SOURCE: Summers, Rev. Montague. “Byron's ‘Lovely Rosa.’” In Essays In Petto, 57-73. London: The Fortune Press, 1928.

[In the following excerpt, the foremost Gothic scholar of the early twentieth century offers a general overview of Dacre's oeuvre.]

Far be't from me unkindly to upbraid
The lovely Rosa's prose in masquerade,
Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her mind,
Leave wondering comprehension far behind.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 1809, ll. 519-522.

The orthodox note on the above passage runs thus: “The lovely little Jessica, the daughter of the noted Jew K———, seems to be a follower of the Della Crusca School, and has published two volumes of very respectable absurdities in rhyme, as times go; besides sundry novels in the style of the first edition of the Monk.” Coleridge, in his edition of Byron (I., p. 357), gives us an additional sentence: “She has since married the Morning Post—an exceeding good match; and is now dead—which is better. B. 1816.” We are further told that the last seven words are in pencil, and, possibly, by another hand.

King was a noted money-lender of the day, who is said to have dealt almost exclusively with the peerage. He seems to have been a man of address and talent in his line, and even to have had pretensions to taste and patronage as regards the fine arts. Especially was he famous for his excellent dinners, much frequented by the wits, when sometimes the highest personages of the realm were not strangers to his table. Sheridan was often his guest at his villa on the Thames, a palatial residence, fitted up by Walsh Porter in the Oriental style. His town house was in Clarges Street, and particularly remarkable shone his gorgeous equipage, which “advertised his calling.” “A yellow carriage, with panels emblazoned with a well-executed shield and armorial bearings, and drawn by two richly-caparisoned steeds, the jehu on the box wearing, according to the fashion of those days, a coat of many capes, a powdered wig, and gloves à l'Henri Quatre, and two spruce footmen in striking but not gaudy livery with long canes in their hands, daily made its appearance in the Park from four to seven in the height of the season.” Mrs. King, a fine woman, dressed in the latest mode, was usually to be seen in this chariot. Gronow, whose description is the above, records a mot uttered by Brummell when Lord William L———, on being thrown from his horse, was placed in the yellow carriage and conducted home by the obliging Mrs. King. “Aha,” quoth the beau, “here we have a Bill Jewly (duly) taken up and honoured.”

There is no mention however to be found of King's daughter, and Coleridge justly questions if in Byron's lines there is not some confusion between this young lady and “Rosa Matilda,”¹ Charlotte Dacre, who married William Pitt Byrne, Robinson's successor as editor of the Morning Post, and who wrote under this Della Cruscan pseudonym. Charlotte Dacre, who is unnoticed in the Dictionary of National Biography, was born in 1782. She must have died before April 28th, 1842, since on that date Byrne married Julia Busk, the second daughter and fourth child of Hans Busk, scholar and poet. Julia Byrne was also an authoress who wrote several volumes of travel and foreign studies. She died as late as March 29th, 1894, at her residence, 16, Montagu Street, Portman Square, her husband having predeceased her by more than thirty years, April 8th, 1861. Charlotte Dacre published the following works: Hours of Solitude, poems, 2 vols. 8vo, Hughes, June, 1805, 14s.; Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer, a romance, 3 vols., Hughes, 1805, 13s. 6d.; Zofloya, or The Moor, a romance, 3 vols., Longman, June, 1806, 13s. 6d.; The Libertine: a novel by “Charlotte Dacre, better known as Rosa Matilda,” 4 vols., Cadell, April, 1807; The Passions, a novel “by Rosa Matilda,” 4 vols., Cadell, June, 1811, 21s.; George the Fourth, “A Poem … to which are added Lyrics designed for various Melodies,” 1 vol., Hatchard, 1822.

Hours of Solitude, effusions “part the production of my untaught youth, and part of my later years,” supplies as frontispiece a portrait of Rosa Matilda. She appears an elegant dark-haired, liquid-eyed damsel, who might well be of Hebraic parentage. The bare random titles of the poems will give some idea of the two volumes: “Passion Uninspired by Sentiment”; “To Lindorf”; “The Musing Maniac” (written at eighteen); “The Murderer”, which in fine frenzy commences thus:

Silent he stalk'd, and ever and anon
He shudder'd and turn'd back, saying “Who follows?”
Horror had blanch'd his cheek; his writhing brows
Confess'd the inward struggles of his mind.
E'en in the distant, ever-varying clouds
His tortur'd fancy form'd a vengeful angel,
Pointing the sword of justice o'er his head,
And e'en the murm'ring zephyrs, rushing by,
Seem'd the low whisp'ring of the restless shade
His sanguinary steel had forc'd abroad.

