunic in the hope of regaining his love (Grant).
433. house on the sands: Matt, vii, 24?6.
434. the European 'perhaps!': The Wanderer 'anticipates'
(retrospectively) the scepticism of the Enlightenment.
435. fardingales: Farthingales, hooped skirts.
436. chrism: Oil mingled with balm, consecrated for use as an
unguent in the administration of certain sacraments in the Eastern
and Western Churches.
437. atabal: A kind of kettledrum used by the Moors.
438. the noise…shoutings: Job xxxix, 25. Blasphemously placed: this is
part of God's reply to Job, in which he lists a number of things he
can do, including make the horse smell battle from afar off. This
surrounding vision of Hell is reminiscent of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, a
parade of the powerful damned of human history.
439. triple-crowned chieftains of the West: Popes, placed by God (1)
above the Church; (2) above the Holy Roman Empire; (3) above
earthly princes.
440. your bretheren…night: Nero (AD 37–68) burnt Christians alive as
torches to illuminate his gardens.
441. You love music…who have chromatized: Played chromatic scales.
essays: Attempts.
Tubal Cain: Gen. iv, 22: ‘And Zillah, she also bare Tu-bal-cain, an
instructer of every artificer in brass and iron’.
Lully: Jean-Baptiste Lulli (1632–87), Italian composer in the
service of Louis XIV; the occasion was at a performance of his
Te Deum, on 8 January 1687. While conducting more than 150
musicians, he hit his toe with the sharp point of the cane with
which he was beating time; an abscess developed, then gangrene.
Maturin’s phrase ‘beat himself to death’ is a play on words.
442. Democritus: (c.460-c.370BC), the Greek moralist and soso-called
‘laughing philosopher’. His ethical system posited an ultimate good
(‘cheerfulness’), a state in which the soul lives peacefully and
tranquilly, undistracted by fear or superstition.
443. laughter is madness: Eccles. ii, 2: ‘I said of laughter, It is mad:
and of mirth, What doeth it?’ The Preacher sets out to prove the vanity
(emptiness) of laughter. Here Greek materialism meets Hebraic
prophecy over the question of laughter.
there: In Hell.
444. fandangoes: Fandango, Spanish dance with castanets.
445. ancient cities: Herculaneum and Pompeii. Cf. Fatal Revenge, 3
vols., Edinburgh, Constable, 1807, Vol. II, 102.
446. A withering monosyllable: i.e. Hell.
CHAPTER XXI
447. Grant's likely conjecture is that these unattributed verses are by
Maturin himself.
448. Mare infructuosum: The unfruitful sea. Possibly a translation of
Homer, Iliad, i, 316: 'the unharvested sea'.
449. tears…eyes: Rev. vii, 17.
450. Let us…mourning: Eccles. vii, 2. That is, it is better to go into the
house of mourning than the house of feasting, because the former is
our inevitable lot.
451. To her…brightness: Job xxxi, 26. The implication of the allusion is
that she is still in a state of pagan idolatry.
452. seity: Selfhood.
453. Pygmalion: Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, fell in love with the ivory
statue of a woman he had made; at his prayer, Aphrodite brought
the statute to life. Here the story is viewed from the statue's point of
view.
454 Christianity…mind: i.e. Catholicism. This is not wholly ironic:
in Maturin's view God's Providence will make sure that Catholic
superstition will give way to Protestant rationalism. (See Intro-
duction, pp. xvi-xvii.)
455. nothing…sun: Eccles. i, 9.
456. fearful…indignation: Heb. x, 27. The passage refers to our furtive
reaction after we have sinned, having received the truth: in this case
it will be Melmoth who inflicts these emotions on the guilty possessors
of wealth and distinction.
457. Mithridates: The Great, King of Pontus (c.67BC), captured
Manlius Aquilus, the Roman Ambassador, in 88BC Finally at
Pergamon he poured molten gold down his throat, to rebuke the
Romans for their bribe-taking. The incident is reported in Appian,
Roman History, 'The Mithridatic War', Bk XII, Chap. III, para 21.
458. He…root: Jonah iv, 6–7. The story of Jonah and the gourd, and
the pity of a jealous God on Nineveh.
