Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
portentously off, like ships of war reconnoitring a
strong fort, to return with added strength 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.
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