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.]

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.