John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

154 TASTE FOR POETRY. 1849-1872.
was then chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests. Mill
intervened at the right moment, and, I believe by the mediation
of Charles Buller, induced Lord Lincoln to preserve the row
as they now remain at the street edge of the foot pavement.
Setting aside for the moment the interests that grew out of
his intellectual capabilities and work generally, we may remark
upon his aesthetic sensibilities as a whole. His earliest favourite
books were those relating to characters renowned for heroism
and strength.
I do not think that this persisted through life to
a marked degree. He qualified his admiration of strength
with the use made of it ; and thoroughly concurred in Crete s
estimate of Alexander the Great. Caesarism was his abomina
tion. Pericles, I should suppose, was his greatest
hero or
antiquity. Greece was the home of his affections in the ancient
world.
His poetic tastes, as they revealed themselves after his great
crisis, are beyond my powers to analyze or explain. Soon after
I knew him, he endeavoured to make me interested in Words
worth, and pointed out the poems that I should begin with ;
his efforts were for the time unsuccessful. He seemed to look
upon Poetry as a Religion, or rather as Religion and Philosophy
in one. He took strongly to Tennyson, and was able to discern
at once those beauties that the general world have since agreed
but his obtuseness to Shakespeare would suggest doubts
upon ;
as to his feeling for poetic effects of the kind that represent
pure poetry, apart from either religion or philosophy. I never
could make sure whether the highest genius of style attracted
him, without pointing some moral, or lending itself to a truth ;
yet, I found from one of his letters at a late period of his life,
that he continued to read Carlyle with pleasure, after ceasing
to care anything for his doctrinal views. His thorough mastery
of the French language enabled him to enjoy the masterpieces
of French prose. At an early stage, he read the French wits
for improving his style ; and it has seemed to me a curious slip
of memory that he never mentions, in the Autobiography, Paul
but