_The Wild Irish Boy_ (1808), _The Milesian Chief_ (1812), _Women_ (1818), and _The Albigenses_ (1824) are negligible, the last, perhaps, rather less so than the others.

But _Melmoth the Wanderer_ (1820) is in quite a different case.

It has faults in plenty--especially a narrative method of such involution that, as it has been said, "a considerable part of the book consists of a story told to a certain person, who is a character in a longer story, found in a manuscript which is delivered to a third person, who narrates the greater part of the novel to a fourth person, who is the namesake and descendant of the title-hero." Stripped of these tiresome lendings (which, as has been frequently pointed out, were a mania with the eighteenth century and naturally grew to such intricacy as this), the central story, though not exactly new, is impressive: and it is told and worked out in manner more impressive, because practically novel, save for, perhaps, a little suggestion from _Vathek_.

Melmoth has bartered his soul with the devil for something like immortality and other privileges, including the unusual one of escaping doom if he can get some one to take the bargain off his hands.

This leads up to numerous episodes or chapters in which Melmoth endeavours to obtain substitutes: and in one of these the love interest of the book--the, of course, fatal love of Melmoth himself for a Spanish-Indian girl Immalee or Isidora--is related with some real pathos and passion, though with a good deal of mere sentiment and twaddle.