CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 B. S. Monroe 
 
 J 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4825.J2Z65 
 
 A famous reviewer [Francis Jeffrey.] 
 
 3 1924 013 488 428 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013488428 
 
A FAMOUS REVIEWER 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 It has not been my purpose to present an original 
 review of the life and work of Francis Jeffrey, but 
 only to give an outline of his career and to cite some 
 contemporaneous estimates of his personality, his 
 character and his merits. He is now little known ex- 
 cept to readers of the books of the middle nineteenth 
 century. His "Life," by Cockburn, is a melancholy 
 monument of dull mediocrity on the part of the biog- 
 rapher. Sir Leslie Stephen's admirable sketch in the 
 Dictionary of National Biography is far more satis- 
 factory, and I have used it freely. If I have quoted 
 liberally from books of gossip and reminiscence, it has 
 been because the writers gave a more vivid presentation 
 of their subject than I could give by mere paraphrase. 
 
 In recent years Professor Gates has written a crit- 
 ical study of Jeffrey as a reviewer in Three Studies in 
 Literature (1899), and Professor Winchester has 
 added a brief supplement in his Group of English Essay- 
 ists ( 1910) . I have not attempted to invade their prov- 
 ince. 
 
 Adrian H. Joi,ine;. 
 
 New York, March, 1910. 
 
 drian Hoffman Joline, who died last: 
 k at his home in New York, aged slxty- 
 , was a graduate of Princeton, a prac- 
 ng lawyer until the time of his death, 
 . ^iways an enthusiastic bibliophile. H& 
 1 the author of "Meditations of an Auto- 
 ph Collector," "Diversions of a Book 
 'er," "At the Library Table," and "Edge- 
 Essays." Mr. Joline was an occasional 
 tributor to the Nation; he was also a 
 mber nf several hist.orical sonieties. 
 
A FAMOUS REVIEWER. 
 
 I. 
 
 A successful lawyer whose name is associated with 
 no great causes ; a leader in literature whose only book 
 was a mere collection of essays reprinted from a maga- 
 zine ; a renowned talker who left to posterity no legacy 
 of memorable sayings ; Francis Jeffrey owes his fame, 
 or so much of it as survives him sixty years after his 
 death, chiefly to his work as a writer of reviews. 
 
 The popularity and influence of the periodical Re- 
 view has suffered so seriously in these days of modern 
 culture that they may be said to have disappeared. But 
 there was a time when the Review was all-powerful. 
 Whether its decline is due to the vast increase in the 
 number of readers, or to the lowering of the level of 
 education, or to the fact — if it be a fact — announced re- 
 cently by a publisher, that "to-day the popular author 
 addresses himself to women, since men no longer read 
 books," or to the growing independence of readers who 
 resent attempts to guide or to control their judgments, 
 only one extremely sure of himself would attempt to 
 decide. The authority of the Review was never as 
 great in America as it was in England ; the old North 
 American, sufficiently heavy in its prime, ponderously 
 imitative of British models, was the sole publication 
 of that character in this country which deserved the 
 name, and while it is still a magazine and preserves 
 the title, it has become only a repository for articles 
 too serious for use in the much be-pictured and adver- 
 
tisement-crowded "monthlies" which serve to amuse 
 the idler and find their principal marts in the news- 
 stands of the street, the hotel and the railway station. 
 Yet in the earlier half of the last century the British 
 Reviews were the chief means by which the leaders 
 of thought essayed to reach the minds of men and to 
 give them instruction in politics as well as in literature. 
 
 Before the founding of the Bdinburgh Review in 
 1802, the magazines which pretended to do the work 
 of reviewing were but poor things, as dull as the dull- 
 est of periodicals in the eighteenth century, and those 
 were very dull indeed. There was the Monthly Review, 
 established in 1749, conducted by Ralph Griffiths, 
 "who starved and bullied Goldsmith," and later by 
 his son, which lasted until 1845 ^^^ was in its 
 earliest years perhaps the best of the lot. Jeffrey wrote 
 for it occasionally. In June, July, and November, 1802, 
 he had published in the Monthly articles on White's 
 Btymoligon and Southey's Thalaba. There were also 
 the Critical Review, begun in 1756, the Gentleman's 
 Magazine (1731), the London Magazine (1732), and 
 Scots' Magazine (1739). But the Monthly remarked 
 that the Vicar of Wakefield had "defects enough to 
 put the reader out of patience with an author capable 
 of so strangely underwriting himself," and as late as 
 1798 pronounced The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to 
 be "the strangest story of cock and bull that we ever 
 saw on paper," while the Gentleman's Magazine sagely 
 commented upon Gray's immortal poem in manner fol- 
 
lowing: "Elegy wrote in a country church-yard, 4to. 
 Dodsley, 6d. : seven pages. The excellency of this lit- 
 tle piece more than compensates for its lack of quan- 
 tity." The Bentley edition, two years later, called 
 forth a luminous comment about the "head and tail 
 pieces with which each poem is adorned, which are of 
 uncommon excellence, the Melancholy in particular 
 being exquisite." In all of them there was scarcely 
 any literary criticism. The articles were furnished 
 chiefly by dreary drudges, hack-writers dominated by 
 the booksellers, receiving absurdly scanty pay. It is 
 true, however, that the books they reviewed were 
 scarcely less dreary than the reviews themselves. 
 
