Memoirs of a Student. By Algernon Taylor. (Simpkin, Marshall, and
Co.)—This volume of curious odds and ends of thought and anecdote was first printed for private circulation. Its author now gives it with " diffidence" to the public. Who be is is revealed in a note to p. 10, in which he refers to "John Stuart. Mill, the fast friend for many years of my father and mother, and equally esteemed by both. After the latter bad been two years a widow he married her, and thus became my stepfather." The curious passage which gives occasion for this note may also be given, as a specimen of the quality of the book as a whole. " Mr. Mill," we are told, " used now and then to perform on the piano. but only when asked to do so by my mother ; and then be would at once sit down to the instrument, and play music entirely of his own composition, on the spur of the moment,—music of a singular character, wanting, possibly, in the finish which more practice would have imparted, but rich in feeling, vigour, and suggestive- ness; the performer, taking for his theme, may be, the weird grandeur of cloud and storm, the deep pathos of a dirge, the fierce onset of the battle-field, or the triumphant, joyous tune of a processional march. When he had finished, my mother would perhaps inquire what had been the idea running in his mind, which had formed the theme of the improvisation,—for such it was, and a strikingly characteristic one too." Mr. Taylor's book is valuable chiefly as a melange of reflection upon all sorts of subjects, such as music, architecture, mathematics, philosophy, social politics, and vegetarianism. Mr. Taylor writes in an agreeable arm-chair sort of style, and if authorities in the widely different matters which he concerns himself about decline to regard him as altogether an expert, they will admit that he writes agreeably and modestly, and with an intelligence that is much above the average. Some of Mr. Taylor's anecdotes about the various persons and personages 'whom he has come across have no doubt done service before, but others are fresh. Mr. Taylor has, en the whole, done well to address a larger audience than that to which his book originally appealed.
Previous page
