Matthew Gregory Lewis—usually known from the title of his most famous work as Monk Lewis—though he only spent a few months in Jamaica, did much for the welfare of the negro population, both by precept and example. On both sides his ancestors had interests in the island. His uncle Robert Sewell died Attorney-General of Jamaica. Another relative and namesake, the Hon. John Lewis, was Chief Justice. The husband of one of his father’s sisters, a Mr. Blake, was a West Indian planter, and his maternal grandmother lies buried in Spanish Town cathedral, while the mausoleum which he mentions as being at =Cornwall= points to a resident proprietorship. Another aunt, it may be mentioned, was married to the ill-fated General Whitelocke, who, after commanding with distinction in 1793–94 the expedition sent by General Williamson from Jamaica to St. Domingo, and elsewhere, was cashiered in 1808 for cowardice in the Buenos Ayres expedition of the previous year. Lewis was born in London in 1775. His father was the deputy secretary at war, and his mother the youngest daughter of Sir Thomas Sewell, the Master of the Rolls. Much of his life and his inner thoughts may be gathered from “The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis,” published anonymously—by Mrs. Margaret Baron-Wilson—in 1839, based in great measure on the letters which he constantly wrote to a mother whom he adored. A more precocious child than he was it would be almost impossible to conceive; but at the same time, though least like her in outward appearance of all her four children, he inherited much of the temperament of his mother, a timid and sensitive woman, whose constant companion he was in early life. Young Lewis’s histrionic talents were early developed, and at Westminster he took part in the school plays. Intended by his parents for a diplomatic career, he afterwards went to Oxford, spending his vacations on the continent in the study of modern languages. When he was nineteen, his father’s influence procured him an attachéship to the British Embassy at the Hague. He stayed but a few months in the Dutch capital, but in that time, in the short space of ten weeks, he wrote a work by the publication of which in 1795 he at once sprang into fame—“Ambrosio, or The Monk.”