Early Essays of John Stuart Mill. Selected by J. W.
M. Gibbs. (G. Bell and Sons.)—It was certainly worth while to republish these essays. Much of the argument is obsolete, but even this has an historical value ; and there is not a little which may be profitably studied for practical ends. Perhaps the most generally interesting is that on the poetry of Tennyson. The Quarterly Review had published a very contemptuous article—one of the extraordinary blunders for which the Quarterly has attained an un- fortunate pre-eminence—and Mill took up the poet's cause. Here is a passage which shows a more than common insight (the essay was written, it will be remembered, in 1835) : "We predict that as Mr. Tennyson advances in general spiritual culture he will strive more and more diligently, and, even without striving, will be more and more impelled by the natural tendencies of an expanding character, towards what has been described as the highest object of poetry, to incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible to his sense, and suitable to it." In no poet of the world—Shakespeare only ex- cepted—is there more of the "everlasting reason."
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