Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818)— 'Monk Lewis' was born in London, his father being deputy-secretary in the War Office, and owner of large estates in Jamaica. Mat was educated at Westminster and Christ Church College, Oxford, and, at Weimar in 1792-93, was introduced to Goethe. As a child he had pored over Glanvill on Witchcraft and other books of diablerie; in Germany romance and the drama were his favourite studies; and whilst resident at the Hague he composed in ten weeks his novel of Ambrosio, or the Monk (1795), which makes extravagant use of supernatural machinery, and in many passages frankly panders to lubricity. A prosecution was not unnaturally threatened on account of some of the luxurious scenes and more than risky descriptions; and to avert trouble Lewis pledged himself to recall the printed copies and recast the work-though how opposition could be silenced without stultifying the whole plot it is not easy to conceive. But throughout life he adhered to the same strain of marvellous and terrific composition-now clothing it in verse, now moulding it into a drama, and at other times contenting himself with the story form. His Tales of Terror (1799), Tales of Wonder (1801) to which Scott and Southey contributed -Romantic Tales (1808), The Bravo of Venice and Feudal Tyrants (both translated from the German), and the tragedies Alphonso (1801), Adelgitha (1807), &c., appeal to a temporary taste nurtured on Mrs Radcliffe. The East Indian (1799) was a comedy, Timour the Tartar a melodrama, and One o'clock a 'musical romance.' Crazy Jane (1797), a once popular poem, was based on an encounter with an actual maniac, and The Captive, a Monodrama, exploited the ravings of a lunatic. In his first novel are found several of the poems, the loveditties, drinking-songs, or anecdotes in rhyme he had the knack of throwing off; and his ballads of 'Alonzo the Brave' and 'Durandarte' proved to his contemporaries as attractive as Ambrosio's own adventures. He brings in weird tales 'from the Danish' of the Erl King or Oak King, of the Fire King, and the Water King, translating the latter in verse; and he refers familiarly to the old romances of Amadis, Perceforest, Palmerin of England, and the Loves of Tristan and Queen Iseult. Flushed with the brilliant success of his romance, and fond of prominence and distinguished society, Lewis in 1796 procured a seat in Parliament for the borough of Hindon, as Beckford had done before him; but he never attempted to address the House, and sat for only six years. The theatres offered a more attractive arena for his talents; and his play of The Castle Spectre, produced in 1797, was applauded as enthusiastically as his romance. While on a visit to Edinburgh in 1798 he met young Walter Scott, who had recently published his translations from Bürger, and who thirty years afterwards told Allan Cunningham that he never felt such elation as when Lewis asked him to dine with him at his hotel! Lewis schooled the great poet on his incorrect verses, and proved himself, as Scott says, 'a martinet in the accuracy of rhymes and numbers.' Furthermore, he had always dukes and duchesses in his mouth, and was pathetically fond of any one that had a title; you would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday.' Yet Scott, though like Byron he admitted Lewis was at length tiresome, recognised his good qualities: 'He was one of the kindest and best creatures that ever lived. His father and mother lived separately. Mr Lewis allowed his son a handsome income, but reduced it by more than one-half when he found that he paid his mother a moiety of it. Mat restricted himself in all his expenses, and shared the diminished income with her as before. He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature' The publication of his correspondence twenty years after his death proved that much good sense, discretion, and kind feeling had been too completely hidden by the exaggerated romance of his writings, by his lax morals and frivolous manners. The death of his father in 1812 made him a man of independent fortune. He succeeded to plantations in the West Indies, besides a large fortune in money; and to better the condition of his slaves there, good-hearted, loquacious, clever little 'Mat' forsook the society of the Prince Regent and all his other great friends, and sailed for the West Indies in 1815. Of this and a subsequent voyage he wrote a narrative, the Journal of a West India Proprietor (1834), which Coleridge pronounced 'delightful;' it is valuable still if only for its wealth of negro folklore, and is, perhaps, his best work. Lewis returned to England in 1816, but after a visit to Byron and Shelley at Geneva, went on to Naples, and in 1817 sailed again for Jamaica, where he found that his attorney had grossly mismanaged his property. Having adjusted his affairs, the Monk' embarked on his