SD764.1. John Stuart Mill to Thomas Carlyle
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3.
[London]
5th July 1833.
My dear Carlyle
I wrote a short letter to you intending to send it by your brother when he went to Craigenputtoch …
What you say of that paper of mine on Poetry and Art is exactly what I think respecting it myself. I do not think it contains anything erroneous, but I feel that it is far from going to the bottom of the subject, or even very deep into it; I think I see somewhat further into it now, and shall perhaps understand it in time. I think I mentioned to you that I have carried the investigation (rightly or wrongly as it may be) one step farther in a paper (being a review of a new poem) which I wrote for the Examiner: it proved too long for Fonblanque, and it is to appear in Tait, after such additions and alterations as I see it absolutely requires, and which I have not yet found time to give it. You say, you wish that you could help me in this matter; you can, and do, help me in all such matters, not by logical definition, which as I think I have said or written before, I agree with you in thinking not to be your peculiar walk of usefulness; but in suggesting deep and pregnant thoughts which might never have occurred to me, but which I am quite able when I have them to subject to all needful logical manipulation....
Publication: John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Vol. 12, ed. Francis E. Mineka (Toronto, 1963), pp. 161–164.
Manuscript: National Library of Scotland.
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