 In their History of English Literature Garnett and 
 Gosse say, with some justice: "Readers of the early 
 numbers of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly will to- 
 day be surprised at the emotion they caused and the 
 power they wielded. They are often smart, sometimes 
 witty, rarely sound, and the style is, as a rule, pompous 
 and diffuse. The modern reader is irritated by the 
 haughty assumption of these boyish reviewers, who 
 treat genius as a prisoner at the bar, and as in all prob- 
 ability a guilty prisoner. * * * This unjust judging 
 of literature, and particularly of poetry — what is called 
 the 'slashing' style of criticism — when it is now revived, 
 is usually still prosecuted on the lines laid down by 
 Jeffrey and Gifford. It gives satisfaction to the 
 reviewer, pain to the author, and a faint amusement to 
 the public. It has no effect whatever on the ultimate 
 position of the book reviewed, but, exercised on occa- 
 
sion, it is doubtless a useful counter-irritant to thought- 
 less or venal eulogy." As far as the pompous style 
 is concerned, it was not peculiar to the Reviews of the 
 time: it pervaded all prose literature; and when we 
 consider the enormous output of books we are now 
 familiar with, we may regret that their power of cor- 
 rection has substantially disappeared. 
 
 The refinement of style for which certain of these 
 magazines were distinguished is indicated by some of 
 the remarks made by one about the other. The Monthly 
 said that the staff of the Critical was composed of "phy- 
 sicians without practice, authors without learning, men 
 without decency, and critics without judgment.'' 
 Smollett in the Critical declared that his Review at 
 least was not conducted by "a parcel of obscene hire- 
 lings under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, 
 who presume to revise, alter and amend the articles." 
 Mrs. Grififiths, who had literary tastes, was reviled as 
 "an antiquated Sappho, or rather a Pope Joan in 
 taste and literature, pregnant with abuse, begot by 
 rancour, under the canopy of ignorance." 
 
 The story of the inception of the Bdinburgh in that 
 little room in the house on Buccleuch Place has been told 
 so often and by so many that it has become a familiar 
 tale. There had been an Hdinhurgh Review in 1756, but 
 it had expired after a twelvemonth life, destined to be 
 revived under brilliant auspices — brilliant at least in 
 the matter of brains, for the youthful galaxy com- 
 posed of Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Horner and Brougham 
 well deserved to be called "brilliant." Smith's account 
 
of the matter was disputed by Brougham long years 
 afterwards, but its correctness in the main has been 
 estabUshed. The old-age reminiscences of the Chan- 
 cellor were not conspicuous for accuracy and his over- 
 weening sense of self-importance led him to exaggera- 
 tions where his own actions were involved. Sydney 
 Smith was the editor of the first number, if it may be 
 said to have had a single editor, but thereafter Jeffrey 
 assumed full charge. Brougham's own copy of that 
 first number, with his autograph on the fly leaf, dated 
 "1802," lies before me. It has the initials of the 
 authors marked in the index against the titles of their 
 contributions. The two hundred and fifty-two pages 
 of close print make up a large book, and I am sorry to 
 say, rather a dull one. It is not easy to understand now 
 why it could have aroused such interest. But on reflec- 
 tion, one may comprehend that it was such an advance 
 on its predecessors that it commanded instant apprecia- 
 tion. According to Brougham's notes, Jeffrey had five 
 articles, filling sixty-seven pages ; Brougham, four, of 
 forty-six pages ; Hamilton four, of thirty-seven pages ; 
 and Horner, Smith, Macfarlan, Dr. John Thomson, Dr. 
 Thomas Brown, and Murray follow with a lesser 
 amount. The volume has an especial interest, for, as 
 Mr. J. Rogers Rees remarks in a pencil note, "this at- 
 tribution in the founder's autograph sets the question of 
 the several contributors finally at rest." The inaccuracy 
 of the story of the establishment of the Review which 
 Brougham gives in his Memoirs, is indicated by the 
 fact that while he asserts that he himself wrote in the 
 
first number the reviews of "Oliver's Travels," "Bald- 
 win's Egypt" (jointly with Jeffrey) and "Play fair's 
 Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory," yet in his 
 personal copy of that number he has, in his own hand- 
 writing, asserted that the first two were by Hamilton 
 and the third by John Macfarlan. But he does justice 
 to Jeffrey, of whom he says: "Jeffrey's labors as an 
 editor were unceasing, and I will venture to say, if we 
 had searched all Europe, a better man in every respect 
 could not have been found. As a critic he was 
 unequalled; and, take them as a whole, I consider his 
 articles were the best we had. As an instance of the 
 care he took in revising and preparing contributions, 
 I remember an article on the Memoirs of Prince 
 Eugene was sent to Jeffrey by Mill. Jeffrey gave it 
 to Dr. Ferrier, of Manchester, to revise; and when he 
 got it back from Dr. Ferrier, he himself corrected 
 it, and added the moral reflections and the concluding 
 observations on the new Paris edition of the work." 
 
