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If Mr. Mill did not love poetry with a purely disinterested love, but
with an eye to its moral causes and effects, neither did he study
character from mere delight in observing the varieties of mankind.
Armand Carrel the Republican journalist, Alfred de Vigny the Royalist
poet, Coleridge the Conservative, and Bentham the Reformer, are taken
up and expounded, not as striking individuals, but as types of
influences and tendencies. This habit of keeping in view mind in the
abstract, or men in the aggregate, may have been in a large measure a
result of his education by his father; but I am inclined to think that
he was of too ardent and pre-occupied a disposition, perhaps too much
disposed to take favorable views of individuals, to be very sensitive
to differences of character. It should not, however, be forgotten that
in one memorable case he showed remarkable discrimination. Soon after
Mr. Tennyson published his second issue of poems, Mr. Mill reviewed
them in "The Westminster Review" for July, 1835, and, with his usual
earnestness and generosity, applied all his powers to making a just
estimate of the new aspirant. To have reprinted this among his
miscellaneous writings might have seemed rather boastful, as claiming
credit for the first full recognition of a great poet: still it is a
very remarkable review; and one would hope it will not be omitted if
there is to be any further collection of his casual productions.
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