LEVER, CHARLES JAMES (1806-1872).—­Novelist, b. at Dublin, and ed. at Trinity Coll. there.  He studied medicine at Goettingen, and practised at various places in Ireland.  In 1837 he contributed to the Dublin University Magazine his first novel, Harry Lorrequer, and the immediate and wide acceptance which it found decided him to devote himself to literature.  He accordingly followed it with Charles O’Malley (1840), his most popular book.  After this scarcely a year passed without an addition to the list of his light-hearted, breezy, rollicking stories, among which may be mentioned Jack Hinton (1842), Tom Burke of Ours, Arthur O’Leary, and The Dodd Family Abroad. The O’Donoghue and The Knight of Gwynne (1847) are more in the nature of historical romances.  In 1864 he contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine a series of miscellaneous papers, Cornelius O’Dowd on Men, Women, and Things in General.  L.’s life was largely spent abroad.  After practising his profession in Brussels 1840-42 he returned to Dublin to ed. the Dublin University Magazine, which he did until 1845, after which he went to Italy, settled at Florence, and thereafter was British Consul successively at Spezzia and Trieste, at the latter of which he d. He continued to produce novels up to the end of his life.  Among the later ones are Sir Brooke Fosbrooke, The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly, and Lord Kilgobbin (1872).

LEWES, GEORGE HENRY (1817-1878).—­Philosopher and miscellaneous writer, b. in London, and ed. at Greenwich, and in Jersey and Brittany.  His early life was varied; he tried law, commerce, and medicine successively, and was then for two years in Germany, on returning from which he tried the London stage, and eventually settled down to journalism, writing for the Morning Chronicle, for the Penny Encyclopaedia, and various periodicals.  Thereafter he ed. the Leader (1851-54), and the Fortnightly Review (which he founded) (1865-66).  His articles deal with an extraordinary variety of subjects—­criticism, the drama, biography, and science, both physical and mental.  His chief works are The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences (1853), The Psychology of Common Life (1859), Studies in Animal Life (1862), Problems of Life and Mind (1873-79).  L. was an exceptionally able dramatic critic, and in this department he produced Actors and the Art of Acting (1875), and a book on the Spanish Drama.  By far his greatest work, however, is his Life and Works of Goethe (1855), which remains the standard English work on the subject, and which by the end of the century had, in its German translation, passed into 16 ed.  He also wrote two novels, Ranthorpe (1847), and Rose, Blanche, and Violet (1848), neither of which attained any success.