altogether devoted to the subject. It is one of these books of which one is tempted to say, that he who had it before him to read, is to be envied.-TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, 1879, George Henry Lewes, Fortnightly Review, vol. 31, p. 20.

Perhaps no other man then living could have shown himself competent to deal with Goethe's many-sidedness-to discuss "Faust" and "Tasso," "Hermann und Dorothea" at one moment, the poet's biological and botanical discoveries the next, and to estimate at their true worth the speculations on colours, which Goethe held to be more calculated than his poems to secure him immortality. The book remains. the standard life of the great Weimar sage in this country, and is popular in Germany, in spite of a vast Goethe literature which has been published since its appearance.SHORTER, CLEMENT K., 1897, Victorian Literature, Sixty Years of Books and Bookmen, p. 149.

PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND
1874-79

Although Mr. Lewes has retained the name of Metaphysics, and offers his solution of what are universally called the problems of Metaphysics, he shows himself from title-page to colophon an unflinching adherent of the positive methods, and never travels a hair's-breadth from his canons which bind truth to experience. In his claim to have swept metaphysics into the fold of science, he is never found to be using metempirical expedients. Whether or not he has domesticated the untamed metaphysical Pegasus, and harnessed him to the car of terrestrial science, we leave to the future to decide; but we can say at once that he himself has never mounted the wild charger into the realms of cloudland, and if he has really got Pegasus as completely in hand as he thinks, he himself is certainly safe on mother earth.-HARRISON, FREDERIC, 1874, Mr. Lewes's Problems of Life and Mind, The Fortnightly Review, vol. 22, p. 92.

In the last chapter Mr. Lewes considers the place of sentiment in philosophy. What he has to show is that Sentiment, or Emotion, is one important source of knowledge. But what he says is more likely to impress his readers with its power of obscuring vision and obstructing research.-SPALDING, DOUGLAS A., 1874, Lewes's Problems of Life and Mind, Nature, vol. 10, p. 2.

In the first volume Mr. Lewes was chiefly occupied with forging new weapons for the armoury of empirical thought: in this he shows us how they can be used. Chief among these is the theory of abstraction: a theory more or less perceived and acted. upon by all empirical philosophers, but now wrought into a finished instrument of various application and exceeding power. But any theory of abstraction, it may be said, must be still only an affair of logic: and how shall a purely logical doctrine throw light upon problems such as those of Matter, Cause, and Things in Themselves? The answer is short: By dispelling logical illusions. And in fact Mr. Lewes lets in light upon a whole series of metempirical phantoms in a manner of which we can here only give the slightest hints. One feels at the end that one has travelled a good way along the road which Mr. Lewes truly says that the scientific study of metaphysic has to pursue, namely the substitution of intelligible for unintelligible questions.-POLLOCK, FREDERICK, 1875, Problems of Life and Mind, The Academy, vol. 7, p. 533.

These five volumes ["Problems of Life thought of one who has hardly an equal in and Mind"] conserve the well-matured recent philosophical literature in breadth and accuracy of knowledge, and to whose restless and versatile mind originality of conception was a necessity. Combining this volume of special knowledge, biological, psychological, historical, and literary, with a high degree of generalising power, he closely related to the scientific ideas of the has struck out conceptions which, while

hour, are also far in advance of them. Thus biology, though some of his ideas, as, for he is commonly looked on as heterodox in example, that of the fundamental identity of all nervous structures, are slowly being taken up by specialists. Whether such a range of exact special information as Mr. Lewes possessed is compatible with the highest quality of philosophical synthesis may perhaps be doubted. . . . Throughout, the writer never fails to be luminous and stimulating in thought and picturesque and forcible in language. No student of psychology who wants to be abreast with recent researches will be able to dispense with a repeated reference to this concluding volume of the series. Though deprived of artistic completeness, it is a worthy conclusion to a literary activity of a remarkable

range and of a uniformly sustained earnestness. SULLY, JAMES, 1880, Problems of Life and Mind, The Academy, vol. 17, pp. 308, 310.

