John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

DIFFERENT OPINIONS AS TO CONVERSATION. 187
people very differently, and when he was twenty-four he was
described by Charles Greville in these terms :
"November isth [1830]. Yesterday morning I breakfasted
with Taylor (Henry) to meet Southey : the party was Southey ;
Strutt, member for Derby, a Radical ; young Mill, a political
economist ; Charles Villiers, young Elliot, and myself. . . .
Young Mill is the son of Mill who wrote the History of British
India, and is said to be cleverer than his father. He has
written many excellent articles in reviews, pamphlets, &c. ;
though powerful with a pen in his hand, in conversation he has
not the art of managing his ideas, and is consequently hesitating
and slow, and has the appearance of being always working in
his mind propositions or a syllogism."
Any one that knew him twelve years later would not recog
nize the smallest resemblance in this picture. He had no
want of the art of managing his ideas ; quite the opposite : he
was neither hesitating nor slow : and there was nothing in the
order of his statements that suggested syllogisms.
A writer in the Edinburgh Review (January, 1874), who
knew him from early years, gives a delineation, which seems to
me not much nearer the mark :
"
His manners were shy and awkward. His powers of con
versation, though remarkable enough in argument, were wholly
didactic and controversial. He had no humour, no talk, and
indeed no interest in the minor concerns of life. He had been
bred in a small coterie of people of extreme opinions, whom he
regarded as superior beings,
contact with ordinary mortals. In later life he affected some
but
and he seemed to shrink from all
thing of the life of a prophet, surrounded by admiring votaries,
who ministered to him largely that incense in which prophets
delight. He had neither the wit and readiness which adorn
the higher circles of the world, nor the geniality and desire to
a charm to the lower."
oblige which impart
His shyness and awkwardness I entirely failed to perceive.
he had humour
His conversation was not limited to argument ;