459. hope deferred: 'Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.' Prov. xiii,
2.
460. where her foot might rest: Gen. viii, 9.
461. tell…them: Ps. xix, 3, 'there is no speech nor language where
their voice is not heard', i.e. the heavens, the glory and the
handiwork of God.
462. What [is there between] thee and me? John ii, 4. Christ's words
to his mother at the Wedding at Cana.
463. the statue that meets the sun: The statue of Memnon at Thebes
resounded musically at daybreak as soon as the sun struck it.
464. whom…serve: Josh, xxiv, 15: '…choose ye today whom ye will
serve.' Joshua asks all the tribes of Israel to put away the Gods they
worshipped on the other side of the flood in Egypt and worship the
Lord.
CHAPTER XXII
465. I'll…husband: Not actually Shakespeare, but quoted from Garrick's
adaptation of the play, V, 5 (Grant).
466. She…were: Not identified.
467. pullen: Poultry (i.e. dialect).
468. Molinists: Followers of the Spanish theologian Luis de Molina
(1535–1600), who held that the efficacy of grace lies in God's
foreknowledge of man's free cooperation with the divine gift of
grace (Concordia, 1588).
Jansenists: followers of Cornelius Otto Jansen, bishop of Ypres
1585–1638, author of Augustinus (1640), who held a doctrine of
irresistible grace without which men cannot keep God's
commandments. The Jansenists had to defend Augustinian theology
against Molinism.
469. Dominican: An order of mendicant friars instituted in 1215 by the
Spaniard Domingo de Guzman (St Dominic); known in England as
the Black Friars.
Franciscan: An order of friars founded by St Francis of Assisi
about 1209; known in England as the Grey Friars.
470. Note that the story of how Immalee became Isidora is presented
via a pastiche of Don Quixote (Pt 1, Ch. XXX).
471. e faucibus Draconis – e profundis Barathri: From the jaws of the
dragon, from the depths of the abyss.
472. ombre pez: Man-fish. Cf. Shakespeare, The Tempest, II, ii, 25ff.
473. prisoners: Protagonists, but also readers. Jane Austen's latest
attack on 'romance', Northanger Abbey (1818), was only two years
old when Melmoth came out.
474. verbosa et grandis epistola: 'A great, long-winded letter' (Juvenal,
Satires, x, 71), i.e. the one from Tiberius in Capri, which hurried
Sejanus to his doom on 18 October AD 31.
475. To the mere…life: This elaborate attack on romances combines
the authority of Austen and Scott, concerning 'the thousand petty
external causes' which romances omit, and reflects the pressure after
Fatal Revenge (1807) on Maturin from Scott, manifested in his
Prefaces and their correspondence, to write in a more 'modern' (i.e.
'realistic') fashion. But in the context of this romance narrative, the
aside has the opposite effect: it appears disingenuous, a rhetorical
disclaimer which intensifies the sublimity of Isidora's conict.
476. The last…Jewish champion: i.e. Samson. Cf. Judges xvi, 21–30.
After his betrayal by Delilah, the putting out of his eyes and his
condemnation by the Philistines to 'grind in the prison house' in
Gaza, Samson succeeded in pulling down the pillars of the temple
and slew 3,000 Philistines.
477. toying…string: The passage recalls De Sade's analysis of sexuality
as a form of power. Cf. Shakespeare, King Lear, 'As flies to wanton
boys/Are we to the Gods; they kill us for their sport.'
CHAPTER XXIII
478. If he…mine: Unidentified; possibly by Maturin himself.
479. Gone to be married: Shakespeare, King John, III, i, 1. It is in
fact a rhetorical question from Constance when she hears that Lewis the
Dauphin is to marry Blanch, and that France and England are to
have an alliance.
480. overcasting: Covering already existent embroidery, by means of an
overcast stitch, often to produce relief, or prevent fraying.
481. Mr Peter's puppet-show: Don Quixote, Pt II, Ch. xxvi. Thinking it
real, Don Quixote attacks the puppet-show of Master Peter with his
sword, and cuts it all to ribbons.
482. Minima…sui: She is the smallest part of herself.
483. Neophyte: A beginner, novice (from Gr. neophyta: a young plant).
The metaphor is carried on in 'sprout'.
