Matthew Gregory Lewis was impelled to write _The Monk_ by reading the romances of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe, together with Schiller's _Robbers_, which triple influence is discernible in his lurid tale. He defended the indecency of his book by asserting that he took the plot from a story in _The Guardian_,[8] ingeniously intimating that plagiarized immorality is less reprehensible than original material. Shelley, in his turn, was so strongly impressed by Lewis's _Monk_, and Mrs. Dacre's _Zofloya_ in writing his _Zastrozzi_, and by William Godwin's _St. Leon_ in his _St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian_, that the adaptation amounts to actual plagiarism. Even the titles show imitation. In writing to Godwin, Shelley said he was "in a state of intellectual sickness" when he wrote these stories, and no one who is familiar with the productions will contradict him in the matter. [8] "The History of Santon Barsis," _The Guardian_, Number 148. The influence of the crude scientific thought and investigation of the eighteenth century is apparent in the Gothic novels. _Frankenstein_, as we have seen, was the outcome of a Romantic, Darwinian dream, and novels by Godwin, Shelley, and Maturin deal with the theme of the elixir of life. William Beckford's _Vathek_ has to do with alchemy, sorcery, and other phases of supernatural science. Zofloya, Mrs. Dacre's diabolical Moor, performs experiments in hypnotism, telepathy, sorcery, and satanic chemistry. And so in a number of the imitative and less known novels of the _genre_ science plays a part in furnishing the material. There is much interest in the study of the relation of science to the literature of supernaturalism in the various periods and the discoveries of modern times as furnishing plot material. The Gothic contribution to this form of ghostly fiction is significant, though slight in comparison with later developments.