Poetry played an important part in the English literary scene during the 19th century. The quality varied from the sublime – Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson – to the mediocre. English magazines of the time often featured verses by those belonging to the latter category. One such was Murdo Young, a Scotsman who is remembered not for his poetic output but for the fact that he was the editor, and later proprietor, of The Sun, a prominent newspaper of the early 19th century.

In 1837, Young purchased another newspaper – The True Sun (which included Charles Dickens among its reporters) and merged it with his own paper, The Sun. Apart from his journalistic enterprises, Young fancied himself as a poet. On June 29, 1838, the day of Queen Victoria’s coronation, he issued a special edition of The Sun with a portrait of the young queen on the front page accompanied by a poem, The Coronation Day, written by Young himself. His earlier literary works include an epic poem The Shades of Waterloo, published in 1816, just one year after the famous battle which saw Napoleon defeated. Brevity was not one of Young’s virtues and this poem runs to 144 pages!

Another long poem followed, Antonia, which was published in London in 1818. This fictional dramatic poem in rhyming couplets is divided into three cantos and runs to 94 pages. The full title of the published work is Antonia – A Poem with Notes descriptive of the Plague in Malta. It was published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown of London.

The inspiration for Antonia was Young’s visit to Malta in 1813 – an unwise choice of year as it marked the outbreak of the famous plague epidemic. During his stay, Young had the opportunity to witness the progress of the disease from beginning to end. He managed to weave his observations of the horrific circumstances that the Maltese population had endured during the dreaded contagion into a romantic story of a love which could not be.

The first lines of this epic poem introduce the location – the island of Melita – with a reference to its climate and history:

There is an isle where morning’s breath is sweet,

And even’s cool sigh is soothing after heat!

Where ancient glories consecrate the scene,

And modern splendor rivals what hath been.

Young then introduces the main protagonists of the piece – the noble Francesco, his wife Langema and their two children Antonia and her older brother Cantore. The rather Shakespearian plot revolves around the beautiful Antonia and Orlando, a handsome youth. On reaching womanhood – In the soft dawn of womanhood arrayed – Antonia fell in love with Orlando. Unfortunately, Orlando’s poverty and his inability to keep Antonia in the manner in which she was accustomed became an obstacle to their union, and her father Francesco would have none of it. After the two lovers had secretly exchanged vows of eternal faithfulness, Orlando decided to solve the impasse by sailing away with Antonia’s brother Cantore to make his fortune:

I would not leave thee, lovelier in thy woe,

But prudence, duty urge that I should go

And, more than all, the hopes of winning thee

When Fortune smiles beyond the dark-blue sea.

Orlando’s absence was the opportunity which Dylrook, one of Antonia’s earlier rejected suitors, seized to press home his suit. Antonia again spurns him, but the wealthy Dylrook was favoured by Antonia’s parents and, after news reaches Malta that Orlando and Cantore had perished in a shipwreck, they force her into marrying him. This is the point where contagion rears its ugly head and becomes a deus ex machina, saving Antonia from the unwanted union. On the very day of the wedding, a messenger arrives:

With tidings drear - The pest and quarantine

Detain Dylrook in perilous distress.

Valletta mourns, beware whom you embrace.

The plague spreads like wildfire and Young devotes a good part of the poem to a description of some of the harrowing scenes which characterised Valletta:

Where every face betrayed the secret dread

Who next will swell the number of the dead?

Antonia’s parents both fall victim to the contagion and their house and wealthy possessions are burnt. She becomes an outcast, shunned for fear of infection, and takes to wandering along the shore. In her despair she resolves to put an end to her misery and plunges into the sea.

Young managed to weave his observations of the horrific circumstances that the Maltese population had endured during the dreaded contagion into a romantic story of a love which could not be

Salvation is at hand, however, for yet another of her rejected suitors, Moran by name, happens to be nearby on his galleon. Moran, who had left Malta and turned corsair after being spurned, rescues Antonia and sails away with her. He attacks a Greek vessel, and during a lengthy engagement meets his death. And who do you think is on board the Greek vessel? Orlando and Cantore, that’s who: they hadn’t perished after all! Our heroine Antonia, after all the tribulations she had been through, eventually finds true happiness in Orlando’s arms.