homeward voyage; but the climate had impaired his health, and he died of yellow fever while the ship was passing through the Gulf of Florida (1818). The main plot of the Monk is taken from the tale of the Santon or dervish Barsisa in Steele's Guardian, as that came from the Turkish Tales, translated from Petis de la Croix's version of Shaikh Zadah. Ambrosio, the hero, is abbot of the Capuchins at Madrid, and called from his reputed sanctity and his eloquent preaching the Man of Holiness. Severe in his saintly judg ments, full of religious pride, he thinks himself proof against all temptation; but tempted to his fall by a young and beautiful she-demon, he proceeds from crime to crime, his female Mephistopheles, Matilda, aiding him by her unexpected powers of sorcery, till, detected in a deed of murder, he is tried, tortured, and convicted by the Inquisition. While trembling at the approaching auto da fé, his evil genius brings him a mysterious book, by help of which he may summon Lucifer. The Evil One appears with thunder and earthquake; and the wretched monk, having sold his hope of salvation to recover his liberty, is borne aloft and afar, only to be dashed to pieces on a rock. Lewis relieved a story which never shrinks from the supernatural machinery Mrs Radcliffe adopted only in semblance, by episodes and lovescenes, one of which-the Bleeding Nun-is told with exceptional narrative power, though it tends to embarrass the progress of the main tale. As a whole the story is ill put together, and shows neither skill in character-painting nor graces of style. Men and women alike melodramatic, almost Byronic, are completely subject to their passions; temptation and opportunity justify any fall from virtue; it is difficult to remember which character is at any moment talking or acting. Incredible conjunctures and manifest impossibilities constantly occur even when supernatural aid has not been invoked. Convent life is represented from the point of view not of an ultra-Protestant but a Voltairean freethinker; a truly pious Spanish lady had carefully to expurgate the Bible before submitting it to a pure-minded girl's reading. Vraisemblance is little regarded, and 'local colour' defied; the Monk' is no monk but a Franciscan friar, an abbot of Capuchins; and though the scene is Madrid, the characters address one another as 'signor' and 'signora,' and ejaculate scraps, not of Spanish, but of stage Italian. The famous scene at a robber's hut in a forest was evidently suggested by Smollett's Count Fathom. Besides his copious use of magic, incantations, and spirits to carry on his story, and his wanton gloating over scenes of luxury and license (hideously complicated by matricide and unconscious incest), Lewis resorted to an even more revolting category of horrors-loathsome images of mortal corruption and decay, the festering relics of death and the grave. But even when its startling defects and blemishes are fully admitted, the Monk remains in every way a marvellous production for a boy of twenty. The Bravo of Venice has enough and to spare of banditti, disguises, plots, and mysterious adventures, daggers and bowls, but nothing to match the best parts of the Monk, though the style is simpler. In none of his works does Lewis show any sense of humour. A Conjuration by the Wandering Jew. Raymond, in the Monk, is pursued by a spectre representing a bleeding nun, which appears at one o'clock in the morning, repeating a blood-curdling chant, and pressing her lips to his. Every succeeding visit inspires him with greater horror, and he becomes excessively ill. His servant, Theodore, meets with a stranger, ultimately ascertained to be the Wandering Jew, who tells him to bid his master wish for him when the clock strikes one; and Raymond teils what befell when the summons was obeyed. He was a man of majestic presence; his countenance was strongly marked, and his eyes were large, black, and sparkling; yet there was a something in his look which, the moment that I saw him, inspired me with a secret awe, not to say horror. He was dressed plainly, his hair was unpowdered, and a band of black velvet, which encircled his forehead, spread over his features an additional gloom. His countenance wore the marks of profound melancholy, his step was slow, and his manner grave, stately, and solemn. He saluted me with politeness, and having replied to the usual compli ments of introduction, he motioned to Theodore to quit the chamber. The page instantly withdrew. 'I know your business,' said he, without giving me time to speak. 'I have the power of releasing you from your nightly visitor; but this cannot be done before Sunday. On the hour when the Sabbath morning breaks, spirits of darkness have least influence over mortals. After Saturday, the nun shall visit you no more.' 'May I not inquire,' said I, 'by what means you are in possession of a secret which I have carefully concealed from the knowledge of every one?' 