JOURNAL.
Geneva, Sunday, 18th August, 1816.
See Apollo's Sexton,[1] who tells us many mysteries of his trade. We talk of Ghosts. Neither Lord Byron nor M. G. L. seem to believe in them; and they both agree, in the very face of reason, that none could believe in ghosts without believing in God. I do not think that all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations, really discredit them; or, if they do in the daylight, are not admonished by the approach of loneliness and midnight, to think more respectfully of the world of shadows.
Lewis recited a poem, which he had composed at the
- ↑ Matthew Gregory Lewis, M.P. for Hindon, author of The Monk, The Castle Spectre, Tales of Terror, &c., thus addressed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:—
Oh! wonder-working Lewis! monk, or bard,
Who fain wouldst make Parnassus a churchyard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou!Mrs. Shelley records that "when Lewis first saw Lord Byron, he asked him earnestly,—'Why did you call me Apollo's Sexton.' The noble Poet found it difficult to reply to this categorical species of reproof." Some of these stories had appeared in print when Mrs. Shelley published the Journal in 1840; but, "as a ghost story depends entirely on the mode in which it is told," these were justly thought worth preservation as having been "written by Shelley, fresh from their relation by Lewis."