That's good; “forc'd abroad” is good. Other pieces are “Fog,” “Mildew,” “Frost,” “Thaw,” “The Evil Being,” “L'Absence,” “Lasso a Me!,” “Madness,” “To Sympathy,” which begins:

Sweet Sympathy! Thou fair, celestial maid,
                    Thou precious, soft, indefinable tie,
                    Source of the pitying drop that dims the eye,
Source of the sigh to Friendship's sorrows paid.

We also have “The Mountain Violet” (written at seventeen); “Experience” (written at eighteen—a charming paradox); “Tu es Beau comme le Desert, avec toutes ses Fleurs et toutes ses Brises”:

Oh! my soul's lord! to my enamour'd eye
          A fairer person lives not; turn not then
In soft confusion from me—nor deny
          Mine eyes to gaze on thee alone of men.

Which let us hope apostrophizes Mr. Byrne, although I am afraid it does not.

“The Mistress” thus addresses “the Spirit of her Lover.” “Can I not press thee to my bosom? Oh! miserable mockery! thou would'st evaporate in my embrace.” There are also verses written under the romantic signature of Azor, a favourite name with Rosa Matilda:

When I swore that I lov'd you, and lov'd you to madness,
          My words they were broken, my eyes overflow'd;
When you own'd that you lov'd, my heart bounded with gladness
          I felt of my bliss as the bliss of a god.

And “A l'Oreiller de ma Maitresse”:

Sweet pillow! on whose down the loveliest fair
          That e'er in slumber clos'd her radiant eyes,
Reclines, her wasted spirits to repair,
          That hence recruited, lovelier she may rise.

“Weymouth” is sentimental; “Julia's Murder,” horrid; “The Skeleton Priest, or The Marriage of Death,” a title which would have entranced Beddoes, highly reminiscent of Alonzo and the Fair Imogene; A Song of Melancholy almost Ossianic with its “Dark as the wintry midnight is my soul; sad and tempestuous. Fain would I sit upon the stern brow'd rock, listening to the roaring of the terrible cataract,” which seems an echo of Beattie's Edwin. I suppose that minor, very minor, poetry of all ages merely differs in form, and the impressionistic Cartwheels or Parallelopipeds which (I believe) prevail to-day are infinitely more absurd than were the contents of Miss Simpkinson's album.

George the Fourth, A Poem: Dedicated to the Right Honourable the Marquis of Londonderry, cannot be taken very seriously. Yet it opens heroically enough:

Expanding far o'er Albion's wide domains,
Where never-vanquish'd, heaven-born Freedom reigns,
Prolific Commerce sheds its genial rays,
While grateful myriads hymn their monarch's praise,

notwithstanding Greville thought that the Court presented “every base, low, and unmanly propensity, with selfishness, avarice and life of petty intrigue and mystery.” Nevertheless the King is hailed as

Patron of Genius! Faith's unshaken friend,

and there is really humour when he is bidden

Think thy great Sire from realms of brightest day
Beholds well pleased—directs thy destin'd way.

The seventeen lyrics and four little odd pieces which go to make up this slim duodecimo are sugary enough, “The Mountain Cot,” for example, commences thus:

How happy is the woodman's life!
          Contented with his lowly lot,
Ere the lark sings his matin lay,
          He leaves his humble mountain cot.

It is really surprising how a writer who revelled in such vapid lyricism can have written romances which, however imitative and sensational, are undeniably interesting, and of their kind admirably contrived and related.

