MILL, JOHN STUART, AUTOBI OGRAPHY. This has been called the his tory of an education, showing what may be accomplished in forming a boy s mind both for good and ilL Mill's teacher was his father, whose ardor in the task was stimulated by the facility of his pupil. He began Greek at three; Latin at eight; by 12 he knew most of the best in both languages, besides reading in English "chiefly histories," and composing one book in continuation of Pope's (Iliad.) From 12 he began logic, at 13, political economy, at 17 he was writing articles for the Westminster Re view. But such forcing of the faculties must be paid for. It was impossible that Mill's edu cation should not produce a distinguished mind, it was equally impossible that it should produce a joyous one. His boyhood lacked games and youthful companionship. At 20, a not un natural reaction caused a sudden collapse in his whole intellectual outlook, resulting in pro found depression, when this brilliant boy "seemed to have nothing left to live for." From this state of "dry, heavy dejection,* he was roused by the discovery of beauty, art, music and poetry, all of which had been omitted from the system of the elder Mill. Thus he came to perceive the value of feeling and emotion, and was brought back to hope and enjoyment by pleasure in Wordsworth's poetry and the Memoirs of MarmonteL Admirable as all this is, not less so is his account of "that friendship which has been the honor and chief blessing of my existence," his marriage with Mrs. Tay
lor in 1851. Mill's intellectual isolation made the experience a vital one; and the words in which he draws his wife's character and their companionship in work and thought are among the most impressive of their kind. Much of the 'Autobiography' is taken up with an ac count of the genesis and growth of Mill's chief works and with a discussion of his father's character and opinions and of the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton and of Comte. But the book, while primarily intellectual, is not without humanity and warmth, even apart from the glowing passages devoted to the author's wife. Mill s friends, Austin, Maurice, Sterling, the Carlyles and others, come into the human picture as well. The style is admirable for the purpose, clear, dispassionate and not unduly restrained; and the attitude of sane analysis, of modesty and of thoughtful discrimination has never been surpassed in any autobiography. The world has taken the earlier portion of the book— the story of the growth of the boy's mind and character — as its unique contribution to the literature of autobiography; but scarcely less valuable are Mill's pictures of his con temporaries and his analysis of the thought and the social movements of his time.