ABSTRACT
Matthew Gregory Lewis was born in London, on July the 9th, 1775. His father, Matthew Lewis, was Deputy-Secretary for War and his mother, Frances Maria Sewell, the youngest daughter of another high official, Thomas Sewell. William Wordsworth is twenty-four and has been imbibing revolutionary ideas in France, whence he succeeds in escaping a little before the heads of his Girondist friends begin to fall; his first works have already been published and he is considering a life altogether devoted to his muse. Thomas Moore is fifteen and is planning his translations of Anacreon, while with his friend Emmet he surrenders himself heart and soul to the idea of Irish liberty. Moore recommends him to a certain writer as a man well acquainted with the theatre, who knows the inside of a theatre better than anyone else. Lewis appears on his part to have read some of Moore’s proofs in 1803, and acted thus as a kind of literary adviser.