The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer is dedicated in admiring terms to Matthew Gregory Lewis. This romance deals with the adventures of Cazire, daughter to the Marquis Arieni. At the opening of volume one the Marquis, having ruined himself by extravagance and loose living, flies to Italy with little Cazire, his favourite child, who is aged eight, leaving his deserted wife to retire to a romantic cottage. On his journey, in fact at the very first “locanda” where he halts, Arieni meets a beautiful countess, usually termed “the Rosendorf,” with whom he soon forms a permanent but not very honourable connexion. A little later Cazire is introduced to Louis St. Elmer, and precociously falls in love with him. She is, however, incontinently consigned to the Convent of St. Omer to be educated by the nuns. Here she indulges in a course of “Dangerous Reading,” and is furnished “clandestinely with volumes as romantic as the most avaricious fancy could desire.” After several years spent in these delights she leaves the convent, and again encounters St. Elmer. Expressing himself shocked at her ultra-Gothic and impetuous views of life and conduct, he suddenly withdraws himself from her society and departs nobody knows whither. Cazire bemoans his loss for a time, but is consoled by the attentions of Augustus Fribourg, a necessitarian, who talks a vague philosophy through several chapters and makes ardent love to her meanwhile. She soon yields, in spite of the fact he is a married man, and in spite of the warnings of Ariel, a mysterious correspondent, who keeps conveying letters to her in some occult manner. Cazire next engages in a liaison with “a son of pleasure,” Lindorf, whose person “was more than elegant. It was too beautiful for man!” Disregarding an urgent missive from Ariel, who assures her that Lindorf is married, she flies with this Adonis to his home, where she makes the acquaintance of his sister Olivia and a friend. One morning the friend and the paragon are missing, whereupon the wretched Cazire is informed by Olivia that she is in reality no relation to Lindorf, but has merely been the mistress of the friend. Count Loretti, a very equivocal personage, next appears on the scene, but Cazire, weary of intrigue, seeks refuge at the house of a poor widow, whose daughter, Janetta, becomes her devoted attendant. Olivia presently offers her money which she rejects with fine scorn, and heroically taking from a drawer “various compositions, the produce of leisure hours,” she submits these to a bookseller, who more suo informs her she will get “fame without emolument!” She is now arrested for a debt of twenty sequins at the suit of the Lady Olivia di Orno, and being penniless, is hurried off to jail. In prison a boy, Lindorf's child, is born. After a day or two, however, a sumptuous carriage sent by Ariel conveys her to a magnificent palace, and that evening the mystic Ariel himself appears in the person of St. Elmer, “the real lover.” Cazire weds St. Elmer, but alas! finds she cannot love him. Very humanly she remarks “Had you but one error it should be dearer to my heart than all your virtues.” One night a man, wounded in a street brawl, takes refuge in their house. It is Fribourg. Anon his old passion blazes out again, when Cazire “seals destruction in his arms.” Immediately she is struck with remorse and attempts suicide, but the pistol misses, and she “falls enhorrored² to the floor.” Presently St. Elmer, discovering his wife's guilt, challenges Fribourg, only to be brought home dying from the field of honour. Fribourg, pursued by the officers of justice, shoots himself, while the wretched Cazire, consigning her child to the care of her mother, and presenting Janetta with her “palazzo,” retires to St. Omer's to take the veil, and presumably to write her memoirs. The incidents and adventures are, as may be seen, both melodramatic and intricate, but in spite of crudities and even absurdities not a few, there are striking, forceful passages in The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer, and not infrequently we meet with speeches and situations that of their kind prove effective enough.

