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Rh of Positivism in England. He was introduced to George Eliot when his fortunes were almost desperate, and two years passed before she discerned that he was not the flippant man he seemed. She helped him to attain a prominent if not quite an important place among men of letters. For twenty years his Life of Goethe held its position even in Germany ; and the vacant record of incoherent error which he called a History of Philosophy is still read with pleasure. Passing with the drift from the discarded illusions of metaphysics to physiology, and in intelligent pursuance of Comte's leading idea, he conceived the noble design of a History of Science, which, by displaying the discovery and application of scientific methods, would have fitly crowned the Positive Philosophy.

Lewes helped to dispel the gloom and despondency of George Eliot's spirits, and stood manfully between her and all the cares he did not cause. His literary skill must have done her untold service, although the recorded instances of his intervention are contestable, and although his practice of keeping her aloof from all criticism but his own must have profited her comfort more than her art. She deferred to his judgment, but she knew that she could rely on his praise. He admired her essays, her novels, and at last her poetry. He was not quick in detecting her sovereign ability, and must bear the reproach that he under-valued his prize, and never knew until it was too late that she was worthy of better things than the position to which he consigned her. During the years in which she rose to fame she lived in seclusion, with no society but that of Lewes, preferring the country to London, the Continent to England, and Germany to France. In this perfect isolation the man through whose ministry almost alone she kept touch with the wider world exerted much influence. He encouraged her in contempt for metaphysics, in the study of biology, in her taste for French and especially German writers, and in her panoramic largeness of view. The point at which their ways parted and his action ceased most decidedly was religion. She had kept up her early love of the Scriptures,