will be able to meet the heavy demands upon it, both of personal duty
and intellectual production--presses upon me almost continually in a way
that prevents me even from tasting the quiet joy I might have in the
_work done_. I feel no regret that the fame, as such, brings no
pleasure; but it _is_ a grief to me that I do not constantly feel strong
in thankfulness that my past life has vindicated its uses.'

_Romola_ seems to have been composed in constant gloom. 'I remember my
wife telling me, at Witley,' says Mr. Cross, 'how cruelly she had
suffered at Dorking from working under a leaden weight at this time. The
writing of _Romola_ ploughed into her more than any of her other books.
She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a well-defined
transition in her life. In her own words, "I began it a young woman--I
finished it an old woman."' She calls upon herself to make 'greater
efforts against indolence and the despondency that comes from too
egoistic a dread of failure.' 'This is the last entry I mean to make in
my old book in which I wrote for the first time at Geneva in 1849. What
moments of despair I passed through after that--despair that life would
ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some
good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of
half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful
activity; and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an
old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated' (ii. 307). One
day the entry is: 'Horrible scepticism about all things paralysing my
mind. Shall I ever be good for anything again? Ever do anything again?'
On another, she describes herself to a trusted friend as 'a mind
morbidly desponding, and a consciousness tending more and more to
consist in memories of error and imperfection rather than in a
strengthening sense of achievement.' We have to turn to such books as
Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_ to find any parallel to such wretchedness.