THE BRAVO OF VENICE--A ROMANCE

by M. G. Lewis




INTRODUCTION.



Matthew Gregory Lewis, who professed to have translated this romance
out of the German, very much, I believe, as Horace Walpole professed
to have taken The Castle of Otranto from an old Italian manuscript,
was born in 1775 of a wealthy family. His father had an estate in
India and a post in a Government office. His mother was daughter to
Sir Thomas Sewell, Master of the Rolls in the reign of George III.
She was a young mother; her son Matthew was devoted to her from the
first. As a child he called her "Fanny," and as a man held firmly
by her when she was deserted by her husband. From Westminster
School, M. G. Lewis passed to Christ Church, Oxford. Already he was
busy over tales and plays, and wrote at college a farce, never
acted, a comedy, written at the age of sixteen, The East Indian,
afterwards played for Mrs. Jordan's benefit and repeated with great
success, and also a novel, never published, called The Effusions of
Sensibility, which was a burlesque upon the sentimental school. He
wrote also what he called "a romance in the style of The Castle of
Otranto," which appeared afterwards as the play of The Castle
Spectre.