John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

LITTLE INTEREST IN THE MATTER OF BOOKS. 25
sequence superficial. It is observable how rare is his avowal
of interest in the subjects of the classical books : Lucian is an
his father to
exception ; Quintilian is another. He was set by
make an analysis of Aristotle s Rhetoric and Organon, and
doubtless his mind was cast for Logic from the first. His
inaptitude for the matter of the Greek and Latin poets is
unambiguously shown ; he read Homer in Greek, but his
interest was awakened only by Pope s translation. His read
ings in the English poets for the most part made no impression
upon him whatever. He had a boyish delight in action,
battles, energy and heroism ; and seeing that whatever he felt,
he felt intensely, his devotion to that kind of literature was
very ardent. But, whether from early habits or from native
peculiarity, he had all his life an extraordinary power
of re
reading books. His first reading merely skimmed the subject:
if a book pleased him, and he wished to study it, he read it
two or three times, not after an interval, but immediately. I
cannot but think that in this practice there is a waste of power.
It was impossible for his father to test his study of Greek
and Latin works, except in select cases ; and hence it must
have been very slovenly. In Mathematics, he had little or no
assistance, but there he would check himself. His readings in
Physical Science were also untutored : unless at Montpellier,
he never had any masters, and his knowledge was at no time
mature.
If I were to compare him in his fifteenth year with the most
intellectual youth that I have ever known, or heard or read
of, I should say that his attainments on the whole are not
unparalleled, although, I admit, very rare. His classical know
ledge, such as it was, might be forced upon a clever youth of
that age. The Mathematics could not be so easily com
manded. The best mathematicians have seldom been capable
of beginning Euclid at eight or nine,* and even granting that
* Locke knew a young gentleman who could demonstrate several proposi
tions in Euclid before he was thirteen.