Zofloya, or The Moor, which appeared in June, 1806, an even more sensational and extravagant melodrama than Charlotte Dacre's first romance, is throughout accusingly imitative of Lewis' The Monk. It had none the less an extraordinary vogue at the time, and in 1812 there was published at Paris, four volumes, chez Barba, Zofloya, ou Le Maure, histoire du XV^e Siècle, “traduite de l'Anglais par Mme. de Viterne.” Mme. de Viterne was also responsible for French versions of The Nun of Misericordia (1807), an entirely typical novel by the prolific Sophia L. Francis, and of Francis Lathom's The Unknown, or The Northern Gallery (1808). Victoria de Loredani, the central figure of Zofloya, is proud, passionate, and cruel, but lovely beyond compare, qualities which are incidentally shared by her brother Leonardo. All the wealth and beauty of Venice grace her birthday fête, when there appears on the scene Count Adolphus, bearing a letter of introduction to the Marquis de Loredani. Adolphus, a gallant who would have been termed in Restoration days “a general undertaker,” i.e., a promiscuous libertine, repays the hospitality afforded him by abducting Laurina, the Marquis' wife, who is still a woman of infinite charm. Victoria is left to be the sole comfort of her dishonoured father. For some not very obvious reason Adolphus after a long interval returns, and in a duel kills the Marquis. Laurina now persuades Victoria to fly with her and Adolphus to Montebello. Here the Count of Berenza falls in love with Victoria, but as this does not suit the plans of Adolphus the guilty pair take Victoria on a visit to la Signora de Modena, a sour old beldame, who conveniently dwells in the midst of an almost inaccessible forest. Victoria, deserted by her mother and the count, soon finds herself a close prisoner in the signora's charge. None the less she escapes after a while, and makes her way to Venice, where she again meets Berenza, who lodges her in a mysterious palace. Berenza tells her that he has been loved by a fair courtezan named Megalina Strozzi, whose advances he rejected. One night Victoria discovers a masked man about to poniard the sleeping Berenza. As the intending assassin escapes his face is unveiled and it proves to be Leonardo. Having fled from home after his mother's abduction, he has met with many adventures and finally become the accepted lover of Megalina, at whose instigation he seeks to murder Berenza. Terrified at the failure, this worthy couple incontinently leave Venice and seek a refuge in Capri. Berenza marries Victoria, but five years after their solemn nuptials there arrives at the palace Henriquez, his brother, of whom Victoria promptly becomes enamoured. Henriquez, however, is about to wed Lilla, a maiden of transcendent loveliness. Zofloya, the Moor, Henriquez's servant, is a paragon of every accomplishment, and a universal favourite. This excites the jealousy of a fellow-servant, Latoni, who stabs the Moor, and casts the body into the canal. A few days after, Latoni, seized with a sudden illness, confesses his crime, and, almost as he speaks, expires. A little later Zofloya returns to the palace to relate how he was picked up by a fisherman, who tended his wounds and nursed him back to health. An indefinable attraction now begins to draw Victoria to Zofloya, and she does not hesitate frequently to meet him at sunset in retired and lonely spots. She makes him her confidant, candidly avowing her love for Henriquez. The Moor supplies her with poison with which she experiments on her husband. Lest suspicion should be aroused, as his health fails, she accompanies him to Torre-Alto, his remote castle in the Apennines, where they are joined by Henriquez, Lilla, and an ancient lady, Lilla's aunt. Victoria now almost daily meets Zofloya in secret, and soon her whole heart “is given up to anarchy and crime.” The Moor becomes her master and tutor, and by his agency she administers a swift poison to the aunt of Lilla and to Berenza, both of whom expire in agony. The two confederates then seize Lilla herself and imprison the weeping maiden in a mysterious cavern. Henriquez, despairing at her loss, falls ill, but Victoria has recourse to a philtre, brewed by Zofloya, which causes the sick man to believe her Lilla, and after a wild revel he embraces her as his bride. In the morning he awakes to find that Victoria is the partner of his bed. The situation here is not unlike that of Syphax and Erictho in Marston's Sophonisba, Acts IV.-V., where the Libyan king is cheated by the witch in Sophonisba's shape, but at dawn she starts up in her own foul hideousness.³ Henriquez, upon discovering the trick, promptly plunges a sword into his breast and expires. Victoria, mad with rage, rushes to the cave where Lilla is chained, and after a terrible struggle stabs her to death, hurling the body over the cliff. The Moor rebukes her violence, and informs her that suspicion having been aroused, some of her servants are gone to Venice to fetch magistrates and guards, whilst the rest remain to prevent her escape. Zofloya adds, moreover, that he can only save her from arrest and execution if she will give herself wholly to him. This she vows to do, and immediately she falls into a magic slumber. On awaking she finds herself amid mountains and beetling crags; thunder is bellowing in the valleys, and the red lightning blazes through the sky. The Moor is at her side, and informs her they are in the heart of the Alps. Banditti surround them, and lead them to a cave where a number of Transpontine brigands are assembled at a feast. Their captain, who is masked, asks Zofloya if Victoria is his wife or his mistress? “Neither,” replies the Moor, “yet she is bound to me by indissoluble bands for all eternity.” That night Victoria has a vision of a glorious angel who bids her repent and fly from the Moor, since he is not what he seems. When she opens her eyes Zofloya is at her side, and eagerly he asks if she wishes to leave him. She clings to him, vowing in passionate terms to be his for ever. Anon the brigands bring back two prisoners, a man and a wounded woman. The captain of the band cuts down the man remorselessly, and then, throwing aside his mask, shows the features of Leonardo. The woman is his mother, his victim Count Adolphus. Laurina dies, and Leonardo weeps at her death-bed, but Victoria mocks and reviles. Eventually the banditti are betrayed to the soldiers by one of their number, Ginotti. Leonardo falls fighting, and Megalina Strozzi, who has shared his wild career, stabs herself to the heart. Victoria and Zofloya are surrounded, but he promises to help her even then if she will once more vow to be his and his alone. When she pronounces the words she immediately finds herself on the summit of a precipitous gorge, alone with the Moor, who suddenly changes from a comely youth to a frightful fiend. “‘Behold me as I am, no longer that which I appeared to be, but the sworn enemy of all created nature, by men called Satan. Yes, it was I that under semblance of the Moor appeared to thee.’ As he spoke, he grasped more firmly the neck of Victoria, with one push he whirled her headlong down the dreadful abyss!—as she fell his loud dæmonic laugh, his yells of triumph, echoed in her ears; and a mangled corpse she fell, she was received into the foaming waters below.”

