ding intensity of mind prevented these hours from being that
leisurely process in slippers and easy-chair which passes with many for
the practice of literary cultivation. Much of her reading was for the
direct purposes of her own work. The young lady who begins to write
historic novels out of her own head will find something much to her
advantage if she will refer to the list of books read by George Eliot
during the latter half of 1861, when she was meditating _Romola_ (ii.
325). Apart from immediate needs and uses, no student of our time has
known better the solace, the delight, the guidance that abide in great
writings. Nobody who did not share the scholar's enthusiasm could have
described the blind scholar in his library in the adorable fifth chapter
of _Romola_; and we feel that she must have copied out with keen gusto
of her own those words of Petrarch which she puts into old Bardo's
mouth--'_Libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva
quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur._'

As for books that are not books, as Milton bade us do with 'neat repasts
of wine,' she wisely spared to interpose them oft. Her standards of
knowledge were those of the erudite and the savant, and even in the
region of beauty she was never content with any but definite
impressions. In one place in these volumes, by the way, she makes a
remark curiously inconsistent with the usual scientific attitude of her
mind. She has been reading Darwin's _Origin of Species_, on which she
makes the truly astonishing criticism that it is 'sadly wanting in
illustrative facts,' and that 'it is not impressive from want of
luminous and orderly presentation' (ii. 43-48). Then she says that 'the
development theory, and all other explanation of processes by which
things came to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery
that lies under processes.' This position it does not now concern us to
discuss, but at least it is in singular discrepancy with her strong
habitual preference for accurate and quantitative knowledge, over vague
and misty moods in the region of the unknowable and the unreachable.

George Eliot's means of access to books were very full. She knew French,
German, Italian, and Spanish accurately. Greek and Latin, Mr. Cross
tells us, she could read with thorough delight to herself; though after
the appalling specimen of Mill's juvenile Latinity that Mr. Bain has
disinterred, the fastidious collegian may be sce