1846—
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
p247analyzed
“now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Inferred as Hudspeth identified: Lewes published his Life and Works of Goethe in 1855, but in 1846 the work was still in progress.