Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/192

456 his career, Mr. Mill had devoted himself to the collection of materials for a history of British India; and while his researches for this most difficult, hut necessary undertaking, were continued with unflinching perseverance, his other literary occupations were conducted as the means of present subsistence. It is amidst such pressure that intellectual activity is often best nerved for its greatest and most important task; and amidst the many distinguished productions by which the literature of every age is most impressed, the common wonder is, that the author, amidst his other avocations, should have found time to accomplish it. The history of British India was commenced in 1806, and published in the winter of 1817-18. At first it appeared in three volumes quarto, and afterwards in five volumes octavo; and the narrative, which is comprised in six books, commences with the first intercourse of our nation with India, and terminates with the conclusion of the Mahratta war, in 1805.

Among the literary productions of the present day, we have histories of India in abundance, while the labour of writing them, on account of the copious supply of materials, has become a comparatively easy task. But far different was it when Mill commenced his celebrated work, and opened up the way for his talented successors. At that time, nothing could be more vague than the commonly received ideas at home respecting our growing eastern empire, and the nations of which it was composed. Every sultan or rajah was thought to be a Xerxes or Giamshid, and every region was flooded with gold, which only waited the lifting; while an Englishman had nothing to do but to enter, and sit down as undisputed possessor, amidst a crowd of worshipping and salaaming natives. To bring down these monarchs to their real dimensions, and states to their native poverty—to show how starvation and taxes prevailed more abundantly there than even among ourselves—and, above all, to show how our East India Company, notwithstanding its crores and lacs of rupees, was continually hampered upon the beggarly financial question of "ways and means," with bankruptcy in perspective; all this was not only a difficult, but a most ungracious task for the historian: he was the African magician, who filched from us our Aladdin's lamp, by giving us a mere common one in exchange. When he passed from these popular delusions to the authenticated records, in order to construct a veritable history instead of an eastern romance, his materials were the most impracticable that can well be imagined—parliamentary speeches and documents; masses of examinations and trials; pamphlets for and against every form of Indian administration, mixed with political intrigues and warlike campaigns to which the general current of history could afford no parallel. To wade through this seemingly boundless ocean to reduce this chaos into form and order—was an attempt at which the most enthusiastic historian might well have paused. And then, too, the usual aids that might have helped to counterbalance such a difficulty, were wanting in the case of Mr. Mill. It is true, indeed, that in England there were scores of adventurers who had spent years in India, and returned enriched with its spoils; but, in most cases, they knew as little of Hindoo character, and the formation of our Indian empire, as if they had remained at home: all they could tell was, that they had fought or traded under the banner of British supremacy, and found cent, per cent, accumulating in the enterprise. In the absence of better information than these, some personal knowledge was necessary, especially to the first recorder of our wonderful Anglo-Indian empire ; but Mill had never been in India, and was little, if at all, acquainted with the languages of the East.