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lation of Müller's Dorians. Some time afterwards he edited a text of the Fables of Babrius. While his friend Hayward conducted the Law Magazine, he wrote in it frequently on such subjects as secondary punishments and the penitentiary system. In 1836, at the request of Lord Glenelg, he accompanied John Austin to Malta, where they spent nearly two years reporting on the condition of the island and framing a new code of laws. One leading object of both commissioners was to associate the Maltese in the responsible government of the dependency. On his return to England Lewis succeeded his father as one of the principal poor-law commissioners. But his literary activity did not cease. In 1841 appeared the Essay on the Government of Dependencies, a systematic statement and discussion of the various relations in which colonies may stand towards the mother country. In 1844 Lewis married Lady Maria Theresa Lister, sister of Lord Clarendon, and a lady of literary tastes. Much of their married life was spent in Kent House, Knightsbridge. They had no children. In 1847 Lewis resigned his office. He was then returned for the county of Hereford, and Lord John Russell appointed him secretary to the Board of Control, but a few months afterwards he became under secretary to the Home Office. In this capacity he introduced two important bills, one for the abolition of turnpike trusts and the management of highways by a mixed county board, the other for the purpose of defining and regulating the law of parochial assessment. On the latter subject his evidence before the select committee (Lords) of 1850 is the clearest statement of general results which we have. In that year he succeeded Hayter as financial secretary to the Treasury. About this time, also, appeared his Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion. Lewis seems to have thought that authority was too much divided to be of much use in theological matters, while in the world of science he found sufficient authority for declaring that homoeopathy, mesmerism, and phrenology were all impostures. On the dissolution of parliament which followed the resignation of Lord John Russell's ministry in 1852, Lewis was defeated for Herefordshire and then for Peterborough. Excluded from parliament he accepted the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, which the death of Empson had left vacant. Lord Halifax offered him, in 1853, the governorship of Bombay, but he remained editor until 1855. During this period he did some public work on the Oxford commission, and on the commission to inquire into the government of London. But its chief fruits were the Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, and the Enquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History,[1] in which he vigorously attacks the theory of epic lays and other theories on which Niebuhr's reconstruction of that history had proceeded. In 1855 Lewis succeeded his father in the baronetcy. He was at once elected member for the Radnor boroughs, and Lord Palmerston made him chancellor of the exchequer. The position was difficult, for he had a war loan to contract and heavy additional taxation to impose. But his industry, method, and clear vision carried him safely through. His financial statement of 13th February 1857, and his speech on 12th February 1858 on the bill for the better government of India were most successful efforts. After the change of ministry in 1859 Sir George became home secretary under Lord Palmerston, and in 1861, much against his wish, he succeeded Sidney Herbert (Lord Herbert of Lea) at the War Office, The closing years of his life were marked by increasing intellectual vigour. In 1859 he published an able Essay on Foreign Jurisdiction and the Extradition of Criminals, a subject to which the attempt on Napoleon's life, the discussions on the Conspiracy Bill, and the trial of Bernard, had drawn general attention. He advocated the extension of extradition treaties, and condemned the principal idea of Weltrechtsordnung which Mohl of Heidelberg had proposed. His two latest works were the Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, in which, without professing any knowledge of Oriental languages, he applies a sceptical analysis to the ambitious Egyptology of Bunsen; and the Dialogue on the Best Form of Government, in which, under the name of Crito, the author points out to the supporters of the various systems that there is no one abstract government which is the best possible for all times and places. An essay on the Characteristics of Federal, National, Provincial, and Municipal Government does not seem to have been published. Sir George died in April 1863. A marble bust by Weekes stands in Westminster Abbey. He has two other monuments – the reprint from the Edinburgh Review of his long series of papers on the Administrations of Great Britain (1864), and his Letters to various Friends (1870), edited by his brother, who succeeded him in the baronetcy.
Lewis was a man of mild and affectionate disposition, much beloved by a large circle of friends, among whom were Sir E. Head, the Grotes, the Austins, Lord Stanhope, J. S. Mill, Dean Milman, the Duff Gordons. In public life he was distinguished, says Lord Aberdeen, "for candour, moderation, love of truth." He had a passion for the systematic acquirement of knowledge, and a keen and sound critical faculty. Nothing is more remarkable than the practical good sense of his speculative writings. Sometimes he betrayed a slight intellectual impatience: but this was merely the passing irritation of a healthy and modest judgment.
LEWIS, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818), often referred to as "Monk" Lewis, was born in London on July 9, 1775. He was educated for a diplomatic career at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, spending most of his vacations abroad in the study of modern languages; and in 1794 he proceeded to the Hague as attaché to the British embassy. His stay there lasted only a few months, but was marked by the composition, in ten weeks, of Ambrosio, or the Monk, which was published in the summer of the following year. It immediately achieved extensive celebrity; but some passages it contained were of such a nature that about a year after its appearance an injunction to restrain its sale was moved for and a rule nisi obtained. Lewis published a second edition from which he had expunged, as he thought, all the objectionable passages, but the work still remains of such a character as almost to justify the severe language in which the author of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers addresses –
"Wonder-working Lewis, Monk or Bard,
Who fain would'st make Parnassus a churchyard;
Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell."
Whatever its demerits, ethical or æsthetic, may have been, The Monk did not interfere with the reception of Lewis into the best English society; he was favourably noticed at court, and almost as soon as he came of age he obtained a seat in the House of Commons as member for Hindon, Wilts. After some years, however, during which he never ventured to address the House, he finally withdrew from a parliamentary career. His tastes lay wholly in the direction of literature, and The Castle Spectre (1796, a musical drama of no great literary merit, but which enjoyed a long popularity on the stage), The Minister (a translation from Schiller's Kabale u. Liebe), Rolla (1797, a translation from Kotzebue), with numerous other operatic and tragic pieces, appeared in rapid succession. The Bravo of Venice, a romance translated from the German, was
- ↑ Translated into German by Liebrecht, Hanover, 1858.
