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Updated: June 21, 2025
The controversy over The Monk caused the young author to be known as Monk Lewis, and the word Monk has to this day taken the place of the words Matthew Gregory so generally, that many catalogue-makers must innocently suppose him to have been so named at the font. The author of The Monk came back from the Hague to be received as a young lion in London society.
"Why, to think," answered Lucien, "that these same closet-naturalists should have built themselves up great names by sitting in their easy chairs measuring, and adding up, and classing into dry catalogues, objects which they knew very little about; and that little they obtained from the observations of others true naturalists men like the great Wilson men who toiled, and travelled, and exposed themselves to countless dangers and fatigues for the purpose of collecting and observing; and then for these men to have the fruits of their labours filched from them, and descanted upon in dry arithmetical terms by these same catalogue-makers.
It is these catalogue-makers who generally multiply synonymes so as to render science unintelligible. Sitting in their easy-chairs they know little or nothing of the habits of the animals about which they write; and therefore, to write something original, they multiply names, and give measurements ad infinitum, and this among them constitutes a science.
The indescribable absurdities, vices, and follies of the bulk of that class of literature called the fashionable novel, are past the power of catalogue-makers to record; but perhaps overwhelming ignorance of the peculiar class they pretend to describe is not the least conspicuous. Next to lack of knowledge, or sound materials deduced from actual observation, we may place want of taste.
He had observed also that the bird was always healthier, and in better spirits, on the days when he was indulged in his favourite osseous diet. These men usually know more of natural history than the catalogue-makers and teeth-measurers of the museum and the closet. "Perhaps," continued Lucien, "one of the most essential points of difference between the vulture and eagle lies in the claws.
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