It will be noticed that this conclusion, though indeed by no means so striking and forceful, is exactly similar to the final scene in Lewis' most famous romance where the exulting demon hurls headlong the wretched Ambrosio, who has just pledged himself to Lucifer, from the cliff to the water's brink, and presently the swollen stream carries “into the river the corse of the despairing monk.” As has before been noticed, not only here but throughout Zofloya we have incessant and unashamed imitation of The Monk. Perhaps with one or two very patent exceptions it was not so much actual incident that Charlotte Dacre pilfered for her pages, as sentiment, characterization, scenic description—though in this particular Mrs. Radcliffe also is laid under wholesale contribution—nomenclature, and a certain lax morality which becomes insufferably trite because palpably a pose and assumed. All these gusts of fierce passion, these pangs and ecstasies of unhallowed love, ring false, and amours which are no doubt intended to convey the sentimental seductiveness of Ovid's poisoned honey seem faded and have lost their fire. These unreal erotics are by no means peculiar to Charlotte Dacre, for a dozen other writers of the school which all too closely imitated “the style of the first edition of The Monk” have spiced their churchyard chapters with would-be luscious description, and stand convicted of a conventional and frigid lasciviousness. They blunder with the clumsy and ill-acted impudence of a naturally modest man.

There appears in Zofloya a blemish, which it must be confessed is avoided by most romantic writers of the time, and into which no story-teller of practised skill should suffer himself to fall. Charlotte Dacre cannot refrain from frequent and overt allusions to the mystery that surrounds the Moor; she unduly emphasizes his supernatural power, his gigantic stature, the awful swiftness of his movements from place to place, and far too prematurely does she insist upon the unhallowed alliance he forms with the abandoned Victoria, who again and again in the course of the romance is made to devote herself with horrid vows to her tutor in evil, and swear to be his body and soul through all eternity. It is hardly with surprise we learn in the final scene that Zofloya is “a frightful fiend from the nethermost hell.” He was, no doubt, in some sort intended to be a counterpart of Matilda in The Monk. But it is to be observed that the figure of the voluptuous beauty whose wanton charms bring about the downfall of Ambrosio, although it has vitality, is quite incongruous and has no consistency. The fact is that Lewis during the course of his narrative changed his mind as to her person and her influence. In the earlier chapters she is a lovely and passionate woman, essentially human, who has become deeply enamoured of the abbot, and who as she relates in detail, forms a very subtle plan to enter the cloister in order that she may seduce him to her arms, a design which is crowned by nights of unbridled venery. She does not shrink from the practices of black magic and sells herself to the demon. In the final scene where Lucifer is hideously exulting over the lost Ambrosio he cries: “I observed your blind idolatry of the Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty spirit assume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded to the blandishments of Matilda.” So the character which commences as a maiden torn with desire ends as a succubus. This is a bad fault, but it passes well-nigh unnoticed in the calenture of this fevered romance.

Zofloya achieved an immense success, and in August, 1810, it was epitomized in a chap-book of twenty-eight pages as The Dæmon of Venice, An Original Romance, “By a Lady.” This abridgement, published by Thomas Tegg, 3, Cheapside, a well-known purveyor of cheap novels and smaller literary ware, is embellished with two most appropriate illustrations, wherein, as in the Primrose family group, the painter has not been sparing of his colours. Such an issue proves the popularity of the work, and was no doubt contraband, as not only is the title altered, but the characters are further disguised, Victoria di Loredani becoming Arabella di Lenardi; Leonardo, Orlando; Adolphus, Jaques; la signora de Modena, Signora di Tabitha; Berenza, Ameins; Lilla, Agnes; Henriquez, Francisco; and Zofloya, Abdullah the Moor.

