1813.] FIRST SUGGESTION OF THE GIAOUR. 311 P.S. 2nd. I have so many things to say.-I want to show you Lord Sligo's letter to me detailing, as he heard them on the spot, the Athenian account of our adventure (a personal one), which certainly first suggested to me the story of The Giaour. It was a strange and not a very long story, and his report of the reports (he arrived just after my departure, and I did not know till last summer that he knew anything of the matter) is not very far from the truth. Don't be alarmed. There was nothing that led further than to the water's edge; but one part (as is often the case in life) was more singular than any of the Giaour's adventures. I never have, and never should have, alluded to it on my own authority, from respect to the ancient proverb on Travellers. 378.-To Leigh Hunt. Dec. 22, 1813. I MY DEAR SIR,-I am indeed "in your debt,”—and, what is still worse, am obliged to follow royal example (he has just apprised his creditors that they must wait till the next meeting), and intreat your indulgence for, I hope, a very short time. The nearest relation and almost the only friend I possess, has been in London for a week, and leaves it tomorrow with me for her own residence. return immediately; but we meet so seldom, and are so minuted when we meet at all, that I give up all engagements till now, without reluctance. On my return, I must see you to console myself for my past disappointment. I should feel highly honoured in Mr. B.'s permission to make his acquaintance, and there you are in my debt; for it is a promise of last summer which I still hope to see performed. Yesterday I had a letter from Moore; you have probably heard from him lately; but if not, you will be glad to learn that he is the same in heart, head, and health. 379.-To John Murray. December 27, 1813. Lord Holland is laid up with the gout, and would feel very much obliged if you could obtain, and send as soon as possible, Madame D'Arblay's (or even Miss Edgeworth's) new work. I know they are not out; but it is perhaps possible for your Majesty to command what we cannot with much suing purchase, as yet. I need not say that when you are able or willing to confer the same favour on me, I shall be obliged. I would almost fall sick myself to get at Madame D'Arblay's writings. P.S.-You were talking to-day of the American E" of a certain unquenchable memorial of my younger days.' As it can't be helped now, I own I have some curiosity to see a copy of transatlantic typography. This you will perhaps obtain, and one for yourself; but I must beg that you will not import more, because, seriously, I do wish to have that thing forgotten as much as it has been forgiven. If you send to the Globe E', say that I want neither excuse nor contradiction, but merely a discontinuance of a most ill-grounded charge. I never was consistent in any thing but my politics; and as my redemption depends on that solitary virtue, it is murder to carry away my last anchor. 1. English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. 1813.] NOTHING BUT FIVE-AND-TWENTY, 313 CHAPTER VIII. JOURNAL: NOVEMBER 14, 1813-APRIL 19, 1814. Ir this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!-heigho! there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is. Well, I have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a good use of. They say "Virtue is its own "reward,”—it certainly should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is over, one should be something;-and what am I? nothing but five-and-twenty-and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all over the world,―ay, and woman too. Give me a Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague-yellow feverand Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,-provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish one was-I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself seriously to wishing without attaining it -and repenting. I begin to believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the nation, and not for the individual;-but, on my principle, this would not be very patriotic. No more reflections.-Let me see-last night I finished "Zuleika," my second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive-for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of— "Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd." I At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose ;-but what romance could equal the events To-day Henry Byron 3 called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will grow up a beauty and a plague ; but, in the mean time, it is the prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,—yet I don't like to think so neither: and though older, she is not so clever. Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too, who seems out of humour with every thing. 1. "Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed, 2. Virgil, Æneid, ii. 5— quoque ipse miserrima vidi Et quorum pars magna fui." 3. The Rev. Henry Byron, second son of the Rev. and Hon. Richard Byron, and nephew of William, fifth Lord Byron, died in 1821. His daughter Eliza married, in 1830, George Rochford Clarke. Byron's "niece Georgina " was the daughter of Mrs. Leigh. 4. Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), intended by his father for the diplomatic service, was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Weimar, and Paris. He soon showed his taste for literaAt the age of seventeen he had translated a play from the French, and written a farce, a comedy called The East Indian (acted at Drury Lane, April 22, 1799), “two volumes of a novel, ture. 1813.] MONK LEWIS. 315 What can be the matter? he is not married-has he lost his own mistress, or any other person's wife? Hodgson, "two of a romance, besides numerous poems" (Life, etc., of M. G. Lewis, vol. i. p. 70). In 1794 he was attached to the British Embassy at the Hague. There, stimulated (ibid., vol. i. p. 123) by reading Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, he wrote Ambrosio, or the Monk. The book, published in 1795, made him famous in fashionable society, and decided his career. Though he sat in Parliament for Hindon from 1796 to 1802, he took no part in politics, but devoted himself to literature. The moral and outline of The Monk are taken, as Lewis says in a letter to his father (Life, etc., vol. i. pp. 154-158), and as was pointed out in the Monthly Review for August, 1797, from Addison's "Santon Barsisa" in the Guardian (No. 148). The book was severely criticized on the score of immorality. Mathias (Pursuits of Literature, Dialogue iv.) attacks Lewis, whom he compares to John Cleland, whose Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure came under the notice of the law courts "Another Cleland see in Lewis rise. Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?" An injunction was, in fact, moved for against the book; but the proceedings dropped. Lewis had a remarkable gift of catching the popular taste of the day, both in his tales of horror and mystery, and in his ballads. In the latter he was the precursor of Scott. Many of his songs were sung to music of his own composition. His Tales of Terror (1799) were dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell, afterwards Bury, with whom he was in love. To his Tales of Wonder (1801) Scott, Southey, and others contributed. His most successful plays were The Castle Spectre (Drury Lane, December 14, 1797), and Timour the Tartar (Covent Garden, April 29, 1811). In 1812, by the death of his father, "the Monk" became a rich man, and the owner of plantations in the West Indies. He paid two visits to his property, in 1815-16 and 1817-18. On the voyage home from the last visit he died of yellow fever, and was buried at His Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, published in 1834, is written in sterling English, with much quiet humour, and a graphic power of very high order. sea. Among his Detached Thoughts Byron has the following notes on Lewis : "Sheridan was one day offered a bet by M. G. Lewis: 'I will "bet you, Mr. Sheridan, a very large sum-I will bet you what you owe me as Manager, for my Castle Spectre.'—' I never make large 'bets,' said Sheridan, 'but I will lay you a very small one. I will "bet you what it is WORTH !'" "Lewis, though a kind man, hated Sheridan, and we had some "words upon that score when in Switzerland, in 1816. Lewis |