484. Campeador: The Cid, who was called Mio Cid el Campeador (my
lord the Champion) (d.1099). Gonsalvo di Cordova:
Gonzalo Fernandes Hernandez y Aguilar (1443–1515), 'El Gran
Capitan', Spanish general who fought successfully for Ferdinand II
of Naples against the French, and restored Zante and Cephalonia to
the Venetians, taking them from the Turks.
485. atramentum: Lit. 'black fluid'. The analogy is with bile.
486. lituras: Corrections.
487. macerate: To cause the body to waste or wear away, esp. by
fasting (OED). But it is also commonly used for the practice of
scourging.
488. Moloch: Properly, Molech, an Ammonite God, mentioned in i
Kings xi, 7, as an 'abomination', to whom infants and children are
sacrificed by fire.
489. seguedilla: Seguidilla, a type of Spanish song.
490. Polyglot: i.e. the Polyglott Bible (OED's earliest ref. 1673). Here,
a crib for priestly study, to acquaint the ignorant Fra Jose with the
Greek original of the Testament.
491. Pliny, Artemidore: Pliny the Elder: Gaius Plinius Secundus
(AD23–79), writer on natural history.
Artemidore: Artemidorus Daldianus (2nd century AD) of Ephesus,
in Roman Asia, author of Oneirocritica ('Interpretation of Dreams').
492. Apparebat…confectus: See above, note 1 to Ch. III.
493. in transitu: In passing.
CHAPTER XXIV
494. 'Responde…argumentum': (Lit.) 'Reply to my argument-a name
is a name – therefore what is your name-reply to my argument…',
Beaumont and Fletcher, Wit at Several Weapons, I. Slightly
misquoted. Old Sir Perfidious Oldcraft, fallen among his son's
sharkish companions, seeks to test whether the Latin of the poor
scholar Priscian is fake or genuine. The analogy is with Isadora's
persistent interrogation of the Wanderer before their mysterious,
diabolic marriage.
495. a banditti: The plural of Ital. 'bandito', here used as a collective
singular noun: a band of robbers. These figures conventionally
appear in Salvator Rosa's painting, and in Ann Radcliffe, especially
in The Mysteries of Udolpho.
496. I believe in a God…: James ii, 19: 'Thou believest that there is
one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.' Here
Melmoth identifies himself, by means of the allusion, as a devil.
497. pages…these: Refers to the original of Adonijah's manuscript,
which Monçada is copying. Here Monçada expressed his surprise at
this passage, (as savouring more of Christianity than Judaism), con-
sidering it occurred in the manuscript of a Jew.
498. testimonies: Acts of martyrdom (in Gr. martyras is a witness); here
it is suggested that the Wanderer is suspended in the fires of hell
like Mephistopheles, for all eternity, in a continuous act of faith or
'testimony'.
499. Here Monçada…expressed his surprise…: While he spoke of what
he had written.
CHAPTER XXV
500. Homer, Iliad, xxiii, 72. See above, Note 1 to Ch. VI.
501. at ease in his possessions: Blair, The Grave, 350–51.
502. Don Quixote, Pt I, ch. ii (last para.).
503. Toledo: The most important political and social centre of Castile
up to the foundation of Madrid, Toledo was traditionally rich from
its metal working and armoury.
CHAPTER XXVI
504. Coleridge, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Pt III, 196–8: The
Nightmare Life-in-Death is playing dice with Death for the ship's
crew, and she wins.
505. change of circumstances: Maturin's own Huguenot ancestors had
fled the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685.
506. Maestro di Capello: Choirmaster.
507. Hebes: The cup-bearers of Olympus (after the original Hebe, a
daughter of Zeus who performed this function). Often used to
describe women in their youthful prime.
508. Teniers or Wouverman: David Teniers the Younger (1610–90) and
Philip Wouverman (1619–68), painters of Dutch interiors and family
groups.
509. pinners: A coif with two long flaps, one on each side, pinned on
and hanging down, and sometimes fastened at the breast; worn by
women, especially of rank, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Sometimes applied to the flaps and the adjunct of the coif.
510. shadow…land: Isa. xxxii, 2: 'And a man shall be as a hiding place
from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a
dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.'
