John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

REVIEWS TENNYSON : DE TOCQUEVILLE. 47
work as an enforcement of the radical creed. After Bentham
and the Mills, no man of their generation was better grounded
in logical methods, or more thorough in his method of grap
pling with political and other questions, than Samuel Bailey.
In the same number, Mill reviews Tennyson s poems. He
assigns as his inducement that the only influential organs that
had as yet noticed them were Blackwood and the Quarterly
Review ; on which notices he pronounces a decided and not
very flattering opinion. He is, accordingly, one of the earliest
to mete out justice to Tennyson s powers ; and, as a critical
exercise, as well as a sympathetic appreciation, the article is
highly meritorious. In some instances besides, Mill was
among the first, if not the very first, to welcome a rising genius.
He closes the number with a political article on the measures
of the Government for the session, among others, the Irish
Church and the Municipal Corporations bills. His text seems
to be that the statesmen of the generation are good in destroy
ing, but bad in construction ; and he says that the remark
applies to all the Whig reforms, and most of all to Lord
Brougham
In the third number, Oct., 1835, Mill reviews De Tocque-
s Law reforms.
ville s book, which had then appeared ; the review extending
to 45 pages. It is a very full account of the book, with
copious extracts, but may be considered as superseded by the
article written for the Edinburgh Review in 1840, which is
reprinted in the Dissertations. The number concludes with a
short but energetic review of the Parliamentary session just
concluded. It is of the tone and character of all his political
writing in those years ; a retrospect of recent achievements,
with a view of the present position and declaration of the one
thing needful for it a leader. He bitterly complains
absence of a man of action, and asks,
"
Why
of the
does not Mr.
Grote exert himself? There is not a man in Parliament who
could do so much, or who is more thoroughly the people s
"
friend." O Connell is the only figure that stands erect."