-
[1675?].
- ‘Proposals to increase Trade and to advance his Majesties Revenue, without any hazard, … and with apparent Profit to Everybody,’ 8vo, London, 1677.
- ‘Proposals to the King and Parliament how this Tax of one hundred sixty thousand pounds per moneth may be raised by a monethly Tax for one year … by setting up Banks here like the Bank at Venice,’ 4to, London, 1677.
- ‘A Short Model of a Bank, … which … will be able to give out bills of credit to a vast extent, that all persons will accept of rather than mony,’ 8vo [London, 1677].
- ‘Proposals to the King and Parliament, or a large Model of a Bank,’ 4to, London, 1678.
[Lewis's Works.]
LEWIS, MATTHEW GREGORY (1775–1818), author of the ‘Monk,’ was born in London on 9 July 1775. His father, Matthew Lewis, was deputy secretary-at-war, and proprietor of large estates in Jamaica (see Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 396). His mother was Anna Maria, daughter of Sir Thomas Sewell, master of the rolls from 1764 to 1784. She was ‘much admired at court,’ famous for her grace in dancing minuets, and was an accomplished musician. Matthew was the eldest of four children, the others being Maria, wife of Sir Henry Lushington; Sophia, wife of Colonel Sheddon; and Barrington, who became deformed and died young from an injury to the spine. Matthew, his mother's pet companion, was a precocious child, and showed an early talent for music. After going to a school kept by Dr. Fountaine, he entered Westminster, where he distinguished himself as an actor in the ‘town boys' play,’ and afterwards went to Christ Church. While he was still a schoolboy his parents were separated. Mrs. Lewis went to France, and received a handsome allowance from her husband. Matthew showed much sense and good feeling in keeping up affectionate communications with his mother, while remaining on good terms with his father, and conveying messages between them. In 1791 (letter from Paris in ‘Life,’ p. 52, is wrongly dated 1792) he visited Paris, and a letter to his mother shows that he was already writing a farce and a novel. In the same year (his sixteenth) he wrote the ‘East Indian.’ In the summer of 1792 he went to Weimar, where he was introduced to Goethe, the ‘celebrated author of “Werter”’ (Life, i. 72). His taste for German literature either took him to Weimar or was acquired there. In any case he became a good German scholar. Goethe's ‘Sorrows of Werter’ (first translated 1779), Schiller's ‘Robbers’ (first translated 1792), had impressed him, and had become popular in England. He stayed at Weimar till the beginning of 1793, and after a visit to Lord Douglas at Bothwell Castle and the Duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith, returned to Oxford. In 1794 he became attaché to the British embassy at the Hague. Here in ten weeks (ib. i. 133) he wrote the ‘Monk,’ having been induced to go on with it by his interest in the ‘Mysteries of Udolpho’ (1794). It appeared as ‘Ambrosio, or the Monk,’ in the summer of 1795. The story was taken from ‘Santon Barsisa’ in the ‘Guardian’ (No. 148). The book hit the public taste, which had just been turned towards Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, a form of literature of which Walpole's ‘Castle of Otranto’ (1765) set the first example. The Monk's indecency provoked many protests, and the attorney-general moved for an injunction against its sale. The prosecution, however, was dropped, and in his second edition the author expunged the most objectionable passages. Meanwhile he became famous at the age of twenty, and was received in the highest society. He sat in the House of Commons from 1796 to 1802 for Hindon, Wiltshire. His father made him an allowance of 1,000l. a year. He took a cottage at Barnes about 1798 (Life, pp. 183, 222), which was ornamented according to the taste of the day, had chambers in the Albany, and lived equally with great people and with actors and musicians. He knew the Duchess of York, whom he visited at Oatlands, the Princess of Wales, and other royal personages, and, according to Scott, was a good deal too fond of the nobility. He wrote plays and a great many poems, which, if of moderate merit, show a facility of versification almost equal to Moore's. He set many of them to music. In 1798 he brought out the ‘Castle Spectre’ at Drury Lane under Sheridan's management. It was founded upon a romance (never published) written in his earliest days of authorship. It ran for sixty nights, and was long popular with lovers of ghosts, horrors, and thunderstorms.
Lewis frequently visited the fifth Duke of Argyll at Inverary, and there, according to his biographer, fell in love with the duke's daughter, Lady Charlotte, married in June 1796 to Colonel Campbell, and afterwards Lady Charlotte Bury [q. v.] A walk with her in which they met a maniac suggested his once popular ballad ‘Crazy Jane’ (ib. i. 186–7). After her marriage he continued to be her friend, and at her house he first met Scott in 1798. Scott, then unknown, was much flattered by the condescension of a recognised poet. Lewis had already, through their common friend William Erskine, asked
