John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

50 CARLYLE S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 1820-1840.
withstanding, or even in consequence of this, the truest of
histories. It is the history of the French Revolution ( and the
poetry of it, both in one; and on the whole, no work of
greater genius, either historical or poetical, has been produced
in this country for many years.
Nothing could be better calculated to disarm prejudice against
the book than the conduct of this article throughout; it is
indeed a masterpiece of pleading, and deserved to be success
ful, as it was. A little later, Mill admitted into the Review
an article on Carlyle by John Sterling, which was a still more
complete exhibition of Carlyle, and is probably yet one of the
best criticisms that he has ever received. Still, when Carlyle,
in his Life of Sterling, refers to that article as the first marked
recognition he had received in the press, he was unfairly
oblivious to what Mill s article had previously done for him.
In this number the political article has to advert to the death
of King William, and the events that follow. The Radicalism
is as strong as ever ; but the signature (E) is not Mill s, and I
do not know the author.
The next number is October, 1837. The opening article is
the political one, and is by Mill. Its text is the opening of
the new Parliament of 1837. It is, if possible, more energetic
and outspoken than ever. It addresses first the Ministers, and
demands of them the Ballot, as a special measure, and a
number of other reforms, the Church included. It addresses
the Radicals in Parliament in the usual strain. It hits the
Tories very hard for their disingenuous dealing on the new
Poor Law at the elections, and demonstrates that not they,
but the Radicals, were the real upholders of the rights of
property. The incitements to action are redoubled,
as the
power of the Liberals has diminished. I do not know of any
compositions that better deserve to be compared with the
Philippics of Demosthenes than Mill s political onslaughts in
those years.
This number contains also the article on Armand Carrel.