trength and fury."

He takes pleasure in coining unusual, striking phrases, such as:
"All colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary,"
or "Minutes are hours in the _noctuary_ of terror," or "The
secret of silence is the only secret. Words are a blasphemy
against that taciturn and invisible God whose presence enshrouds
us in our last extremity."

Maturin chooses his similes with discrimination, to heighten the
effect he aims at producing:

"The locks were so bad and the keys so rusty that it was like the
cry of the dead in the house when the keys were turned," or:

"With all my care, however, the lamp declined,
quivered, flashed a pale light, like the smile of
despair, on me, and was extinguished ... I had watched
it like the last beatings of an expiring heart, like
the shiverings of a spirit about to depart for
eternity."

There are no quiet scenes or motionless figures in _Melmoth_.
Everything is intensified, exaggerated, distorted. The very
clouds fly rapidly across the sky, and the moon bursts forth with
the "sudden and appalling effulgence of lightning." A shower of
rain is perhaps "the most violent that was ever precipitated on
the earth." When Melmoth stamps his foot "the reverberation of
his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with
the thunder." Maturin's use of words like "callosity,"
"induration," "defecated," "evanition," and his fondness for
italics are other indications of his desire to force an
impression by fair means or foul.

The gift of psychological insight that distinguishes _Montorio_
reappears in a more highly developed form in _Melmoth the
Wanderer_. "Emotions," Maturin declares, "are my events," and he
excels in depicting mental as well as physical torture. The
monotony of a "timeless day" is suggested with dreary reality in
the scene where Moncada and his guide await the approach of night
to effect their escape from the monastery. The gradual surrender
of resolution before slight, reiterated assaults is cunningly
described in the analysis of Isidora's state of mind, when a
hateful marriage is forced upon her. Occasionally Maturin
astonishes us by the subtlety of his thought:

"While people think it worth while to torment us we are never
without some dignity, though painful and imaginary."

It is his faculty for describing intense, passionate feeling, his
power of painting wild pictures of horror, his gifts for
conveyin