Few men in society have more “gladdened life” than this poet. He now [1833] resides in Paris, and may thence make the grand tour without an interpreter—speaking, as he does, French, Italian, and German, as fluently as English. {57} 10th of October, 1812, the day of opening. {59} Congreve’s plug. The late Sir William Congreve had made a model of Drury Lane Theatre, to which was affixed an engine that, in event of fire, was made to play from the stage into every box in the house. The writer, accompanied by Theodore Hook, went to see the model at Sir William’s house in Cecil-street. “Now I’ll duck Whitbread!” said Hook, seizing the water-pipe whilst he spoke, and sending a torrent of water into the brewer’s box. {60} See Byron, _afterwards_, its _Don Juan_:— “For flesh is grass, which Time mows down to hay.” But as Johnson says of Dryden, “His known wealth was so great, he might borrow without any impeachment of his credit.” {61} “‘Fire and Ale,’ by M. G. Lewis, exhibits not only a faithful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing versification of that singular author, but a very just representation of that mixture of extravagance and jocularity which has impressed most of his writings with the character of a sort of farcical horror.”—JEFFREY, _Edinburgh Review_. MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS, commonly called _Monk_ Lewis, from his once popular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a disagreeable one—verbose, disputatious and paradoxical. His _Monk_ and _Castle Spectre_ elevated him into fame; and he continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mrs. Radcliffe, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly negro-bitten. He promulgated a new code of laws in the island, for the government of his sable subjects: one may serve for a specimen: “Any slave who commits murder shall have his heed shaved, and be confined three days and nights in a dark room.” Upon occasion of printing these parodies, _Monk_ Lewis said to Lady H[olland], “Many of them are very fair, but mine is not at all like; they have made me write burlesque, which I never do” “You don’t know your own talent,” answered the lady. Lewis aptly described himself, as to externals, in the verses affixed to his _Monk_, as having “A graceless form and dwarfish stature”