As a contemporary reviewer in The Literary Gazette put it: “We cannot in conscience praise the poetry of this poem, but the tale is interesting.” Interesting it is, crammed with all the soppy clichés of melodrama characteristic of the era. The same reviewer goes on to write: “We are sorry to repeat that the verse has few claims to praise, considering the horrid sublimity of the subject.”

Some of the verses portraying the horrors of the plague are interesting from a historical rather than a literary point of view. A passage referring to an incident which is known to have truly occurred during the plague, though inaccurate in detail, does manage to instil in the reader an idea of the horrors endured by the population. After a temporary decline in the incidence of the epidemic, an infected man was selling bread in the streets of Valletta and the unfortunate purchasers fell victim to the contagion:

Before mine eyes starvation’s throng appear,

Imploring bread – by famine made how dear!

Around that man whose breath is pestilence

They crowd – buy – touch and bear contagion thence.

Behold Affection haste with panting breath,

To bless her children with the feast of death!

Each fondly presses to her bounteous treat,

And each receives what hunger longs to eat.

Delighted all: Good Heaven! it may not last:

One giddy falls while all look on, aghast!

Another falls – while fondness lifts the first,

A third reels round – with pestilence accurst.

The epic poem is followed by a narrative describing Young’s impressions of those harrowing months during which Malta was visited by the dreaded disease. He writes that he was induced to give a brief account of the appearance, progress and termination of the epidemic.

He starts off by stating that the first rumours of the presence of the disease in Valletta started spreading in early May, but were treated with ridicule by the authorities and merriment by the populace. Actually, the pestilence had arrived in Malta on March 28 on board the brig San Nicola, which had sailed from Alexandria, where the plague was present, with a cargo of textiles and leather. During the voyage two of the ship’s crew showed symptoms of the disease and died before reaching Malta.

Some leather items which somehow found their way from the quarantined brig to a cobbler in Valletta were the cause of the transmission of the infection from the ship to the island. The shoemaker’s daughter was infected and passed away, followed by both her parents. After this, “the pestilence burst forth in various parts of the town”.

From this point on, Young gives a not always accurate account of the dreaded epidemic and of the events which marked its development. The British authorities started taking several measures in an attempt to restrict the continuing spread of the disease. A number of prohibitory orders were issued, including the disinfection of infected premises and burning of furniture and clothes. These appeared to be having the desired effect and the severity of the epidemic abated, but this was short-lived and soon the plague again “raged with accumulated horrors”.

Convicts were pressed into handling the dead bodies in exchange for their freedom, but, as the author dryly remarks, they “only exchanged a prison for a grave – they all expired!”. In midsummer, Greeks, accustomed to such pestilence, were brought over to carry out these functions, and even French and Italian prisoners-of-war were released and they “swept the streets, cleared and white-washed the infected houses, burning their furniture”.

Young’s narrative continues to describe the horrors which the Maltese population was enduring. At one point he remarks that “a thousand anecdotes might be related from what fell under my own observation, but they are all so touchingly sad, that I must omit them to spare the soft breast of sympathy”. Ignoring this proviso, however, he goes on to describe a number of incidents, such as the one in which a priest’s maid-servant had gone to draw water from the well. When she failed to return the priest went to the well only to find her drowned. He took hold of the rope to help her and, as the author dramatically states, “in that act was found, standing in the calm serenity of death!”.

With the onset of winter, the remains of the plague were dispelled in Valletta, although it subsisted for some months longer in the outlying villages. An inaccurate observation that Young makes concerns the British residents, of whom, he writes, only 12 deaths were recorded during the months of the plague, and these from other causes. In fact, the British Garrison on the island suffered about 20 deaths from the plague.

Young ends his account by stating that “before leaving Malta, I had the melancholy satisfaction of standing on the ruins of the plague-hospital, which had been burnt to ashes – that place where so many hopes and fears were hushed to rest!” He was probably referring to the temporary wooden huts that had been erected in the ditch outside Valletta to house the victims of this terrible pestilence.

The poem, although no great literary achievement, can nevertheless be considered as one of the less unpleasant outcomes of the plague epidemic of 1813.

Antonia, A Poem with Notes descriptive of the Plague in Malta is available at https://books.google.com.mt/books?id=x6BgAAAAcAAJ&printsec .