SOURCE: “Mrs. Taylor Seen Through Other Eyes than John Stuart Mill's,” in Sewanee Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, April, 1923, pp. 198-204.

In the following essay, Diffenbaugh examines various opinions of both the character and intellectual abilities of Harriet Taylor by her contemporaries, concluding that although she was certainly an intelligent woman, Taylor could not have been the intellectual giant that John Stuart Mill claimed she was.

Mill in reply to Grote's letter of sympathy on the death of Mrs. Mill writes: “If I were to attempt to express in the most moderate terms what she was, even you would hardly believe me.”¹ This doubt appears to be not without foundation, for Grote on reading the lines which Mill wrote for his wife's grave remarked that “only Mill's reputation could survive this and similar displays.”

Certainly Mill leaves no one in doubt as to his opinion of Mrs. Taylor. The inscription...