ABSTRACT
George Henry Lewes (1817-78) is now best known for his relationship with George Eliot, whom he met in 1851; but Lewes was also an energetic contributor to-and editor of-various periodicals, a scientific writer, and the author of a pioneer work on Goethe. Lewes had reviewed Arnold’s first two volumes, rather coolly, earlier in 1853, and he was to review Merope a few years later. Although he liked Merope and its classicism, his main comments on the 1853 volume concern the preface, which he finds the work of ‘a scholar’ rather than the expression of a man ‘of poetical genius’.