 Perhaps, in preference to the various accounts by 
 Sydney Smith, Brougham, and others, one may trust 
 most in Jeffrey's own story as related by him in a letter 
 written in 1846 to Robert Chambers. Jeffrey says: 
 
 "I cannot say exactly where the project of the Edin- 
 burgh Review was first talked of among the projectors. 
 But the first serious conversations about it — and which 
 led to our application to a publisher — ^were held in a 
 small house, where I then lived, in Buccleuch Place (I 
 forget the number). They were attended by S. Smith, 
 F. Horner, Dr. Thomas Brown, Lord Murray (John 
 
Archibald Murray, a Scottish advocate, and now one 
 of the Scottish judges), and some of them also by Lord 
 Webb Seymour, Dr. John Thomson, and Thomas 
 Thomson. The first three numbers were given to the 
 publisher— he taking the risk and defraying the 
 charges. There was then no individual editor, but as 
 many of us as could be got to attend used to meet in a 
 dingy room of Willison's printing-office, in Craig's 
 Close, where the proofs of our own articles were read 
 over and remarked upon and attempts made also to sit 
 in judgment on the few manuscripts which were then 
 offered by strangers. * * * Smith was by far the 
 most timid of the confederacy and believed that, if our 
 incognito was not strictly maintained, we could not go 
 on a day, and this was his object for making us hold 
 our dark divans at Willison's office, to which he insisted 
 on our repairing singly, and by back-approaches or dif- 
 ferent lanes. He had also so strong an impression of 
 Brougham's indiscretion and rashness, that he would 
 not let him be a member of our association, though 
 wished for by all the rest. He was admitted, however, 
 after the third number, and did more work for us than 
 anybody. Brown took offence at some alterations 
 I had made in a trifling article of his in the second num- 
 ber, and left us thus early: publishing at the same time 
 in a magazine the fact of his secession — a step which 
 we all deeply regretted, and thought scarcely justified 
 by the provocation. Nothing of the kind occured ever 
 after." It is amusing to compare this sober and un- 
 doubtedly accurate story with Sydney Smith's, and with 
 
10 
 
 Brougham's bumptious narrative, — accusing Jeffrey of 
 timidity — from which one would suppose that Broug- 
 ham was the mainstay of the enterprise and the others 
 were satelHtes, content to follow his lead. 
 
 Jeffrey continued to occupy the chair until 1829, 
 and under his management the circulation of the Re- 
 view increased from seven hundred and eighty-nine to 
 nearly thirteen thousand copies. Griffiths paid two 
 guineas a sheet of sixteen pages, and his writers earned 
 their money by giving about eight pages of quotation 
 to one page of criticism ; so that the Edinburgh was not 
 especially generous, at first. Sir Walter Scott ascribed 
 its success mainly to two circumstances, — that it was 
 entirely uninfluenced by the booksellers and that the 
 editor and contributors were regularly paid. The edi- 
 tor received at first £300 a year, afterwards £800 a 
 year; and every contributor, rich or poor, was com- 
 pelled to accept a minimum sum of £10 a sheet, after- 
 wards increased to f 16. Sir Walter's reasons may 
 have been good, but perhaps the style and the merit 
 of the contents and the growing demand of readers 
 for the best work had a good deal to do with the pros- 
 perity of the periodical. 
 
 The young man of twenty-nine who thus entered 
 upon his career as a famous critic and a great editor, 
 was the eldest son of George Jeffrey, a Depute Clerk 
 of the Court of Session, and Henrietta Louden, his 
 wife. His mother was a daughter of John Louden, 
 a farmer living near Lanark. There were four other 
 
11 
 
 children of this marriage: Margaret, who died young; 
 Mary, who married George Napier, a writer to the 
 signet, on April 21, 1797; John, who went to Boston, 
 Massachusetts, engaged in business as a merchant with 
 his father's brother, and married a sister of John 
 Wilkes; and Marion, who married in June, 1806, 
 Dr. Thomas Brown, a physician in Glasgow, and who 
 died in 1846. Francis was born in St. Charles Street, 
 St. George's Square, Edinburgh, on October 23, 1773. 
 His father is described as "a high Tory," "sensible 
 and respectable, but of a gloomy temper." The mother, 
 greatly beloved "the more so from the contrast between 
 her and her husband," died when Francis was only 
 thirteen years old. The boy learned dancing before 
 he was nine, loved study better than play, and 
 was never good at any bodily exercise except walk- 
 ing. He entered the High School at Edinburgh 
 in October, 1781, remaining there until 1787. Mr. 
 Eraser, of the School, who was the instructor of 
 both Scott and Brougham, and who was Jeffrey's 
 preceptor for four years, — until the youth passed under 
 the sway of Alexander Adam, the rector, — remembered 
 him as a "little, clever, anxious boy, always near the top 
 of his class, and who never lost a place without shed- 
 ding tears." He was at Glasgow College during the 
 next two years, his brightness becoming manifest, but 
 his father would not permit him to attend the lectures 
 of Professor Millar, a Whig. He occupied himself 
 much in the work of composition, and even proposed to 
 Adam to conduct a philosophical correspondence. Re- 
 turning to Edinburgh in 1789, he attended the law 
 
