The other philosophical writers of the period were, with one exception, of minor importance. Harriet Martineau was a woman of varied activity. She wrote political economy, history and fiction; and her story, _Deerbrook_ (1839), is among the best and freshest of her works. She is however most memorable, not as an original thinker, but as a translator and expounder. She translated and condensed the philosophy of Comte, and did as much as anyone to make it known in England. She had the great merits of unshrinking courage, perfect sincerity and undoubting loyalty to truth. [Sidenote: George Henry Lewes (1817-1878).] Another miscellaneous writer of the Comtist school was George Henry Lewes, who has been elsewhere mentioned in connexion with George Eliot. He was an active-minded, energetic man, whose life touches literature at many points. He too wrote novels, but they did not succeed. He was a critic of no mean power. He took great interest in and possessed considerable knowledge of science, and in 1859-1860 published a popular scientific work, _The Physiology of Common Life_. But his best known book is the _Life of Goethe_ (1855). It is an able biography and pleasant to read, though perhaps, considering the calibre of the subject, rather lacking in weight. It is however no small compliment to Lewes's work that it was for many years accepted, both in Germany and in England, as the standard biography of Goethe. Lewes's principal contributions to philosophy were _A Biographical History of Philosophy_ (1845-1846), _Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences_ (1853), and _Problems of Life and Mind_ (1873-1879). In all of them Lewes shows himself an unswerving Positivist. He accepts and reiterates his master's doctrine that the day of metaphysics is past, so that his philosophy is, in a sense, the negation of philosophy. [Sidenote: Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1806-1863).]