Born in London, 21st April 1806, son of Sir T. F. Lewis, Bart., of Harpton Court, Radnorshire, and was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where in 1828 he took a first-class in classics and a second-class in mathematics. He was called to the bar in 1831, and became a Poor-law Commissioner in 1839. He was Liberal M.P. for Herefordshire 1847–52, and for the Radnor Boroughs from 1855. He rose to be financial secretary to the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Palmerston 1855–58, Home Secretary 1859–61, and then War Secretary. He succeeded his father as second baronet in 1855, and died at Harpton Court, 13th April 1863. He wrote “Origin of the Romance Languages” (1835), “Inquiry into the Credibility of Ancient Roman History” (1855—against Niebuhr), “Astronomy of the Ancients” (1859), “Dialogue on the Best Form of Government” (1859), &c. He was editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1852 to 1855. See his “Letters” (1870) and Bagehot’s “Literary Studies” (1879).
Personal
Gladstone seems bent on leading Sir George Lewis a weary life, but Lewis is just the man to encounter and baffle such an opponent, for he is cold-blooded as a fish, totally devoid of sensibility or nervousness, of an imperturbable temper, calm and resolute, laborious and indefatigable, and exceedingly popular in the House of Commons, from his general good humour and civility, and the credit given him for honour, sincerity, plain dealing, and good intentions.
Few more curious sights were, not long since, to be seen in London than that of Sir G. C. Lewis at the War Office. What is now a melancholy recollection was, when we used to see it, an odd mixture of amusing anomalies. The accidental and bit-by-bit way in which all minor business is managed in England has drifted our public offices into scattered, strange, and miscellaneous places; it has drifted the war minister into the large drawing-room of an old mansion, which is splendid enough to receive fashionable people and large enough to receive a hundred people. In this great and gorgeous apartment sat, a few months since, a homely scholar in spectacles, whose face bore traces of secretary labor, and whose figure was bent into the student stoop. Such a plain man looked odd enough in such a splendid place, but it was much more odd to think that that man in that place supremely regulated the War Department of England. The place should have been a pacific drawing-room, and the man was a pacific student: he looked like a conveyancer over deeds, like a scholar among treatises, like a jurist making a code; he looked like the last man to preside over martial pomp and military expeditions…. No German professor, from the smoke and study of many silent years, has ever put forth books more bristling with recondite references, more exact in every technicality of scholarship, more rich in matured reflection, than Sir George Lewis found time, mind, and scholarlike curiosity to write in the very thick of eager English life: and yet he was never very busy, or never seemed so. In the extremity of the “Trent” difficulty—when, as he was inclined to think, a war with America was impending, when a war minister might be pardoned for having no time for general reflection—Sir George Lewis found time, at three o’clock on a busy parliamentary day, to discuss with the writer of these lines for some twenty minutes the comparative certainty (or rather uncertainty) of the physical and moral sciences. It was difficult to know what to make of such a man.
Of course I knew him but little, but there was one quality of his mind of vast consequence to him as a statesman, and to his country, which was very quickly apparent; I mean his instinctive fairness. He was singularly able and willing to change his opinion, when new facts came to unsettle his old one. He seemed to do it, too, without regret. This struck me the first time I saw him, which was at breakfast at Lord Stanhope’s, in July, 1856, and it was still more strongly apparent the next morning at breakfast at his own house; the conversations on both occasions having been much on American affairs…. And so it continued, I think, every time I saw him that summer, and the next, down to the last dinner at his house, when we were together. I remember that I used to think that he had the greatest respect for facts of any man I ever saw, and an extraordinary power of determining, from internal evidence, what were such. I suppose this meant, that the love of truth was the uppermost visible quality in his character.
Lord Bacon tells us, “Reading makes a full man, writing a correct man, and speaking a ready man;” and as Sir Cornewall Lewis had ample experience of the three systems, he was naturally expected to take a high position. In an eminent degree he abounded with the materials out of which good speaking might be made. His main fault was a tendency to be doctrinaire, to forget the feelings and prejudices of Englishmen, to reason too much like the philosopher in his closet, and to forget to make allowance for the infirmities of human nature.
He was one of the most profound scholars of his day. He was not only an eminent statesman, but might, as Dean Milman said, “have done honour as Professor of Greek to the most learned university in Europe.” In hours snatched from public business he performed “feats of scholarship which might try the erudition and research of the most recluse student.” His “Babrius” is the perfection of classical editing. He wrote notable books on Roman history, ancient astronomy, international law, methods of political reasoning and forms of government. His essays on the administration of Great Britain from 1783 to 1830 are an important historical contribution, modestly put forth in the form of reviews. Looking back on all this variety of work, and work of such a high order, it certainly strikes one at first sight as strange that it should have attracted so little attention from his contemporaries. They took it all very much as a matter of course, like any common incident of nature—daylight or the flowing of the tide—very wonderful when one thinks of it, but which one doesn’t think about at all…. He worked with the coldness and precision of machinery, and to casual observers seemed rather a system or intellectual process than a man.
Sir George Lewis’s was no ordinary character: there was mixed with his clear intelligence and capacity for profound and distinct thought a peculiar singleness and simplicity with which such qualities are rarely found in union. A part of this simplicity was his entire freedom from vanity. Aware of his own superiority he could hardly fail to be, but on no occasion was he ever tempted to make a display of it, either in order to obtain praise or gain an advantage. Neither did he on any occasion take offence: he never felt animosity towards persons who misunderstood and disparaged him, nor dislike to those who treated him slightingly because in some common-place matters they were more efficient than himself. He was gentle and unassuming, calm, dispassionate, and just, and was consequently beloved in private and respected in public life…. The love of letters was, in Sir George Lewis’s mind, the dominant passion, and that for its own sake. It was this quality which rendered his commerce so delightful to his learned associates. Ever ready to plunge into discussions of grave questions, bringing to them stores of heaped-up knowledge, with a candid appreciation of opinions at variance with his own, no man was more sought after as a converser by the distinguished members of the literary republic.
