Author: Lewis, Charles
Biography:
LEWIS, Charles (fl 1830)
No other publications appear under this author’s name and the name itself is so common in public records that he cannot be identified with confidence. Internal evidence suggests someone with a gentleman’s education—casual allusion to classical authors, some extended quotations in French and Italian. He was bookish but not scholarly: the prose notes to the title poem “The Career of Woman” consist of passages taken from a dozen or so books of travels. A few poems addressed to “Matilda” celebrate many years of marriage; one lament of “a mourner” for “his lost child” may be autobiographical; and there is an intriguing reference to renovations underway at Rochester Cathedral in a poem “To the River Medway” that might be a clue to the author’s location. The work is dedicated to J. A. St. John (q.v.), currently travelling in foreign parts, with thanks for his encouragement. Some of the shorter poems had been published before under the author’s initials, and since St. John had recently been a founder and editor of the London Weekly Review, it seems quite likely that that is where those shorter poems had been placed. Unfortunately for Lewis, the reviewers were uncomplimentary (“merely the outward and visible sign of poetry” according to the British Magazine), although the New Monthly Magazine expressed a slight preference for the shorter pieces. University registers produce only one possible candidate: Charles, son of James Lewis, gentleman, of the London parish of St. George the Martyr, who matriculated at Brasenose College in 1803 at the age of 17—giving a presumptive birthdate of 1786—but did not proceed to a degree. But it is at least as likely that Charles Lewis, Esq. did not attend university at all. (ancestry.com 11 Jan. 2024; findmypast.com 11 Jan. 2024; Alumni Oxonienses; British Magazine 1 [1830], 153; New Monthly Magazine [1830], 507)