'How can I be ignorant of your distresses, when their cause at this moment stands before you?' I started. The stranger continued: 'Though to you only visible for one hour in the twentyfour, neither day nor night does she ever quit you; nor will she ever quit you till you have granted her request.' 'And what is that request?' 'That she must herself explain; it lies not in my knowledge. Wait with patience for the night of Saturday; all shall be then cleared up.' I dared not press him further. He soon after changed the conversation, and talked of various matters. He named people who had ceased to exist for many centuries, and yet with whom he appeared to have been personally acquainted. I could not mention a country, however distant, which he had not visited; nor could I sufficiently admire the extent and variety of his information. I remarked to him, that having travelled, seen, and known so much, must have given him infinite pleasure. He shook his head mournfully. No one,' he replied, 'is adequate to comprehending the misery of my lot! Fate obliges me to be constantly in movement; I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight in the same place. I have no friend in the world, and, from the restlessness of my destiny, I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the grave; but death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the ocean the waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore; I rush into fire-the flames recoil at my approach; I oppose myself to the fury of bandittitheir swords become blunted, and break against my breast. The hungry tiger shudders at my approach, and the alligator flies from a monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his creatures respect this fatal mark.' He put his hand to the velvet which was bound round his forehead. There was in his eyes an expression of fury, despair, and malevolence, that struck horror to my very soul. An involuntary convulsion made me shudder. The stranger perceived Such is the curse imposed on me,' he continued; 'I am doomed to inspire all who look on me with terror and detestation. You already feel the influence of the charm, and with every succeeding moment will feel it more. I will not add to your sufferings by my presence. Farewell till Saturday. As soon as the clock strikes twelve, expect me at your chamber.' it. Having said this, he departed, leaving me in astonishment at the mysterious turn of his manner and conversation. His assurances that I should soon be relieved from the apparition's visits produced a good effect upon my constitution. Theodore, whom I rather treated as an adopted child than a domestic, was surprised, at his return, to observe the amendment in my looks. He congratulated me on this symptom of returning health, and declared himself delighted at my having received so much benefit from my conference with the Great Mogul [so called; really the Wandering Jew]. Upon inquiry I found that the stranger had already passed eight days in Ratisbon. According to his own account, therefore, he was only to remain there six days longer. Saturday was still at a distance of three. Oh, with what impatience did I expect its arrival! In MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS. From the Portrait by H. W. Pickersgill, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. the interim, the bleeding nun continued her nocturnal visits; but hoping soon to be released from them altogether, the effects which they produced on me became less violent than before. The wished-for night arrived. To avoid creating suspicion, I retired to bed at my usual hour; but as soon as my attendants had left me, I dressed myself again, and prepared for the stranger's reception. He entered my room upon the turn of midnight. A small chest was in his hand, which he placed near the stove. He saluted me without speaking; I returned the compliment, observing an equal silence. He then opened the chest. The first thing which he produced was a small wooden crucifix; he sank upon his knees, gazed upon it mournfully, and cast his eyes towards heaven. He seemed to be praying devoutly. At length he bowed his head respectfully, kissed the crucifix thrice, and quitted his kneeling posture. He next drew from the chest a covered goblet; with the liquor which it contained, and which appeared to be blood, he sprinkled the floor; and then dipping in it one end of the crucifix, he described a circle in the middle of the room. Round about this he placed various reliques, skulls, thighbones, &c. I observed that he disposed them all in the form of crosses. Lastly, he took out a large Bible, and beckoned me to follow him into the circle. I obeyed. 