Mill's first essays were written in the Traveller about a year before he
entered the India House. From that time forward his literary work was
uninterrupted save by attacks of illness. His industry was stupendous.
He wrote articles on an infinite variety of subjects, political,
metaphysical, philosophic, religious, poetical. He discovered Tennyson
for his generation, he influenced the writing of Carlyle's French
Revolution as well as its success. And all the while he was engaged in
studying and preparing for his more ambitious works, while he rose step
by step at the India Office. His Essays on Unsettled Questions in
Political Economy were written in 1831, although they did not appear
until thirteen years later. His System of Logic, the design of which was
even then fashioning itself in his brain, took thirteen years to
complete, and was actually published before the Political Economy. In
1844 appeared the article on Michelet, which its author anticipated
would cause some discussion, but which did not create the sensation he
expected. Next year there were the "Claims of Labour" and "Guizot," and
in 1847 his articles on Irish affairs in the Morning Chronicle. These
years were very much influenced by his friendship and correspondence
with Comte, a curious comradeship between men of such different
temperament. In 1848 Mill published his Political Economy, to which he
had given his serious study since the completion of his Logic. His
articles and reviews, though they involved a good deal of work-as, for
instance, the re-perusal of the Iliad and theOdyssey in the original
before reviewing Grote's Greece-were recreation to the student. The year
1856 saw him head of the Examiners' Office in the India House, and
another two years brought the end of his official work, owing to the
transfer of India to the Crown. In the same year his wife died. Liberty
was published shortly after, as well as the Thoughts on Parliamentary
Reform, and no year passed without Mill making important contributions
on the political, philosophical, and ethical questions of the day.
