John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

174 STYLE. 1849-1872.
talk, which Mill took up and improved upon in his own way.
In like manner, one of Mill s chief friendships in later years
was with Thornton, who differed from him in a great many
things, but the differences were of the kind to bring into lively
exercise Mill s argumentative powers.
My next topic in the delineation of Mill s character,
is his
STYLE. He is allowed to be not only a great thinker, but a good
writer. His lucidity, in particular, is regarded as pre-eminent.
Exceptions are taken by the more fastidious critics ; he is said
by Mr. Pattison to be wanting in classical grace and literary
polish.
I have already expressed the opinion that the language
faculty in him was merely ordinary. Great cultivation had
given him a good command of expression for all his purposes,
but nothing could have made him a Macaulay. To begin
with his vocabulary including in that, not simply the words of
the English dictionary, but the stock of phrases coined by our
literary predecessors for expressing single
ideas we cannot
say that in this he was more than a good average among
men of intelligence and culture. He was greatly inferior to
Bentham in the copiousness, the variety of his primary stock
of language elements. He was surpassed, if I mistake not,
by both the Austins, by Grote and by Roebuck. Had he been
required to express the same idea in ten different forms, all
good, he would have come to a standstill sooner than any of
those.
His grammar is oftener defective than we should expect in
any one so carefully disciplined
some of the points that would be deemed objectionable, he
as he was from the first. In
probably had theories of his own. His placing of the trouble
some words
"
"
"
"
only and not only is, in my judgment, often
wholly indefensible. Scores of examples of such constructions
as the following, may be produced from his :
writings
"
Astraa
must not only have returned to earth, but the heart of the worst