Plodding

The old man was plodding along.

He learnt for the first time that there was no law of transmutation, as in his innocence he had supposed (there was, in some degree, but the grammarian did not recognize it), but that every word in both Latin and Greek was to be individually committed to memory at the cost of years of plodding.

He's plodding along.

I'd count not wearisome / Long toil, nor enterprise, / But strain to reach it; aye, with wrestlings stout / And hopes that even in the dark will grow / (Like plants in dungeons, reaching feelers out), / And ploddings wary and slow.