Her culture may be compared with Mrs. Browning's, who was also an extensive
reader and widely informed. The poet as well as the novelist acquired her
learning because of her thirst for knowledge, and mainly by her own
efforts; but she preferred the classics to science, and literature to
philosophy. Mrs. Browning was the wiser, George Eliot the more learned. The
writings of Mrs. Browning are less affected by her information than George
Eliot's; and this is true because she was of a more poetical temperament,
because her imagination was more brilliant and creative.

Mrs. Lewes was an enthusiastic lover of art, and especially of music. She
never tired in her interest in beholding fine paintings, and music was the
continual delight of her life. She was a tireless frequenter of picture
galleries, and every fine musical entertainment in London was sure to find
her, in company with Mr. Lewes, an enthusiastic listener. Good acting also
claimed not a little of her interest, and she carefully studied even the
details of the dramatic art, so that she was able to give a critical
appreciation to the acting she enjoyed. Indeed, she had given to her mind
that rounded fulness of attainment, and developed all her faculties
with that due proportion, which Fichte so earnestly preached as the
characteristic of true culture. "Her character," says Edith Simcox, "seemed
to include every possibility of action and emotion; no human passion was
wanting in her nature, there were no blanks or negations; and the
marvellous thing was to see how, in this wealth of impulses and desires,
there was no crash of internal discord, no painful collisions with other
human interests outside; how, in all her life, passions of volcanic
strength were harnessed in the service of those nearest her, and so
inspired by the permanent instinct of devotion to her kind, that it seemed
as if it were by her own choice they spent themselves there only where
their force was welcome. Her very being was a protest against the opposing
and yet cognate heresies that half the normal human passions must be