'Be cautious not to utter a syllable!' whispered the stranger: 'step not out of the circle, and as you love yourself, dare not to look upon my face.' Holding the crucifix in one hand, the Bible in the other, he seemed to read with profound attention. The clock struck one; as usual, I heard the spectre's steps upon the staircase, but I was not seized with the accustomed shivering. I waited her approach with confidence. She entered the room, drew near the circle, and stopped. The stranger muttered some words, to me unintelligible. Then raising his head from the book, and extending the crucifix towards the ghost, he pronounced in a voice distinct and solemn Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice!' 'What wouldst thou?' replied the apparition in a hollow faltering tone. 'What disturbs thy sleep? Why dost thou afflict and torture this youth? How can rest be restored to thy unquiet spirit?' 'I dare not tell; I must not tell. Fain would I repose in my grave, but stern commands force me to prolong my punishment!' 'Knowest thou this blood? Knowest thou in whose veins it flowed? Beatrice! Beatrice! in his name I charge thee to answer me.' 'I dare not disobey my taskers.' 'Darest thou disobey me?' He spoke in a commanding tone, and drew the sable band from his forehead. In spite of his injunction to the contrary, curiosity would not suffer me to keep my eyes off his face: I raised them, and beheld a burning cross impressed upon his brow. For the horror with which this object inspired me I cannot account, but I never felt its equal. My senses left me for some moments; a mysterious dread overcame my courage; and had not the exorciser caught my hand, I should have fallen out of the circle. When I recovered myself, I perceived that the burning cross had produced an effect no less violent upon the spectre. Her countenance expressed reverence and horror, and her visionary limbs were shaken by fear. 'Yes,' she said at length, 'I tremble at that mark! I respect it! I obey you! Know, then, that my bones lie still unburied-they rot in the obscurity of Lindenberg-hole. None but this youth has the right of consigning them to the grave. His own lips have made over to me his body and his soul; never will I give back his promise; never shall he know a night devoid of terror unless he engages to collect my mouldering bones, and deposit them in the family vault of his Andalusian castle. Then let thirty masses be said for the repose of my spirit, and I trouble this world no more. Now let me depart; those flames are scorching.' He let the hand drop slowly which held the crucifix, and which till then he had pointed towards her. The apparition bowed her head, and her form melted into air. A Welcome from his Negroes. As soon as the carriage entered my gates, the uproar and confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance. The works were instantly all abandoned; everything that had life came flocking to the house from all quarters; and not only the men, and the women, and the children, but, by a bland assimilation,' the hogs, and the dogs, and the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was sincere may be doubted; but, certainly, it was the loudest that I ever witnessed; they all talked together, sang, danced, shouted, and, in the violence of their gesticulations, tumbled over each other, and rolled about upon the ground. Twenty voices at once inquired after uncles and aunts, and grandfathers and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most of them only knew by tradition. One woman held up her little naked black child to me, grinning from ear to ear'Look, massa, look here! him nice lilly neger for massa!' Another complained-'So long since none come see we, massa; good massa come at last.' As for the old people, they were all in one and the same story: now they had lived once to see massa, they were ready for dying tomorrow them no care.' The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, their strange and sudden bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women, wrapped up in large cloaks, their heads bound round with differentcoloured handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet there was something in it by which I could not help being affected. Perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my slaves. Durandarte and Belerma. Sad and fearful is the story On those fatal plains of glory "Ah! though young I fall, believe me, 'Oh! my cousin, Montesinos, 'When my soul, these limbs forsaking, From my breast the cold heart taking, 'Say, I of my lands possessor 'Twice a week, too, how sincerely 'Eyes, which forth beheld me going, Thy kind hand my eyelids closing, Yet one favour I implorePray thou for my soul's reposing, When my heart shall throb no more. 