12 
 
 lectures of Hume and Dick, and was fortunate enough 
 to be able to avail of the privileges of the excellent 
 library of his uncle, William Morehead, who lived at 
 Herbertshire, Stirling. In September, 1 791, he entered 
 Queen's College, Oxford, where he remained, greatly 
 discontented, until July, 1792. In the dreary and dis- 
 appointing biography which Lord Cockburn published 
 in 1852, there are a number of quotations from his 
 letters to members of his family betraying his dissat- 
 isfaction with the conditions then prevailing in Oxford. 
 An unpublished letter to his sister Mary, written in 
 April, 1792, is in my possession. It is pleasantly 
 chatty and playful, foreshadowing the diffuseness and 
 discursiveness of his later style, and the handwriting 
 is abominable. "Oh, ma soeur," he begins, refer- 
 ring to a portrait which she had given him, "how 
 much I am obliged to you — and the readiness of 
 your compliance has doubled its value, and the ele- 
 gance of the execution has multiplied it seven fold. It 
 has restored the image to my soul and given a founda- 
 tion of accuracy and reality to the lawless embellish- 
 ments of fancy." He criticises the portrait in a 
 manner which reminds us of his later reviews, and then 
 wanders to the subject of woman. He expresses doubts 
 about the truth of a report concerning one of his 
 sister's friends. "I have many admirable reasons," 
 he says, "for my disbelief — among the rest, first, be- 
 cause so many of the same family have imposed upon 
 the world of late that it would be absurd to depend 
 upon the veracity of this, and secondly, because I 
 
13 
 
 am very unwilling to suppose that it should be so, 
 the' how and why I am unwilling it may not be so 
 easy to explain. I don't know that I ever was 
 exactly what can be called in love with this fair 
 coquette, and am certain there never was anything 
 serious in my attachment to her, for her idea was so 
 closely associated with images of laughter and vivacity 
 that I could never conjure up her beauties but they 
 appeared gilded with smiles and banished all the lan- 
 guishments of meditating and melting affection which 
 I take to be the only basis and indication of love — but 
 this is letting you into the very mysteries of the science, 
 — but perpend — at the same time her idea is entire in my 
 fancy — her image is enshrined in my heart, and I shall 
 be horribly tempted to wish that this (illegible) may 
 dance off in an apoplexy the night preceding his 
 espousals if I hear anything more about him ; however, 
 I did not dedicate one tear to the probability." After 
 this sage dissertation on love from a lad of nine- 
 teen, he proceeds to more serious subjects. "I begin 
 to find that the company with which I am most prob- 
 ably destined to labor along the journey of life is not 
 accommodated to my taste and disposition. It seems 
 to be composed of men of moderate futures and mod- 
 erate wishes and abilities and passions, and virtues 
 and vices. Men who do not think it hard to toil and 
 bustle like Mr. Paterson in his printing garret all day 
 so they can have a comfortable supper and a tiff of 
 punch after it at night; men who talk very sagely of 
 the comforts of such a supper, who are easily induced 
 to forgive any fraud to which a brother has been 
 
14 
 
 tempted, in the hope of it; men in whom business has 
 extinguished sensation and whose wishes are bounded 
 with the certainty of Hving respectably and comfort- 
 ably among their neighbors. Now this sort of life and 
 this sort of character is exactly what I detest and avoid. 
 If it were not given to me to ascend the towering steep 
 of glory I should wish to descend into the low and the 
 verdant vale of obscurity and peace — there to seek 
 enjoyment from the practice of benevolence, from the 
 sublimities of meditation, the gratification of taste, 
 and the sweet simplicity of intercourse which softens 
 the ruggedness of retirement. But in this heedless 
 society of indifference and impertinence where a man 
 never sees the heart of his companion, where his time 
 is occupied in laboring out some superfluous luxury to 
 be sparkled in the eyes of those from whose gratifica- 
 tion he can have no pleasure, where no reward or 
 recompence is offered to his hopes for the continued 
 torture of a silly and turbulent crowd. In this med- 
 dling, busy region of existence I question if it be possi- 
 ble for happiness to find footing, and if we hear few 
 complaints of the misery of its inhabitants, it is only 
 because their sensations have been so totally destroyed 
 that they have no notion or idea of the good they never 
 knew. I am determined to make an exertion to get 
 out of this crowd. * * * Cara, I have sent you 
 quite a declamation, but such are the subjects which 
 occupy me at present, and there is not a single soul here 
 to whom they would be intelligible. The insipid and 
 vulgarly social character is more universal than I had 
 
15 
 
 believed. I have found it conjoined with learning and 
 mathematics, and pride, and even with taste and sane 
 feeling." All of this is quite characteristic of a lively 
 boy with a vocabulary too overflowing to be completely 
 under control, and it is amusing to find him at the 
 close, straying back from the "regions, of existence" 
 to the young woman about whose prospective nuptials 
 he was so much disturbed. "I lay my commands upon 
 you to write me a long letter about this fair girl. If she 
 is within hearing, tell her as much of my sentiments 
 of her as you think consistent with my politeness." It 
 all shows that college lads remain about the same from 
 generation to generation. We may not find so much 
 fertility of phrase in the letters of the boys of Harvard, 
 Princeton, and Yale, to their loving sisters; but it is 
 generally the life one is to lead, the unsympathetic 
 surroundings, and the eternal feminine. 
 