511. so…eternal: 2 Cor. iv, 18. For St Paul, it is a question, not of
'passing through' temporal things, but of 'looking at things not seen'
which are eternal.
CHAPTER XXVII
512. Quæque…fui: The sights most piteous that I myself saw, and
where of I was no small part (Virgil, Aeneid, ii, 5–6: Grant). At
Dido's request, Aeneas prepares to tell what he saw at the
destruction of Troy.
513. Hidalgoes: Gentlemen by birth.
514. en prise: In thrall, taken.
515. The sacrifice…despise: Ps. li, 17: 'The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, Oh God, thou will not
despise.' The aspect of contrition is not present in Ines's view of her
husband's situation.
516. Quid multis morer: Why do I delay so much? (Terence, Andria,
114: Grant). 'I' refers to the narrator. The phrase is often used in
Roman drama as a rhetorical tag: in short, to cut a long story short.
517. 
Smiling through her tears (Homer, Iliad,
vi, 484: Grant). i.e. Andromache, who weeps for Hector's fate, while
smiling at their infant son.
518. vis impotentiæ: 'Force of impotence'. Another oxymoron: an
attempt to reanimate the paradox in 'feeble strength'.
CHAPTER XXVIII
519. Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ii, 206: Horatio's first electrifying report
of seeing the ghost of Hamlet's father, a major source of rhetoric for
the Gothic novel. In this case an analogy for the appearance of the
Stranger.
520. lifted up his voice and wept: Gen. xxvii, 38. Esau's bitter complaint
to his father Isaac. The phrase marks a clear expression of emotion.
521. a sore evil: Eccles. v, 13 (Grant); i.e. 'riches kept for the owners
there of to their hurt'. Here it is used to describe the way they are
not allowed to be taught Spanish, because they are heretics.
522. one day telleth another: Ps. xix, 2 (Grant); a violent reversal of
context: 'Day unto day uttereth speech, and night into night sheweth
knowledge.' Nature continuously reveals God's handiwork, whereas
Maturin uses it for monotony.
523. the first of painters: It may be that we are not required to provide a
candidate, but Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson might be an
appropriate model.
524. taken from the evil to come: Isa. Ivii. 1. Here the context gives a
perfect application: death is a consolation for the righteous.
525. rivelled: Shrivelled.
526. any of those painters…as it lay: St Laurence, martyred by being
roasted on a gridiron, is a standard subject in Renaissance and
Florentine painting. St Bartholomew is said to have been flayed
alive and beheaded by the Babylonian King Astyages. His relics were
taken to St Bartholomew in the Tiber, Rome. Caravaggio is surely in
Maturin's mind, but also perhaps the various earlier Florentine and
Venetian painters, who delight in the erotic contradictions of St
Sebastian's martyrdom.
527. styptics: Remedies for haemorrhage.
528. pale as the widow of Seneca: i.e. from loss of blood. Paulina
attempted to follow her husband by opening her veins, after his
inculpation in the conspiracy of Piso. But she was prevented by
Nero.
529. the mother of witchcrafts and spiritual seduction: the phrase is
the symptom of Ines's Protestant training; a standard description of
Roman Catholicism as the whore of Babylon.
530. voluntary humility: Col. ii,18. Paul inveighs here against
religiosity.
531. destitute…tormented: Heb. xi, 37. Paul recalls the sufferings of
the Jews and attributes them to their faith. Ines tries to take heart
from Paul.
532. ensamples: Examples.
CHAPTER XXIX
533. Woe 'tis to love not, and to love is woe;
But worst it is of woes
To love and lose.
(Anacreontea, xxix, 1–4. Loeb trans.)
534. Punic faith: Treachery. The Romans distrusted the Carthaginians.
535. amid a labyrinth of rocks: Don Quixote, Pt I, ch. xxix. There is no
further description of the landscape in which they find Quixote in
this passage in Cervantes' text.
536. de Collibus Ubedæ: See Cervantes, in Don Quixote, concerning the
Hills of Ubeda. The allusion is in Pt II, ch. xliii.
537. metal…attractive: Shakespeare, Hamlet, 111, ii, 109–10. Hamlet's
tormenting remark about Ophelia to Gertrude in the play scene
which turns the latter into a (failed) sexual competitor.