'So shall Jesus, still attending, Gracious to a Christian's vow, Pleased accept my ghost ascending, And a seat in heaven allow.' Thus spoke gallant Durandarte; Soon his brave heart broke in twain. Greatly joyed the Moorish party That the gallant knight was slain. Bitter weeping, Montesinos Took from him his helm and glaive; To perform his promise made, he Sad was Montesinos' heart, he 'Sweet in manners, fair in favour, 'Cousin, lo! my tears bedew thee; How shall I thy loss survive? Durandarte, he who slew thee, Wherefore left he me alive?' Matilda fascinates Ambrosio by singing this ballad to him, accompanying herself on the harp; that which follows is read, not without qualms of discomfort, in a lonely room at dead of night, out of an old book of Spanish ballads, by Antonia, another of Ambrosio's victims, whom Matilda, after he tired of her, obligingly put in his power by sorcery. Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene. They gazed on each other with tender delight : 'And, oh!' said the youth, 'since to-morrow I go Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow, * Oh! hush these suspicions,' Fair Imogene said, 'Offensive to love and to me; For, if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead 'If e'er I, by lust or by wealth led aside, Forget my Alonzo the Brave, God grant that, to punish my falsehood and pride, To Palestine hastened the hero so bold, His love she lamented him sore; But scarce had a twelvemonth elapsed, when, behold! His treasures, his presents, his spacious domain, And now had the marriage been blest by the priest ; The tables they groaned with the weight of the feast, Then first with amazement Fair Imogene found His air was terrific; he uttered no sound He spake not, he moved not, he looked not around- His vizor was closed, and gigantic his height, All pleasure and laughter were hushed at his sight; His presence all bosoms appeared to dismay; At length spake the bride, while she trembled: 'I pray, The lady is silent; the stranger complies His vizor he slowly unclosed; O God! what a sight met Fair Imogene's eyes! All present then uttered a terrified shout, All turned with disgust from the scene; The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out, And sported his eyes and his temples about, While the spectre addressed Imogene : God grants that, to punish thy falsehood and pride, Thus saying, his arms round the lady he wound, Then sank with his prey through the wide-yawning ground. Or the spectre that bore her away. Not long lived the baron; and none, since that time, For chronicles tell that, by order sublime, At midnight, four times in each year, does her sprite, And shriek as he whirls her around. While they drink out of skulls newly torn from the grave, Dancing round them the spectres are seen; Their liquor is blood, and this horrible stave They howl: To the health of Alonzo the Brave, Lewis's Journal of a West Indian Proprietor and the Life and Correspondence, published in 1839, are the biographical authorities His Tales of Terror and Wonder are reprinted in Henry Morley's Universal Library. The Monk is not in most libraries. Charles Robert Maturin (1782–1824), born in Dublin of Huguenot ancestry, at fifteen entered Trinity College, and became curate first of Loughrea and then of St Peter's, Dublin. He came forward in 1807 as an imitator of the bloodcurdling and nightmarish style of novel-writing, of which 'Monk' Lewis was the modern master. The style, as Maturin afterwards confessed, was out of date when he was a boy, and he had not power to revive it. The Fatal Revenge, or the Family of Montorio (1807), his first effort, was soon in high favour in the circulating libraries, and seems to have been liked the better because imagination and elaborated diction were carried to the height of extravagance and bombast. To it succeeded The Wild Irish Boy (1808), The Milesian Chief (1812), Women, or Pour et Contre (1818), and Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)—all romances in three or four volumes. In Women Maturin aimed at depicting real life and manners, and we have pictures of Calvinistic Methodists, an Irish Meg Merrilies, and an Irish hero, De Courcy, compounded of contradictions and improbabilities. Eva Wentworth and Zaira, a brilliant Italianwho afterwards turns out to be Eva's motherare drawn with some skill. De Courcy is in love with both, and both are blighted by his inconstancy. Eva, who is purity itself, dies calmly and tranquilly, elevated by religious hope; Zaira meditates suicide, but lives on, as if spell-bound to the death-place of her daughter and lover; and De Courcy very properly perishes of remorse. Maturin's tragedy, Bertram, had a success at Drury Lane in 1816; his next, Manuel and Fredolpho, were both promptly damned. Melmoth is the most hyperbolical of Maturin's romances. hero, a compound of Faust, Mephistopheles, the Wandering Jew, and the Prisoner of Chillon, 'gleams with demon light,' and, owing to a compact with Satan, lives a century and a half, meeting with all manner of preposterous adventures, which might be gruesome were they less tedious and puerile; some of the details are absolutely sickening The |