 Although disappointed with Oxford, he studied 
 diligently and wrote persistently, one of his papers 
 being an essay on "Beauty," which was "the germ of 
 his treatise on that subject in the Bncyclopcedia Britan- 
 nica." One thing he strove for, which seems to us 
 scarcely worth while : he tried to lose his Scotch dialect 
 and accent, but did not entirely succeed. Lord Cockburn 
 says that he was "by no means so successful in acquir- 
 ing an English voice. * * * What he picked up 
 was a high-keyed accent and a sharp pronunciation;" 
 and the solemn biographer adds that "the acquisition 
 of a pure English accent by a full grown Scotchman 
 is fortunately impossible." He resumed his attendance 
 
16 
 
 on law lectures in Edinburgh, and was admitted to 
 practice on December i6, 1794. He had so busied 
 himself in writing and speaking, and in the debates 
 of the famous Speculative Society, which he joined in 
 1792 and where he encountered Scott, Petty, Broug- 
 ham, Horner, and Henry Cockburn, that he had little 
 or no time to build up a business, and in 1801 he told 
 his brother that his profession had never yet brought 
 him £100 a year. While at Oxford he had fancied 
 that he might become famous as a poet; he wrote to 
 his sister that he should "never be a great man, unless 
 it be as a poet." So besides his essays, he wrote much 
 verse; contemplated, in 1796, a translation in the style 
 of Cowper's Homer, from the Argonautics of Apol- 
 lonius; and composed two plays, never given to the 
 world. Cockburn tells us that he once left a manu- 
 script poem with a publisher, but after reflection, suc- 
 ceeded in rescuing it before it was considered. 
 
 II. 
 
 The young lawyer in search of a practice should be 
 an object of commiseration. It is all so much a mat- 
 ter of chance that he is apt to be sadly discouraged at 
 the outset in his quest of clients. Brains count, it is 
 true, but brains must come into contact with opportu- 
 nity to achieve success, and the time when the conjunc- 
 tion is to occur, if it is to occur at all, seems often 
 remote and the waiting is tedious and exasperating. It 
 may never come, and the failure leaves the victim in 
 depression and penury. In any event, the aspirant 
 
17 
 
 experiences a long discouragement, and is again and 
 again on the point of abandoning his profession. Jeff- 
 rey was no exception to the rule. He was a Whig, and 
 in 1793 had written an essay on "Politicks" giving ex- 
 pression to views which sorely displeased his Tory 
 father, but he was encouraged by his uncle More- 
 head who was inclined to liberalism. In that day 
 Scotland was ruled by the Tories under Henry Dundas 
 and later under Melville, and there was little chance for 
 Jeffrey, although he had a small business by reason of 
 some family connections. He betook himself to Lon- 
 don in 1798, taking letters to editors, including Perry of 
 the "Morning Chronicle," with the notion that he could 
 do far better in literature than in law, but it came to 
 nothing and back he went to study science, especially 
 chemistry. He joined a society, the "Academy of 
 Physicks," in company with Brown, Brougham and 
 Horner, and had serious thoughts of trying his for- 
 tune in India. His friends suggested that he should 
 aspire to fill the chair of history in the University of 
 Edinburgh, which A. F. Tytler had just resigned, but 
 his political principles stood in his way. In 1801 he 
 was a candidate for a reportership in the Court of Ses- 
 sions, but was defeated. So, having no prospects to 
 speak of and barely twenty guineas to his name, he pru- 
 dently married his second cousin, Catherine Wilson, on 
 November i, 1801, and went to live in that "flat" on 
 Buccleuch Place, which was to attain immortality as 
 the birthplace of the Edinburgh. Sydney Smith speaks 
 of it as being in the "eighth or ninth story," but it was 
 
18 
 
 really in the third; and there he dwelt until May, 1802, 
 when he removed to the upper story of No. 62 Queen 
 Street. It is recorded that it cost him £7-18 to 
 furnish his study, £13-8 for his dining room, and 
 £22-19 for his drawing room. Almost ready to look 
 for employment in other fields, he found his opportu- 
 nity in the Review. 
 
 In the first four numbers of the Edinburgh, Jeffrey 
 had sixteen articles and Sydney Smith eighteen; in 
 the first twenty numbers he had seventy-five, Brougham 
 eighty, and Smith twenty-three. In the first number- 
 that of October, 1802, he reviewed Southey's Thalaba, 
 and to a reader of to-day his conclusions appear to be 
 well-founded. His judgment was severe but not sav- 
 agely fierce. He says with justice that "all the pro- 
 ductions of this author, it appears to us, bear very 
 distinctly the impression of an amiable mind, a culti- 
 vated fancy, and a perverted taste." But the review 
 is important chiefly from the evidence it affords of the 
 writer's hostility to the rising school of poetry, that 
 of Wordsworth and his friends — a hostility which sur- 
 vived even the ultimate victory of the new school over 
 the old and classical formality of its predecessors. 
 The spirit in which he approached the subject is indi- 
 cated by the opening sentence : "Poetry has this much, 
 at least, in common with religion, that its standards 
 were fixed long ago by certain inspired writers whose 
 authority it is no longer lawful to call in question." 
 This positive assertion of his proposition is an example 
 
19 
 
 of what has been assailed as the dictatorial, ex cathedra 
 method which prevailed in the Edinburgh for years and 
 which reached perhaps its ultimate development in the 
 brilliant, often unfair, but always fascinating essays 
 of Macaulay. 
 
