John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

WRITES A ROMAN HISTORY. 3
numerous Voyages and Travels Anson, Cook, &c. ; Robin
son Crusoe, Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Miss Edgeworth s
Tales, and Brooke s Fool of Quality. I repeat that all this was
within the same four years as the Greek list above enumerated.
At a later stage, he speaks of his fondness for writing histories ;
he successively composed a Roman History from Hooke, an
abridgment of the Universal History, a History of Holland, and
(in his eleventh and twelfth years) a History of the Roman
Government. All these, he says, he destroyed. It happens,
however, that a lady friend of the family copied and preserved
the first of these essays, the Roman History ; upon the copy is
marked his age, six and a-half years, which would be near the
termination of the two formidable courses of reading now sum
marized. The sketch is very short, equal to about four of the
present printed pages, and gives but a few scraps of the earlier
traditions. If it is wonderful for the writer s age, it also shows
that his enormous reading had as yet done little for him. He can
make short sentences neatly enough ; he gives the heads of the
history, in the shape of the succession of kings and consuls, and,
in imitation of his author, he supplies erudite and critical notes.
The beginning runs thus (heading First Alban Govern
ment : Roman Conquest in Italy ) :
" We know not any part,
says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, of the History of Rome till
the Sicilian invasions. Before that time, the country had not
been entered by any foreign invader. After the expulsion of
Sicilians, Iberian (?) kings reigned for several years ; but in the
time of Latinus, ^Eneas, son of Venus and Anchises, came to
Italy, and established a kingdom there called Albania. He
then succeeded Latinus in the government, and engaged in the
wars of Italy. The Rutuli, a people living near the sea, and
extending along the Numicius up to Lavinium, opposed him.
However, Tu^nus their king was defeated and killed by ^Eneas.
. Eneas was killed soon after this. The war continued to be
carried on chiefly against the Rutuli, to the time of Romulus,
the first king of Rome. By him it was that Rome was built."
(