538. Richard and Richmond: Richard III (1452–85) and Henry Earl of
Richmond (1457–1509), who will become Henry VII. Bosworth Field
(1485) resulted in the defeat and death of Richard III, the last
Yorkist King, and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty under Henry
VII which, in its emblem, combined the White Rose (York) and Red
(Lancaster), ending thirty years of warfare.
539. Tyndal in Holland: William Tyndale (d. 1536) actually printed his
translation of the New Testament in Germany (at Cologne and
Worms). His Old Testament translations were printed at Marburg
(Grant).
540. the then favourite of the Queen: Robert Dudley (1532–88), Earl of
Leicester. Later, after his seduction of Elizabeth's favourite lady-in-
waiting, Lettice Knollys, their secret marriage, and his subsequent
espousal of the Puritan cause, Leicester fell out of favour with
Elizabeth.
541. jesses: In falconry, the short straps attached to each of the legs of
a hawk.
542. the misguided Laud: William Laud (1573–1645), the anti-Puritan
Archbishop of Canterbury, was executed for treason.
the unfortunate Strafford: Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of
Strafford (1593–1641) – unfortunate, because after his failure to
quell the Scottish revolt of 1639, he was impeached by Parliament
and executed.
543. Let the praises…hands: Ps. cxlix, 6. Mortimer's second son is an
apostate.
544. Cloghan Casde: I have been an inmate in this castle for many
months – it is still inhabited by the venerable descendant of that an-
cient family. His son is now High-Sheriff of the King’s county. Half
the castle was battered down by Oliver Cromwell’s forces, and rebuilt
in the reign of Charles the Second. The remains of the castle are a
tower of about forty feet square, and apartment on each and a narrow
staircase communicating with each, and reaching to the bartizan. A
beautiful ash-plant, which I have often admired, is now displaying its
foliage between the stones of the bartizan, – and how it got or grew
there, heaven only knows. There it is, however; and it is better to see
it there than to feel the discharge of hot water or molten lead from the
apertures.
bartizan: A small battlemented turret, projecting at right angles
from the main battlements of a castle; the term appears to have
been invented by Sir Walter Scott, which is probably where Maturin
found it.
545. Punctuation garbled by misquotation: to make clear sense, the
opening lines from Milton's poem should read:
Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounced his liturgy,
To seize the widow'd whore Plurality
From them whose sin ye envied, and not
abhorred,…
546. Colonel Pride: Thomas Pride (d. 1658), the Roundhead soldier
who commanded a regiment at Naseby and signed Charles I's death
warrant as a Parliamentary Commissioner.
547. Thou.…Sandal: John i, 27; this lugubrious joke is founded on
John the Baptist's phrase, describing his own unworthiness to
unfasten even the latchet of Jesus's shoe.
548. Hugh Peters: The Independent divine (1598–1660) and powerful
preacher, executed as an abettor of the execution of Charles I.
549. Ranters: A sect under the Commonwealth who rejected all
authority.
Antinomians: Followers of Johannes Agricola, an extreme
Calvinist sect (whose name, from Gr. anti, against, and nomos, law,
means 'against the law'), feared as thinking themselves guided only
by conscience, not the law.
550. Fifth-monarchy man: One who believed that Christ's Second
Coming was near at hand, as foretold in Dan. ii, 44.
551. Cameronians: Reformed Presbyterians who attacked the Bishops
and refused their allegiance to Kings. Named after their leader,
Richard Cameron (d.1680), the Scottish Covenanter and field
preacher.
552. the Episcopalian system: The Bishops.
553. Apostate: One who abandons his religious principles, a renegade,
turncoat; i.e. the second son, who became a Puritan.
554. a brand…burning: Amos iv, 11.
555. Monk: George, Duke of Albemarle (1608–70), General Monk,
who brought about the Restoration of the Monarchy ('the banished
family' = the Stuarts) in 1660.
556. Lord…salvation: Luke ii, 29–30 (Grant). The words of the patient
Simeon who is permitted to see the infant Christ, and thus the
future, before he dies. The analogy with the Restoration is an apt
and plausible one for 'the old loyalist'.