John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

24 APPLICATION TO STUDY EXCESSIVE. 1806-1821.
sidering that he was at work from about six in the morning,
with only half-an-hour for breakfast, he should clearly have had
between one and two a cessation of several hours, extending
over ^dinner ; especially as he gave up the evening
to his
hardest subjects. Of course this interval should have been
devoted to out-of-doors recreation. It is quite true that both
father and son were alive to the necessity of walking, and
practised it even to excess ; in fact, counted too much upon it
as a means of renewing the forces of the brain : while their
walks were so conducted as to be merely a part of their work
ing-day a hearing and giving of lessons.
What with his own recital in the Autobiography, and the
minuter details in the letter to Sir S. Bentham, and the diary,
we have a complete account of his reading and study in every
form. The amount is, of course, for a child, stupendous. The
choice and sequence of books and subjects suggest various re
flections. His beginning Greek at so early an age was no
doubt due to his father s strong predilection for that language.
.What we wonder at most is the order of his reading. Before
his eighth year, he had read not merely the easier writers, but
six dialogues of Plato (the Theaetetus he admits he did not
understand). He was only eight, when he first read Thu-
cydides, as well as a number of plays ; at nine, he read part
of Demosthenes ; at eleven, Thucydides the second time.
What his reading of Thucydides could be at eight, we may
it could be nothing but an exercise in the
dimly imagine ;
Greek language ; and the same remark must be applicable to
the great mass of his early reading both in Greek and in Latin.
At Toulouse, we find him still reading Virgil, although five years
before he had read the Buccolics and six books of the
yEneid. Moreover, at Toulouse, his Greek reading was Lucian,
a very easy writer whom he had begun before he was eight ;
the noticeable fact being that he is now taking an interest in
the writer s thoughts and able to criticize him. It is apparent
enough that his vast early reading was too rapid, and, as a con-