LEWIS, MATTIIEW GREGORY (1775-1818 ) . An English romancer, nicknamed 'Monk' Lewis. He was born in London, July 9, 1775. his father owned valuable estates in Jamaica. Lewis was seat to Westminster School and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1792 he went to Weimar, where lie saw Goethe and acquired a knowledge of contemporary German literature. In 1794 he was appointed attache to the British Embassy at The Hague; and from 1796 to 1802 he was in Parliament. In 1798 he made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott, who, then unknown, was glad to'contribute to his Tales of Wonder (1801). In 1816 he visited Byron at Geneva, and again the next year in Florence and Venice. On the death of his father (1812), he inherited the estate and slaves in the West Indies. On the homeward voyage from a second visit to Jamaica, he died of yellow fever (May 14, 1818). Lewis won wide celebrity for his Ambrosio, or the Monk (1795), and was ever afterwards known as 'Monk' Lewis. It is a Gothic romance after the type of Ann Radcli•e's Mysteries of I'dolpho. It contains, however, incidents taken from German romance, and thus becomes historically interesting as a thread connecting the literature of Germany and England. Owing
to certain voluptuous passages, afterwards sup pressed, the sale of the hook was enjoined by the Attorney-Gene•al. A Gothie melodrama en titled The Castle Spectre. brought out at Drury Lane in 1798, ran for sixty nights, and long con tinued popular. After his death appeared the ./oirne/ of a West Indian Proprietor (1834), which was praised by Coleridge. The Monk has been often reprinted, though not usually entire. A second romance, The B•aro of Venice (1804), is in Cassell's National Library; and The Tales of Wonder and the earlier 'Pales of Terror (1709) were reprinted in Morley's Universal Library (1887). Consult: The Life and Correspondence of Levis( London, 1839) : and for Lewis's relation to German literature, Beers, English Romanti cism (New York, 1898) ; and Brandt, 8. T. Cole ridge and die englische Romantik (Berlin, 1886; trans. by Lady Eastlake, London, 1887). See