It has been truly said of her that above all novelists, with the exception
of Goethe, she was supreme in culture. She had a passion for knowledge, and
zeal in the pursuit of learning. She was a lover of books, but not a
scholar in the technical and exact sense. Delighting in literature, art,
music, and all that appeals to the imagination, rather than in mere
information, yet she was a thinker of original powers, with a keen
appreciation of philosophy, and ability to tread its most difficult paths
with firm step. She had an intimate acquaintance with the literatures of
Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and she was well read in the classics of
Greece and Rome. She was "competently acquainted" with the different
systems of philosophy, and she had mastered their problems while thinking
out her own conclusions. Having no professional knowledge of the sciences,
she was a diligent reader of scientific books, and was familiar with all
the bearings of science on philosophy and religion. Her books show an
intimate knowledge of modern thought in many of its phases, as it bears
upon physical, economic, historical and intellectual science. With all her
learning, however, she retained a woman's sympathy with life, beauty and
poetry. Her knowledge was never dry and technical, but warm and imaginative
with genius and poetry. [Footnote: Her scholarly habits, and her realistic
tendencies, usually made George Eliot very painstaking and accurate, but an
occasional slip of pen or memory is to be noted in her books. In
Theophrastus Such she credited to the Apologia of Plato what is really
contained in the Phaedo. The motto to chapter seventeen of Daniel Deronda
was quoted, in the first edition, as from In Memoriam instead of Locksley
Hall. In an early chapter of Felix Holt she made the parson preach from the
words, "Break up the fallow ground of your hearts." The words of scripture
are, "Break up your fallow ground." In Adam Bede a clergyman is made to
take the words of the Prayer Book, "In the midst of life we are in death,"
for his text.]