 A vast amount of nonsense has been uttered con- 
 cerning Jeffrey's arbitrary manner and his errors with 
 regard to the works of the new poets. One of the most 
 common texts for the sermons of those discerning 
 critics who are so extremely wise after the fact, is 
 the famous, "This will never do," with which he opened 
 his review of The Excursion. "But has it ever done ?" 
 asks Professor Minto; "I have never heard of or seen 
 anybody prepared to say that The Excursion can be 
 read with unflagging delight. * * * The truth is 
 that most of his [Jeffrey's] criticism has been amply 
 confirmed and justified." A pretentious and "cock-sure" 
 writer in a modern "History of English Literature" so- 
 called, affords an illustration of the very quality of 
 autocratic judgment which he ascribes to Jeffrey, when 
 he says : — "The ministerial pronouncements of its arch- 
 critic, Jeffrey, are such as now can only amaze. Amid 
 the great constellation of poets who had come within 
 his knowledge as a critic— Byron, Moore, Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Crabbe, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson— he dis- 
 covered permanent qualities in two only, Rogers and 
 Campbell. He describes Wilhelni Meister without cir- 
 cumlocution as 'so much trash'. In fact he represents 
 orthodox opinion of the day in stylish circles, elevated 
 only to the extent of being expressed with exceptional 
 
20 
 
 point." This writer sees fit to leave wholly out of view 
 Burns and Scott and the laudatory reviews of the 
 Reliques of Robert Burns in January, 1809, and of The 
 Lady of the Lake in August, 18 10. Tennyson's 
 "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical" did not appear until a year 
 after Jeffrey resigned the editorial chair. As to Keats, 
 he overlooks the appreciative review of Bndymion, 
 which appeared in the Edinburgh in 1820, long after 
 the publication of the cruel and excoriating criticism 
 which disfigured the pages of the Quarterly in Ajjril, 
 1818. 
 
 In a note to the review of Bndymion, which I cite 
 from the volumes of collected papers (ii, 373; Edition 
 of 1846), Jeffrey says : "I still think that a poet of great 
 power and promise was lost to us by the premature 
 death of Keats * * * and regret that I did not go more 
 largely into the exposition of his merits, in the slight 
 notice of them which I now venture to reprint. But 
 though I cannot, with propriety, or without departing 
 from the principle which must govern this republica- 
 tion, now supply the omission, I hope to be forgiven for 
 having added a page or two to the citations — by which 
 my opinion of those merits was then illustrated and 
 is again left to the judgment of the reader." 
 
 As far as Wilhelm Meister is concerned, I am not 
 sure that he was wrong. It seems to be an unwar- 
 ranted assertion that Jeffrey merely represented "the 
 orthodox opinion of the day in stylish circles" — a 
 causeless sneer at a supposed deference to the views of 
 "stylish circles," which somewhat vulgar phrase is evi- 
 dently used to designate the aristocracy of culture and 
 
21 
 
 of social position. It is needless to devise such a puerile 
 theory. Jefifrey was a trained and accomplished law- 
 yer ; and like most lawyers of his type, he was disposed 
 to find everywhere a law, a rule, whether of civil con- 
 duct prescribed by the supreme power of a state, or of 
 good taste prescribed by those whose decisions, re- 
 spected and followed in the past, had come to possess 
 in their own realm the binding force of law. Men of 
 his profession are almost always conservative, often to 
 excess, over-reluctant to countenance changes which 
 may be advantageous and which moreover are inevita- 
 ble; for all laws must change with the spirit and the 
 temper of the times. 
 
 In fact, however, this sapient scribbler borrowed his 
 judgment from Sir Leslie Stephen's charming essay, 
 "The First Edinburgh Reviewers,"* which is full of 
 that delightful and easy book-discussion so fascinating 
 to a reader who enjoys literary criticism. Stephen 
 was, in that essay, a little, if ever so little, severe with 
 Jeffrey, and his article on Jeffrey in the National Dic- 
 tionary of Biography is much more favorable in its tone. 
 Stephen says of him in the essay : "Every critic has a 
 sacred and inalienable right to blunder at times; but 
 Jeffrey's blundering is amazingly systematic and com- 
 prehensive." He illustrates this by a quotation from the 
 last of Jeffrey's poetical critiques (October, i829)where 
 the reviewer, he says, sums up his critical experience. 
 "He doubts whether Mrs. Hemans, whom he is review- 
 ing at the time, will be immortal. 'The tuneful quartos 
 of Southey,' he says, 'are already little better than lum- 
 
 *Hours in a Library, ii, 241 (1894)- 
 
22 
 
 ber,' and the rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and 
 the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth, and the ple- 
 beian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the field 
 of vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. 
 Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into 
 distance and dimness, except when they have been 
 married to immortal music; and the blazing star of 
 Byron himself is receding from its place of pride." This 
 does not impress one as a monument of error. Surely 
 every word of it is as true to-day as it was in 1829, 
 except that there has been a recrudescence of "the rich 
 melodies of Keats and Shelley," and of Byron, whose 
 star was most assuredly obscured for many years, 
 although of late it seems to be again shining with a 
 good deal of its former lustre. The gravamen of the 
 charge of blundering which is preferred against Jeffrey 
 is, to use the words of Sir Leslie Stephen, his assertion 
 that "the two who show least marks of decay are — of all 
 people in the world — Rogers and Campbell !" Let us rea- 
 son together a little about this censure. 
 
