Meanwhile, these literary labours were pleasantly diversified by frequent visits to her friends at Rosehill and elsewhere. In October 1852, she stayed with Mr. and Mrs. George Combe at Edinburgh, and on her way back was the guest of Harriet Martineau, at her delightfully situated house in Ambleside. Her acquaintance with Mr. Herbert Spencer had ripened into a cordial friendship. They met constantly both in London and in the country, and their intercourse was a source of mutual intellectual enjoyment and profit. As must already have become evident, it is erroneous to suppose that he had any share in the formation of her mind: for as Mr. Herbert Spencer said, in a letter to the Daily News, “Our friendship did not commence until 1851 … when she was already distinguished by that breadth of culture, and universality of power, which have since made her known to all the world.”

In a letter to Miss Phelps, George Eliot touches on this rumour, after alluding in an unmistakable manner to another great contemporary: “I never—to answer one of your questions quite directly—I never had any personal acquaintance with” (naming a prominent Positivist); “never saw him to my knowledge, except in the House of Commons; and though I have studied his books, especially his ‘Logic’ and ‘Political Economy,’ with much benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked epoch in my life.