, that had bound his
predecessor. The incidents, which follow one another in
kaleidoscopic variety, are like the disjointed phases of a
delirium or nightmare, from which there is no escape. We are
conscious that his story is unreal or even ludicrous, yet Lewis
has a certain dogged power of driving us unrelentingly through
it, regardless of our own will. Literary historians have tended
to over-emphasise the connection between Mrs. Radcliffe and
Lewis. Their purposes and achievement are so different that it is
hardly accurate to speak of them as belonging to the same school.
It is true that in one of his letters Lewis asserts that he was
induced to go on with his romance, _The Monk_, by reading _The
Mysteries of Udolpho_, "one of the most interesting books that
has (sic) ever been written," and that he was struck by the
resemblance of his own character to that of Montoni;[40] but his
literary debt to Mrs. Radcliffe is comparatively insignificant.
His depredations on German literature are much more serious and
extensive. Lewis, indeed, is one of the Dick Turpins of fiction
and seizes his booty where he will in a high-handed and somewhat
unscrupulous fashion, but for many of Mrs. Radcliffe's treasures
he could find no use. Her picturesque backgrounds, her ingenious
explanations of the uncanny, her uneventful interludes and long
deferred but happy endings were outside his province. The moments
in her novels which Lewis admired and strove to emulate were
those during which the reader with quickened pulse breathlessly
awaits some startling development. Of these moments, there are,
it must be frankly owned, few in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Lewis's
mistake lay in trying to induce a more rapid palpitation, and to
prolong it almost uninterruptedly throughout his novel. By
attempting a physical and mental impossibility he courts
disaster. Mrs. Radcliffe's skeletons are decently concealed in
the family cupboard, Lewis's stalk abroad in shameless publicity.
In Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, the shadow fades and disappears just
when we think we are close upon the substance; for, after we have
long been groping in the twilight of fearful imaginings, she
suddenly jerks back the shutter to admit the clear light of
reason. In Lewis's wonder-world there are no elusive shadows; he
hurls us without preparation or initiation into a daylight orgy
of horrors.

Lewis was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, but a year
spent in Weimar (1792-3