Spending several months in Germany learning the language, Lewis briefly met Goethe and Wieland in Weimar. Scott seems to have admired his poetry — Lewis also showed him his translation of a story by Goethe — while finding him “a bore of the first description”. Byron invited him (along with several other cronies) to stay with him on Lake Geneva, where he also met the Shelleys — though he was not present the famous evening that ‘Frankenstein’ was born.