action presented itself to him as a duty he became physically
incapable of doing it. Whatever Mill undertook he accomplished, often
in the face of enormous difficulties. Coleridge never finished
anything, and his works are a heap of fragments of the prolegomena to
ambitious schemes. Mill worked his hardest from youth to age, never
sparing labour or shirking difficulties or turning aside from his
path. Coleridge dawdled through life, solacing himself with opium, and
could only be coaxed into occasional activity by skilful diplomacy.
Mill preserved his independence by rigid self-denial, temperance, and
punctuality. Coleridge was always dependent upon the generosity of his
friends. Mill brought up a large family, and in the midst of severe
labours found time to educate them even to excess. Coleridge left his
wife and children to be cared for by others. And Coleridge died in the
odour of sanctity, revered by his disciples, and idolised by his
children; while Mill went to the grave amidst the shrugs of
respectable shoulders, and respected rather than beloved by the son
who succeeded to his intellectual leadership.

The answer to the riddle is indeed plain enough; or rather there are
many superabundantly obvious answers. Had Mill defended orthodox views
and Coleridge been avowedly heterodox, we should no doubt have heard
more of Coleridge's opium and of Mill's blameless and energetic life.
But this explains little. That Coleridge was a man of genius and,
moreover, of exquisitely poetical genius, and that Mill was at most a
man of remarkable talent and the driest and sternest of logicians is
also obvious. It is even more to the purpose that Coleridge was
overflowing with kindliness, though little able to turn goodwill to
much effect; whereas Mill's morality took the form chiefly of
attacking the wicked. This is indicated by the saying attributed by
Bowring to Bentham that Mill's sympathy for the many sprang out of his
hatred of the oppressing few.[30] J. S. Mill very properly protested
against this statement when it was quoted in the _Edinburgh Review_.
It would obviously imply a gross misunderstanding, whether Bentham,
not a good observer of men, said so or not. But it indicates the side
of Mill's character which made him unattractive to contemporaries and
also to posterity. He partook, says his son,[31] of the Stoic, the
Epicurean, and the Cynic character. He was a Stoic in his personal
qualities; an Epicurean so far as his