GENERAL

Execrable, ["Rose Blanche"] that is; I Icould not have suspected even the ape of writing anything so silly. Lady H. read it all the way down, and decided it was "too vulgar to go on with." I myself should have also laid it aside in the first half volume if I had not felt a pitying interest in the man, that makes me read on in hope of coming to something a little better. Your marginal notes are the only real amusement I have got out of it hitherto.-CARLYLE, JANE WELSH, 1848, To Thomas Carlyle, Apr. 13; Letters and Memorials, ed. Froude, vol. I, p. 318.

I have a very high opinion of his literary judgment.-ARNOLD, MATTHEW, 1858, To his Mother, Jan 3; Letters ed. Russell, vol. I, p. 67.

What man of our day has done so many things and done them so well? He is the biographer of Goethe and of Robespierre; he has compiled the "History of Philosophy," in which he has something really his own to say of every great philosopher, from Thales to Schelling; he has translated Spinoza; he has published various scientific works; he has written at least two novels;

he has made one of the most successful dramatic adaptions known to our stage; he is an accomplished theatrical critic; he was at one time so successful as an amateur actor that he seriously contemplated taking to the stage as a profession, in the full conviction, which he did not hesitate frankly to avow, that he was destined to be the successor to Macready. . . . There was good deal of inflation, and audacity, and nonsense in it; ["Ranthorpe"] but at the same time it showed more brains and artistic impulse and constructive power than nine out of every ten novels published in England to-day.-MCCARTHY, JUSTIN, 1872, Modern Leaders, George Eliot and George Lewes, pp. 141, 142.

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Almost any one of the essays ["On Actors and the Art of Acting"] would have sufficed to prove that Mr. Lewes was a competent theatrical critic, and as far as Mr. Lewes is personally concerned, the whole volume proves little more.-WEDMORE, FREDERICK, 1875, On Actors and the Art of Acting, The Academy, vol. 8, p. 76.

He is, I think, the acutest critic I knowand the severest. His severity, however, is a fault. His intention to be honest, even when honesty may give pain, has caused him to give pain when honesty has not required it. He is essentially a doubter, and has encouraged himself to doubt till the faculty of trusting has almost left him. I am not speaking of the personal trust which one man feels in another, but of that confidence in literary excellence which is, I think, necessary for the full enjoyment of literature.-TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, 1882-83, An Autobiography, p. 112.

Of these critical writings the most valuable are those on the drama, which were afterwards republished under the title "Actors and Acting.' With this may be

taken the volume on "The Spanish Drama.' The combination of wide scholarship, philosophic culture, and practical acquaintance with the theatre gives these essays a high place among the best efforts in English. dramatic criticism.-SULLY, JAMES, 1882, The Enclyclopædia Britannica, vol. XIV.

Mr. Lewes was not only an accomplished and practised literary critic, but he was also gifted with the inborn insight accompanying a fine artistic temperament, which gave unusual weight to his judgment.-CROSS, J. her Letters and Journals, p. 277. W., 1884, George Eliot's Life as related in

He originated no special line of thought. He was the bold usher of the modern scientific spirit, and his influence chiefly consisted in the unalloyed enthusiasm with which he pushed its premisses to their legitimate conclusion. ... He had admirable gifts as a writer, whatever we may think of his powers as a thinker. His exposition was marked by a rare lucidity, and had the charm of interest, even when least satisfactory. Much of a Frenchman in many of his ways, he had the French gift of facile and happy expression.-TULLOCH, JOHN, 1885, Movements of Religious Thought in Britain During the Nineteenth Century, p.157.

Of course, writing thus much and on such a great variety of themes, Lewes was not always effective. All along, indeed, he contributed more to "the literature of knowledge" than to "the literature of power." But whatever he wrote displayed a certain originality of view. Whether he was dealing with literature, philosophy, or science,