Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/170

Rh in ‘Love for Love,’ and was the original Colonel Quorum in ‘Reparation.’ His name next appears for his benefit, 9 May 1785, as Brush in the ‘Clandestine Marriage,’ and as Meadows in the ‘Deaf Lover,’ and he had no further engagement at the principal London theatres. On 19 May 1787 he was in Edinburgh, where he acted in several pieces and gave, after a custom adopted in his later life, recitations of George Alexander Stevens's ‘Lecture on Heads.’ He went with Palmer to the Royalty Theatre in Wellclose Square, where he recited Cowper's ‘John Gilpin.’ In a vain hope of bettering his fortune he visited India with his wife and family. He had not obtained the requisite leave from England, and his performances were prohibited. On 7 April 1790 for the benefit of [q. v.], and on 18 May 1790 for the benefit of [q. v.], he played at Covent Garden Buck in the ‘Englishman in Paris.’ Returning to Scotland, he engaged in Edinburgh in 1792 under Stephen Kemble, was part manager of the Dundee Theatre, and in 1792–3 was in Dublin, where he became a favourite in low comedy. While undergoing imprisonment for debt he wrote various works of little merit. The most ambitious of these, ‘Memoirs of Charles Lee Lewes,’ &c., written by himself, 4 vols. 12mo, 1805, was a posthumous publication edited by his son. Among theatrical compilations it has an unenviable precedency of worthlessness. A few highly coloured pictures of his own early life are given; but he supplies many apocryphal anecdotes of other actors, and devotes two volumes to an account of the wrangles concerning the Edinburgh Theatre between Jackson, Mrs. Esten, and others. Lewes is also responsible for Hippisley's ‘Drunken Man, as altered by Charles Lee Lewes,’ 8vo, no date (?1787); a ‘Lecture on Heads, as delivered by Charles Lee Lewes,’ 1784; ‘John Gilpin, as delivered by Charles Lee Lewes,’ unmentioned by authorities and inaccessible; ‘Comic Sketches, or the Comedian his own Manager,’ 12mo, 1804, consisting of the entertainments he had given and a sketch of his life and a portrait; ‘National Melodist, Songs,’ &c., 12mo, 1817. Harris, the manager of Drury Lane, lent the theatre for the benefit of Lewes, 24 June 1803, when the ‘Wonder’ was performed, with Lewes as Lissardo, H. Siddons as Don Felix, Mrs. Jordan as Violante, and Mrs. Mattocks as Flora. An address entitled ‘Lee Lewes's Ultimatum,’ written by Thomas Dibdin, was delivered. A considerable sum of money was raised, but a serious decay of power was manifested by Lewes, who two days later according to Dibdin, on 23 July according to Boaden, was found dead in his bed. He was buried in Pentonville. Lewes was thrice married, leaving a family by his first wife, a Miss Hussey, and another by the second, a Miss Rigley, the daughter of a Liverpool innkeeper. Genest speaks of Lewes as a good actor, and says his retirement was a loss to the stage. Anthony Pasquin praises his valets for a bold ‘pertness.’ Two portraits by De Wilde of Lewes as Bobadil are in the Garrick Club. In theatrical records Lewes is frequently confused with [q. v.]

 LEWES, GEORGE HENRY (1817–1878), miscellaneous writer, born in London in 1817, was the grandson of the actor, [q. v.] His education was desultory. He passed through various schools in London, Jersey, and Brittany, and was finally at Dr. Burney's at Greenwich. He entered a notary's office, and was at one time in the employment of a Russian merchant. For a time he walked the hospitals, but gave up the profession from his dislike to witnessing physical pain, a feeling which in later years restricted the range of his physiological experiments. At the age of nineteen he belonged to a club, consisting chiefly of small tradesmen, who discussed philosophy and, in particular, Spinoza. He described it in the ‘Fortnightly Review’ for 1866. One of its members, Kohn, a journeyman watchmaker, is said to have been the original of Mordecai in George Eliot's ‘Daniel Deronda.’ By 1836, he says (Problems of Life and Mind, Preface), he had planned a treatise, in which the philosophy of the Scottish school was to be physiologically interpreted, and he lectured upon the subject in 1837 in Fox's chapel in Finsbury. The interest in philosophical questions thus indicated was probably the cause of a visit to Germany in 1838. He speaks in a letter to Macvey Napier (7 June 1844, Napier Correspondence, p. 464) of having spent the greater part of his youth in France and Germany, and of having regained the use of his mother-tongue by the last three or four years in England. Lewes had inherited or imbibed from the surroundings of his youth a passion for the drama. At the age of sixteen he had written a play to be acted in his own house by a company of boy amateurs. After his return from Germany he made some attempts to take up acting as a profession. In 1841 he