MATTHEW

See also:

• GREGORY
• GREGORY (Gregorius)
• GREGORY (Grigorii) GRIGORIEVICH ORLOV, COUNT (1734-1783)
• GREGORY, EDWARD JOHN (1850-19o9)
• GREGORY, OLINTHUS GILBERT (1774—1841)
• GREGORY, ST (c. 213-C. 270)
• GREGORY, ST, OF NAZIANZUS (329–389)
• GREGORY, ST, OF NYSSA (c.331—c. 396)
• GREGORY, ST, OF TOURS (538-594)

GREGORY

See also:

• LEWIS, HENRY CARVILL
• LEWIS, JOHN FREDERICK (180 1876)
• MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS (1775-1818)
• LEWIS, MERIWETHER (1774-1809)
• LEWIS, SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL, BART

LEWIS (1775-1818)  , English romance-writer and dramatist, often referred to as " Monk " Lewis, was born in London on the 9th of July 1775 . He was educated for a diplomatic career at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, spending most of his vacations abroad in the study of modern languages; and in 1794 he proceeded to the Hague as attache to the British embassy . His stay there lasted only a few months, but was marked by the composition, in ten weeks, of his romance Ambrosio, or the Monk, which was published in the summer of the following year . It immediately achieved celebrity; but some passages it contained were of such a nature that about a year after its appearance an injunction to restrain its sale was moved for and a rule nisi obtained . Lewis published a second edition from which he had expunged, as he thought, all the objectionable passages, but the work still remains of such a character as almost to justify the severe language in which Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers addresses " Wonder-working Lewis, Monk or Bard, Who fain would'st make Parnassus a churchyard; Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper hell." Whatever its demerits, ethical or aesthetic, may have been, The Monk did not interfere with the reception of Lewis into the best English society; he was favourably noticed at court, and almost as soon as he came of age he obtained a seat in the House of Commons as member for Hindon, Wilts . After some years, however, during which he never addressed the House, he finally withdrew from a parliamentary career . His tastes lay wholly in the direction of literature, and The Castle Spectre (1796, a musical drama of no great literary merit, but which enjoyed a long popularity on the stage), The Minister (a translation from Schiller's Kabale u . Liebe), Rolla (1797, a translation from Kotzebue), with numerous other operatic and tragic pieces, appeared in rapid succession . The Bravo of Venice, a romance translated from the German, was published in 1804; next to The Monk it is the best known work of Lewis . By the death of his father he succeeded to a large fortune, and in 1815 embarked for the West Indies to visit his estates; in the course of this tour, which lasted four months, the Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, published posthumously in 1833, was written . A second visit to Jamaica was undertaken in 1817, in order that he might become further acquainted with, and able to ameliorate, the condition of the slave population; the fatigues to which he exposed himself in the tropical climate brought on a fever which terminated fatally on the homeward voyage on the 14th of May 1818 . The Life and Correspondence of M .

G . Lewis, in two volumes, was published in 1839 .