John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

1 88 VOICE AND ELOCUTION. 1849-1872.
and lightness, and did not restrain their display. He did not
shrink from contact with ordinary mortals, and had a great
many occasions of encountering
such :
if
it were only during the
six hours a day, for thirty-five years, that he spent in a busy
State office, encompassed with superiors, equals, and inferiors.
He had wit and readiness such as we do not find often sur
"
passed in the higher circles ". No one pretends that he was
a Sydney Smith. I believe that the one thing that took the
London public by surprise in 1865, and carried his election for
Westminster, was his wit and readiness.
The material of a man s conversation must be his amassed
knowledge ; and a writer shows that by his books. The nearest
approach to actual conversation is letter-writing ; we may judge
of people s talk by their familiar correspondence. What books
and letters fail to show is conversation as such ; and includes
elements of considerable efficacy in themselves. All that re
lates to voice, delivery, gesture, and play of countenance the
purely physical part is imperfectly conceivable through mere
description. The part not physical is the conduct as regards
the listeners ; which fluctuates between the two extremes of
lecture or monologue, in the Coleridge style, and short question
and answer, in the Socratic style.
Mill s voice was agreeable, although not specially melodious ;
it was thin and weak. His articulation was not very clear.
His elocution was good, without being particularly showy or
impressive ; he had a mastery of emphasis ; his modulation was
sufficiently removed from monotone, so that there was nothing
wearying in his manner. He had not much gesture, but it was
all in keeping ; his features were expressive without his aiming
at strong effects. Everything
about him had the cast of
sobriety and reserve ; he did no more than the end required.
There was so little of marked peculiarity in his speaking, that I
never knew anyone that could mimic him successfully in the
enunciation of a sentence. Very few people could assume his