Few recent lives of Englishmen are so worthy to be set on record for the example of posterity as that of Sir George Cornewall Lewis. It was so balanced and sustained; such an honest life of work, gradually and surely winning its own reward, and demonstrating that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. A weak physique never suggested to him an excuse for indolence; a singular modesty never interfered with the earnest pursuit of high aims in his works and acts; a consistent gentleness and dislike of giving offence never prevented his holding his own opinion and holding it so that, sooner or later, he was generally found to be in the right. And what animated his whole career was rather perseverance than genius; there were no brilliant coups, though there were manifold instances of the triumph of plain sound judgment based on a careful survey of precedents. Gifted with a clear head, a spirit of research, and a calm judicial mind, he achieved by industry, system, and steadfast conscientiousness, an eminence far higher than the high station in which he was born, and left behind him a name, of which his country is justly proud, in the annals of its statesmanship and its literature.
He was a singular man; his manners were dry and phlegmatic, though too simple to be supercilious; he was thoroughly honest-minded; he was of an imperturbable temper, though cynical; and, externally frigid as he was, he had two or three attachments of which the secret strength was to be inferred from an unvarying constancy. His success in political life never received a check; and it showed how unessential popular manners are to such success in this country, so long as integrity and sincerity are unquestioned; proving also that coldness and comparative indifference, with the requisite conscientiousness and intellectual power, may inspire more general and durable confidence than political ardors, howsoever patriotic. His well-known saying that “life would be tolerable enough but for its amusements” was genuinely characteristic; and I doubt whether politics were much more congenial to him than amusements; or work in his office, whether as chancellor of the exchequer or secretary of state, equally acceptable with work in his study. Even when in his office he seemed to prefer laborious literary research and the composition of able, but dry, literary works to administrative industries; though for these also he was well fitted by the largeness of his understanding; for, with all his devotion to learning and scholastic literature, his mind was in no sense pedantic. He had a highly cultivated logical faculty; but he knew that faculty to be instrumental only—designed to serve the higher reason, not to master it. What limitation there was of his intellect was on the imaginative side. His mind was essentially prosaic.
If George Lewis had taken care of himself he might possibly have been alive now, but he was of a skeptical turn of mind, and even disbelieved in what is the center of truth to so many, his own country doctor. Hence, an illness, I believe easily curable at first, rapidly got worse, and no one attended to it, till too late. And so he died prematurely. His loss has been a very great one, and we feel it more and more every day, for he stands as one of those honest and independent Liberals, whose political fibre was not relaxed by his constantly feeding himself upon sentimental platitudes. He really loved his native land better than his party or his own personal interests, so that whenever a duty to England showed itself before him, he might safely have been depended upon.
General
It is as a writer, as a clear-headed and fearless though thoughtful inquirer into abstruse problems of Polity and Jurisprudence, that he will be best remembered. His Essays “On the Use and Abuse of Political Terms,” “On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion;” “On the Government of Dependencies;” and “On the Method of Observation and Reasoning in Politics,” show his characteristic merits. He has also left us a short but very valuable work, “On the Extradition of Criminals;” a difficult subject, which continually forces itself on the attention of those who have to deal with International law.
Most of his books are too full of citations and explanations, and to the last he would have been more read and more influential if he had thought often of Sydney Smith’s precept, “Now, remember Noah, and be quick.” But though a tendency to overlay a subject with superfluous erudition was one of Sir George Lewis’s defects, the possession of that available erudition was one of his greatest powers.
The author was one of the wisest as well as one of the most learned men of the last generation.
The most remarkable characteristic of Lewis was the great variety of his literary activity. Yet he was by no means a versatile man; and in his speculations he ever preserved the clearness, method, regularity, and industry that characterised his political life. With strong limitations, and with but plain and homely qualities, he succeeded in making his influence widely felt in several departments of letters.
A somewhat incongruous figure to appear in this company has nevertheless a right to be mentioned in connection with Roman history…. He was also a prolific writer, chiefly upon more or less political questions…. This class of writing is seldom entertaining, and in Sir George Lewis’s hands becomes exceedingly dry; but there is more life in the more important work which leads us to class the author among the students of ancient history, a ruthless attack upon all manner of legends and traditions, entitled an “Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History.” We have small sympathy, as a rule, with the demolishers of traditions. It is certainly not a work of mercy, and seldom of necessity; indeed, it usually reminds us, especially when carried out with undue violence, of the unnecessary efforts of Panard’s stage hero.
| “J’ai vu Roland dans sa colère | |
| Exercer l’ effort de son bras | |
| Pour pouvoir arracher de terre | |
| Des arbres—qui n’y tenait pas.” |
His writings are more remarkable for scholarly research than for any elegance of style, and are distinguished by the same practical good sense, as well as the same absence of any desire for popularity, which were so noticeable in his parliamentary career. Lewis had a tendency to overestimate the effects of education, and was firmly convinced that “a well-educated man was competent to undertake any office and write on any subject.” His characteristic assertion that “life would be tolerable but for its amusements,” though familiar to many, is frequently misquoted.
A keen scholar and a fastidious writer.
Extensive knowledge, combined with a clearness of intellect and independence of judgment, gives value to his work.