 Every lawyer knows that in dealing with what a 
 man says, it is necessary to know exactly what he said. 
 What was it that Jeffrey said about Rogers and Camp- 
 bell which has brought down upon him the avalanche of 
 blame showered on him by Stephen and Scribbler? 
 
 Dr. Winchester says that it has been "quoted by 
 everybody who has written anything on Jeffrey since 
 Christopher North quoted it first in Blackwood." The 
 trouble is that everybody does not quote it; almost 
 everybody attempts to paraphrase it and blunders in 
 the attempt. This is exactly what Jeffrey wrot^ : — 
 
23 
 
 "The two who have the longest withstood this rapid 
 withering of the laurel, and with the least mark of 
 decay on their branches, are Rogers and Campbell; 
 
 jp. ^ , 
 
 neither of them, it may be remarked, volummous writ- 
 ers, and both distinguished rather for their fine taste 
 and consummate elegance of their writings, than for 
 that fiery passion, and disdainful vehemence which 
 seemed for a time to be so much more in favor with the 
 public." 
 
 It may be permitted to say that in 1829 this was 
 all quite true ; no one has denied it. It is very far from 
 an assertion that Rogers and Campbell will be "the 
 sole enduring relics from the age of Wordsworth, Shel- 
 ley, Keats, Coleridge, and Byron." Jeffrey says not 
 a word about what may happen in the future. Sir Les- 
 lie appears to have had a slight degree of compunction 
 about his conclusion, because he attempts to sustain his 
 severity by the remark that "this summary was repub- 
 lished in 1843, by which time the true proportions of the 
 great reputations of the period were becoming more 
 obvious to an ordinary observer." But Jeffrey was not 
 writing in 1843 ; he was simply repeating what he wrote 
 in 1829. Would Sir Leslie have had him change it? This 
 principle in the reproduction is referred to in the note 
 about Keats, heretofore quoted. In the well-known 
 wprds of Jeffrey, "This will never do." It must be 
 remembered, too, that Rogers was a dearly beloved 
 friend, and critics are human; and I dare to say that 
 there are even now verses of Campbell which are famil- 
 iar to thousands who do not know a line of Keats or 
 
24 
 
 of Shelley. Moreover, if the modest statement of his 
 views was a blunder, we must remember what Sir Les- 
 lie well says : "Criticism is a still more perishable com- 
 modity than poetry," and if you censure one critic 
 for an occasional error, you will have to condemn them 
 all. Stephen does admit in a letter to Mrs. Jackson, 
 in 1877, that "Jeffrey, too, said a true thing or two about 
 Wordsworth." But was Sir Leslie, after all, a very 
 competent judge? His biographer, Mr. Maitland, in 
 Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen (1906) says: 
 "Stephen, we are told, after his death, did not really 
 care for poetry any more than Jeffrey, and conse- 
 quently was not fully qualified to criticise it. Of course 
 not; he was a philosopher." Hence we may distrust 
 the capacity of Stephen to decide about Jeffrey's views 
 of poetry. The devoted admirers of Wordsworth never 
 quite forgave Jeffrey for what he said about their idol. 
 Crabbe Robinson records in his Diary a talk with Emp- 
 son, in which the latter relates that Jeffrey had lately 
 told him that so many people had thought highly of 
 Wordsworth, that he was resolved to reperuse his 
 poems and see if he had anything to retract. He found 
 nothing to retract except, perhaps, a contjcmptuous and 
 flippant phrase or two. Empson believed that Jeffrey's 
 distaste for Wordsworth was honest, — mere uncon- 
 geniality of mind. Jeffrey did acknowledge that he 
 was wrong in his treatment of Lamb. Robinson notes, 
 in April, 1835, his meeting Jeffrey at dinner. "Jeffrey," 
 he says, "is a sharp and clever-looking man, and in spite 
 of my dislike to his name, he did not on the whole 
 
25 
 
 displease me. His treatment of Wordsworth would not 
 allow me to like him, had he been greater by far than 
 he was. And, therefore, when he said, 'I was always 
 an admirer of Wordsworth,' I could not repress the 
 unseemly remark, 'You had a singular way of showing 
 your admiration."* 
 
 In the Thalaba review, Jeffrey vigorously attacks 
 the "affectation of great simplicity and familiarity of 
 language," which was characteristic of the new school 
 of poets; "the perverted taste for simplicity" he calls 
 it. He seems to have been fond of the expression "per- 
 verted taste." He is moved to bitter words when he 
 refers to their "splenetic and idle discontent with the 
 existing institutions of society." His own feelings 
 were so far "aristocratic" that he was unable to believe 
 that while the princely and the wealthy are to be 
 strongly condemned for acts of vice and profligacy, the 
 members of "the lower orders of society" are to be 
 excused and pitied for like acts, because they are "but 
 the helpless victims or instruments" of the disorders 
 attending the vicious constitution of society. He is 
 guilty of such offensive and unpopular suggestions as 
 that "the same apology ought certainly to be admitted 
 for the wealthy, as for the needy offender. They are 
 subject alike to the overruling influence of necessity, 
 and equally affected by the miserable condition of 
 society. If it be natural for a poor man to murder and 
 rob in order to make himself comfortable, it is no less 
 natural for a rich man to gormandise and domineer, in 
 
 *Diary, iii, 65. 
 
