The discrepancy to be noticed between the character of Lewis as a man and the opinions expressed in the book are most curious. Mrs. Baron-Wilson, evidently a close friend, says of him: “There is nothing else in English literature so wild, so extravagant, so utterly at variance with all the ordinary and received rules of art and of criticism (not to mention the recognised codes of morals), as the chief writings of ‘Monk’ Lewis. Yet we may tax the whole circle of our biographical literature to show us a man whose personal character and conduct—from his earliest youth to the close of his worldly career—were more strictly and emphatically those which we are accustomed to look for from a plain, right-thinking, commonsense view of human affairs.” Before he had passed his majority by many months, Lewis was elected Member of Parliament for Hindon in Wiltshire, in which borough he succeeded William Beckford, of Fonthill Abbey, another Jamaica proprietor. But his parliamentary career was singularly prosaic; he never addressed the House. Henceforth he devoted himself to literature. From his facile pen flowed contributions to every branch, from _vers de société_ to funeral odes—novels, dramas, lyric poems, Scotch ballads, nautical songs, imitations of classic writers, translations and adaptations from the German, Italian, Spanish and Danish. As a reviver of old ballads he paved the way for Hogg and for Scott, the latter of whom collaborated with him in his “Tales of Terror” and “Tales of Wonder,” which however were never popular. The acquisition of wealth and the inheritance of his father’s West Indian estates enabled him to enter on a larger sphere of philanthropic work than he had hitherto been able to undertake. His action in this respect was not a momentary impulse, but a practical outcome of firm conviction, and he took steps to ensure that its effects should endure after his death. His object was the amelioration of the condition of the slaves on his Jamaica properties. He arrived at Black River on New Year’s Day, 1816, where he found “John Canoe” and all the rest of negro Christmastide festivities in full swing. In his first letter home to his mother he told her he was keeping a regular journal, and this was afterwards published posthumously in 1834, under the title of “The Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept during a residence in the Island of Jamaica,” which Coleridge in his “Table-Talk” denotes “delightful. It is almost the only unaffected book of travels I have read of late years. You have the man himself. It is by far his best work, and will live to be popular.” A new edition appeared in 1861 under the title of “Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies.”