SOURCE: Hirschberg, Edgar W. “G. H. Lewes and A. W. Schlegel: An Important Critical Relationship.” University of South Florida Language Quarterly 5, nos. 3-4 (spring-summer 1967): 37-40.

In the following essay, Hirschberg compares the critical methods of Schlegel and G. W. Lewes, arguing for the influence of the former on the latter.

Bernard Shaw once termed George Henry Lewes “the most able and brilliant critic between Hazlitt and our own contemporaries.”¹ Certainly at the time he wrote most of his dramatic criticism, during the 1840's and 1850's, he was better equipped by way of background, education and experience for the task of criticism than any other English writer. Many literary historians regard him as the equal of any nineteenth-century critic and superior to most of them—with the notable exception, of course, of Shaw himself. One—and perhaps the chief—reason for his superior critical acumen was his thorough acquaintance...