Particularly interesting is the connexion between Zofloya and Shelley's two juvenile romances Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian (1811). Crude and exaggerated as these novels may be, they are important in that they already foreshadow much of the poet's later self and they clearly contain the embryo of that philosophy which found immortal expression in his greatest poems. Medwin, who tells us that The Italian was a favourite work of Shelley's youth, goes on to say that Zofloya “quite enraptured” the young enthusiast, and hence it was the source for his two romances. It must be remembered too that Godwin's St. Leon was ever in Shelley's hands, and he mentioned to Stockdale that it had powerfully influenced him in writing St. Irvyne. It would be easy to show in detail how amply Shelley drew from Mrs. Dacre—more than one passage is actually paraphrased—but it must suffice to touch upon but a few points. In Zastrozzi Matilda di Laurentini—Matilda is from The Monk and Laurentini from The Mysteries of Udolpho—is a close replica of Victoria di Loredani, and the scene where Henriquez or Verezzi is seduced, or well-nigh seduced, by a medicated philtre occurs in both novels, Lilla being named Julia by Shelley. Incidentally there is a character Verezzi in The Mysteries of Udolpho. In St. Irvyne Megalena has been borrowed from Megalena Strozzi in Zofloya, whence Shelley has also taken his Alpine bandits wholesale. The name Cavigni (St. Irvyne) is from The Mysteries of Udolpho. Ginotti of the “strangely and fearfully gleaming eyeball” has his name from Mrs. Dacre's brigand, who betrays the robbers' lair on Mt. Cenis to the Duke of Savoy. Further comparison were needless, but it should not be forgotten that at Christmas, 1809-1810, was being composed Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, which latter name is that of the heroine of The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer.

Mrs. Dacre's third romance, The Libertine, which appeared in April, 1807, achieved a popularity almost equal to that of her famous Zofloya, and was discussed on every side. Montmorency and his daughter, Gabrielle, have retired from a troublous world to an Arcadian valley in Switzerland, “that sublimely beautiful part which the magic pen of the tender enthusiast Rousseau has rescued from obscurity.” During a terrific storm Count Angelo d'Albini seeks shelter at their house, where Montmorency was reading, but not aloud, the “Maxims of La Rochefoucalt.” The visitor so charms his host by his noble bearing and courtly manners that he is pressed to stay for a few days, during which time he promptly seduces the unsophisticated but pliant Gabrielle, who, however, does not forsake her father's roof as her lover suggests, whereupon he is quick to take his leave. In due course Gabrielle becomes a mother, and Montmorency dies brokenhearted at his daughter's shame. She then resolves to follow her faithless Angelo, and entrusting her babe to the care of some honest cottagers, she dons male attire—an episode which reminds one of the Elizabethan dramatists—and calling herself Eugene makes her way to Naples. Here she enters the service of the Count, who confides to his page that he has a mistress, Oriana, “a bewitching Genoese.” Bravoes presently appear on the scene, and in a scuffle Eugene is wounded, thus saving the unworthy Angelo's life. She is recognized and greeted with rapture, being installed in his mansion. In a few months, however, the fickle wretch again deserts her and goes to England. Gabrielle follows him to London, bringing with her their little son Felix. Milborough, a treacherous waiting-maid, who seems modelled upon Millwood in Lillo's The London Merchant (George Barnwell), attends Gabrielle. Angelo, who is attracted by this woman's charms, intrigues with her, but he is fast reducing himself to poverty by gaming and other extravagances. Guessing that the end cannot be far, Milborough, robbing him of all upon which she can lay hands, disappears, taking with her the child whom she has already begun to initiate into every wickedness. Angelo is completely ruined, and only the patient Gabrielle clings to him in his misfortunes. They are reduced to great distress, which is unexpectedly relieved by one Ellesmere, a former friend, who now restores large sums of money of which he cheated him. At last Angelo makes Gabrielle his wife, but owing to her privations and sorrow she dies on the threshold of happier days. The widower goes to Paris, and here he is taken to a luxurious house filled with a superb company. To his surprise he recognizes in the hostess Milborough. This fair cyprian informs him that Felix has been stolen from her by a woman who seems to have taken a lesson from her own conduct and decamped with a large casket of jewels, money, and the boy, who cannot be traced. In horror Angelo flies from cities to seek a country retreat. He encounters a maiden Ida, who is living in a delicious rural solitude. Struck by her beauty, he wooes her. It appears that she has been betrayed by one Darlowitz, and later he finds that she is his daughter, Agnes. She enters a convent of the strictest order, and Angelo hurries back to England. On passing through Paris he learns that Milborough, owing to her riot and debauchery, has gone mad and is the hopeless inmate of an asylum for the most violently distempered and incurable lunatics. Arriving in England he settles down to a life of retirement and regret. One night he is attacked by a highwayman, to whom he gives all his gold. The robber is shortly afterwards taken, and when Angelo attends the trial, to his horror, he recognizes the prisoner as his son. Felix is condemned to death, and the wretched father shoots himself at the hour of execution.

