ptical of the
scholarship of prodigies. Hebrew was her favourite study to the end of
her days. People commonly supposed that she had been inoculated with an
artificial taste for science by her companion. We now learn that she
took a decided interest in natural science long before she made Mr.
Lewes's acquaintance, and many of the roundabout pedantries that
displeased people in her latest writings, and were set down to his
account, appeared in her composition before she had ever exchanged a
word with him.

All who knew her well enough were aware that she had what Mr. Cross
describes as 'limitless persistency in application.' This is an old
account of genius, but nobody illustrates more effectively the infinite
capacity of taking pains. In reading, in looking at pictures, in playing
difficult music, in talking, she was equally importunate in the search,
and equally insistent on mastery. Her faculty of sustained concentration
was part of her immense intellectual power. 'Continuous thought did not
fatigue her. She could keep her mind on the stretch hour after hour; the
body might give way, but the brain remained unwearied' (iii. 422). It is
only a trifling illustration of the infection of her indefatigable
quality of taking pains, that Lewes should have formed the important
habit of rewriting every page of his work, even of short articles for
Reviews, before letting it go to the press. The journal shows what sore
pain and travail composition was to her. She wrote the last volume of
_Adam Bede_ in six weeks; she 'could not help writing it fast, because
it was written under the stress of emotion.' But what a prodigious
contrast between her pace and Walter Scott's twelve volumes a year! Like
many other people of powerful brains, she united strong and clear
general retentiveness with a weak and untrustworthy verbal memory. 'She
never could trust herself to write a quotation without verifying it.'
'What courage and patience,' she says of some one else, 'are wanted for
every life that aims to produce anything,' and her own existence was one
long and painful sermon on that text.

Over few lives have the clouds of mental dejection hung in such heavy
unmoving banks. Nearly every chapter is strewn with melancholy words. 'I
cannot help thinking more of your illness than of the pleasure in
prospect--according to my foolish nature, which is always prone to live
in past pain.' The same sentiment is the mournful refrain that runs
throug