Although a novel of many and complicated incidents and adventures must be sadly impaired by so brief a recapitulation, it is to be hoped that even this bald narrative may convey some idea of this powerful and distressing story, which fully deserved the success it immediately enjoyed, for by 1807 it had run into a third edition. It will be noticed that some hints are derived from The Monk, and Lewis no doubt suggested the horror of incest, which also appears in Walpole's The Mysterious Mother, printed at Strawberry Hill, 1768, and Shelley's The Cenci, 1819.

The Libertine was turned into French by Elisabeth de Bon, a famous purveyor of melodramatic fiction, and the translator in 1815 of Anna Maria Porter's The Recluse of Norway, 4 vols., 1814, together with many other novels of the same school. Angelo, Comte d'Albini, ou Les Dangers du Vice, “par Charlotte Dacre connue sous le nom de Rosa Matilda,” was published at Paris, 3 vols., 1816, “chez Arthur Bertrand,” and was soon to be seen in every fashionable boudoir and ruelle.

The story of The Passions is told in epistolary fashion, a series of letters mainly between Count Wiemar and Baron Rozendorf, or Rozendorf and Darlowitz. Perhaps there is no little truth in the harsh remarks of The Critical Review, December, 1811: “The inflated extravagance of diction, which deforms Rosa Matilda's novel of ‘The Passions,’ deducts very much from the interest which her work would otherwise have excited. The effect of her talents, for talents she undoubtedly possesses, is impaired by the repulsive affectation of her style.” At any rate Count Wiemar, who somewhat vaguely heads his first effusion Switzerland, where “it is nothing uncommon to see a herdsman with a volume of Voltaire or Rosseau [sic] in his hand,” which is, to say the least, extremely regrettable, protests to his friend that “I would not for the treasures of the east undergo another year such as the last I spent at Vienna.” Here he seems to have engaged the affections of the Countess Appollonia Zulmer, whom, however, he did not wish to lead to the altar, a feeling Rozendorf highly approves, since the lady “cannot breathe out of the warm meridian of gallantry and universal admiration.” In a letter to her gouvernante, Madame de Hauteville, the imperious Appollonia declares her frantic love for the fascinating Wiemar. Unfortunately she is in the power of two blackmailers, Pietro Mondovi and Catherine Glatz, who are continually draining her of large sums. We now have a letter to Rozendorf from Wiemar, who is at Zurich. He has fallen in love with Julia de Montalban, who resides with her mother in a small cottage, and he soon discovers that “they are supposed to be persons of rank, driven by misfortune into this seclusion; that they have already resided here several years, and are highly respected by the few with whom they deign to associate,” all of which seems pretty clearly taken from The Italian, when Ellena is living in great retirement near Naples with Signora Bianchi. The letters now cease, and a brief note informs us that Wiemar weds Julia de Montalban, upon the death of whose mother after four years they return to Vienna. The Countess Zulmer instantly seeks their society, and before long becomes “almost the shadow of the Countess Wiemar,” whom she endeavours to corrupt by a course of insidious reading and false philosophy. But presently she is withdrawn from these temptations, as Count Wiemar takes his wife and children to visit his dear friend Count Darlowitz, the spouse of the amiable Amelia. It is soon apparent, however, that Darlowitz is fast falling in love with Julia, and before long, although she cries, “The hot blush of agonizing shame tingles on my burning cheek,” it is pretty plain that the lady returns his passion. This she very unwisely confesses in a letter to Appollonia Zulmer, who, of course, promptly persuades her not to resist. “I am a fatuist, Julia,” writes the lady, by which she probably means a fatalist, “and I believe the pictured web of our lives is woven by the hand of destiny, and you, too, must yield to this doctrine of fatality, of which you are so reluctant a victim.” Meanwhile Amelia has expressed a wish that her husband shall take her to visit her mother, the Duchess of Sternach, who resides at Naples, and Wiemar resolves that he and Julia shall join the party, whence the two lovers are constantly thrown in one another's company. Appollonia now employs Mondovi to convey a letter to Wiemar at Naples, wherein, under a feigned hand, she more than hints at the state of affairs. Rozendorf upon learning this writes a stern letter to Darlowitz, bidding him “save from deep perdition the object of your guilty passion.” He also addresses some very plain speaking to the Countess Zulmer, whose Machiavellian guile has, he is confident, dealt the blow. Darlowitz on finding that his secret is “in the possession of another!” gives way to frenzy. He dare not think that his “Angel of innocence, pure as spiritual æther,” should be suspected, his “sublimated hopes” destroyed. In fact his emotions are so fearful that a fever supervenes, and he is only recalled from death's door by Julia's confession of love. The situation is exceedingly poignant, and in spite of some stilted phraseology it is exceedingly well portrayed. In the letters which pass between Darlowitz and Julia Mrs. Dacre shows herself possessed of considerable power and imagination. An accident reveals the state of her husband's affections to Amelia, whose broken heart cannot survive the shock. Although written in too florid a style to be truly pathetic, an emotion above all demanding the utmost simplicity, it cannot be denied that some passages of the death-bed scene, which is not unduly prolonged, are extremely moving. Julia flies, and Darlowitz, in agonies of remorse, destroys himself by his own hand. Unfortunately the wretched wife seeks a refuge with the Countess Zulmer, and writing from Zurich to implore her compassion, receives in reply a letter of biting irony which concludes in a whirl of passion: “Now then, let the mask be torn off. … Learn, too, that you have been my tool!—my puppet!—the instrument of my revenge on the perfidious Wiemar, who loved me ere he knew you—the object of it yourself, for daring to possess a heart which had wrested itself from me, and which, but for the intervention of your accursed influence, I might still have regained.” The triumphant Medea writes in similar strain to Wiemar. Meanwhile, in order to escape the increasing extortions of Mondovi, she secretly plans to leave Vienna, taking with her all her jewels and gold. Mondovi, however, discovers her design and, disguising himself as a postilion, drives her coach into the Black Forest, where he descends, drags her forth, and pierces her with deadly wounds, whilst a confederate rifles the chaise. At this moment Rozendorf and his servants, on their way to join Wiemar, rush up, attracted by the shrieks of the wretched woman. They rescue her, disarming the ruffians, and carry her to a wayside inn, where she expires in terrible agonies of mind and body. It is discovered that Julia has taken refuge with some cottagers at a hamlet named Eglisaw, but in consequence of the fatal events in which she was involved her reason has well-nigh forsaken her. Curiously enough, towards the conclusion of the story the epistolary form is dropped, and the events which follow are now simply narrated. Wiemar passes several months of great unhappiness, for it is felt that if he presents himself to his sorrowing wife her fear and remorse may drive her to frantic madness. In fact she has already possessed herself of a penknife belonging to her attendant Jeannette, but this she is unable to use. The end comes when one winter's night the wretched maniac, tortured to frenzy by her self-accusations of murder and unfaith, escapes from the house and, after wandering far and wide in the storm, chances upon the path leading to the cottage where she once dwelt in happiness with her mother, and where now her husband is sojourning to watch over her as best he may. “She draws near! nearer and nearer still; her strength fails, her fainting footsteps flag; yet she gains the winding avenue which leads to the house; she beholds the very door! A hollow cry escapes her, and with a frightful effort she drags herself along; a few steps more, and she touches the threshold.” But just as she is about to knock feebly for admittance her strength fails, and she falls without a sound, whilst the heavy snowflakes wind a soft white pall over her dead body.

I am very well aware that any analysis of a novel is apt to be bald and commonplace; in a mere relation of incidents much that is of interest evaporates completely. The art of the writer fades away, and dry bare bones alone are left, nor is there any prophet to clothe them with flesh. No doubt the account I have endeavoured to give of Charlotte Dacre's romances is trite, but yet I did not very well see how otherwise it was possible to review briefly these works, which had in their own day no inconsiderable meed of popularity. It is, I venture to think, good sometimes to turn from the great ones of literature and adventure among the smaller names. When I first read English Bards and Scotch Reviewers I was full of curiosity concerning “the lovely Rosa,” and my curiosity went unsatisfied, for I was never able to find anyone then or in after years who had so much as heard of the lady. I determined to explore. I have always had a love for the occult, and I suppose there are but few, if any, writers in English fiction whose works are more difficult to discover than are the romances of Charlotte Dacre, “better known by the Name of Rosa Matilda,” who married Byrne of the “Morning Post.”

Notes

1. It must be remembered that Anna Matilda, who was scarified by Gifford, is Mrs. Hannah Cowley, the skilful dramatist and poetess (1743-1809).

2. “Enhorrored” is not to be found in the New English Dictionary.

3. Cf. Settle's The Female Prelate, where Pope Joan, feigning to be Angelina, shares the bed of the Duke of Saxony. A fire breaks out and the imposture is exposed.