26 
 
 order to have the full use of his riches. Wealth is just 
 as valid an excuse for the one class of vices, as indigence 
 is for the other." Such sentiments, if uttered in these 
 times of ours, w^ould surely subject the offender to the 
 scornful rebukes of our modern philosophers of the 
 press, who regard it as criminal to be rich — unless the 
 fortune was acquired by printing newspapers, as in 
 Mr. Pulitzer's case, or was inherited by an editor, as 
 in Mr. Hearst's case — and whose denunciations of large 
 fortunes are accompanied by abject deference to the 
 possessors of them when in their personal presence. 
 For with all his cheap abuse of the millionaires, there 
 is no more deferential being than a newspaper reporter 
 when he encounters one in the flesh. 
 
 The review of The Reliques of Robert Burns (Janu- 
 ary, 1809) is a fine example of the discriminating power 
 of the critic. Scotchman as he was. Burns was for him 
 no fetish to, be adored blindly, whose every verse was 
 to be raved about because the poet was a genius. He 
 did not belong to that class of men who cannot believe 
 that Shakespeare or Milton were ever dull; or that 
 there are lines in the Holy Scriptures which might 
 well be blotted out; or that George Washington ever 
 did a foolish thing or Benedict Arnold a good one. He 
 recognized the truth that even the great have their 
 failings, as they must have, being human ; all the more 
 lovable, more honorable perhaps for having them. 
 After the usual introductory essay of the day, treating 
 of the relative advantages of great culture and of hum- 
 
27 
 
 ble beginnings in the making of a true poet, and arriv- 
 ing at the conclusion that such a poet may well be 
 unencumbered by "the pretended helps of extended 
 study and literary society," he calls attention to the 
 harshness and acrimony of Burns's invective, his want 
 of polish or at least of respectfulness in the general 
 tone of his gallantry, his contempt or affectation of 
 contempt for prudence, decency, and regularity; his 
 frequent mistake of mere exaggeration and violence 
 for force and sublimity ; and then he says : "With the 
 allowances and exceptions we have now stated, we think 
 Burns entitled to the rank of a great and original 
 genius. He has in all his compositions great force of 
 conception; and great spirit and animation in its ex- 
 pression. He has taken a large range through the 
 region of Fancy and naturalized himself in almost all 
 her climates. He has great humour — great powers of 
 description — great pathos — and great discrimination 
 of character. Almost everything that he says has 
 spirit and originality ; and everything that he says well, 
 is characterized by a charming facility, which gives a 
 grace even to occasional rudeness, and communicates 
 to the reader a delightful sympathy with the spon- 
 taneous soaring and conscious inspiration of the poet." 
 What he wrote of The Lady of the Lake in the num- 
 ber for August, 1810, shows his capacity in estimating 
 the real value of popular works, uninfluenced by per- 
 sonal friendship or by the voice of the multitude. He 
 gives a careful study of the elements of popularity in 
 poetry, and finds the great secret of Scott's popularity 
 
28 
 
 and the leading characteristic of his poetry to consist 
 "in this, that he has made more use of common topics, 
 images, and expressions than any original poet of later 
 times ; and, at the same time, displayed more genius and 
 originality than any recent author who has worked in 
 the same materials. By the latter peculiarity, he has 
 entitled himself to the admiration of every description 
 of readers; — by the former he is recommended in an 
 especial manner to the inexperienced — at the hazard of 
 some little offence to the more cultivated and fastid- 
 ious." He says further: "There is nothing, in Mr. 
 Scott, of the severe and majestic style of Milton — or of 
 the terse and fine composition of Pope, — or of the elab- 
 orate elegance and melody of Campbell, — or even of the 
 flowing and redundant diction of Southey. But there 
 is a medley of bright images and glowing words, set 
 carelessly and loosely together — a diction, tinged suc- 
 cessively with the careless richness of Shakespeare, the 
 harshness and antique simplicity of the old romances, 
 the homeliness of vulgar ballads and anecdotes, and the 
 sentimental glitter of the most modern poetry — pass- 
 ing from the borders of the ludicrous to those of the 
 sublime — alternately minute and energetic — sometimes 
 artificial, and frequently negligent — but always full of 
 spirit and vivacity — abounding in images that are strik- 
 ing, at first sight, to minds of every contexture — and 
 never expressing a sentiment which it can cost the most 
 ordinary reader any exertion to comprehend." 
 
 Jeffrey praises Scott's vivifying spirit of strength 
 and animation; his ease of production; his singular 
 
29 
 
 talent for description and "especially for the descrip- 
 tion of scenes abounding in motion or action of any 
 kind"; the manner in which "with a few bold and 
 abrupt strokes he finishes a most spirited outline, and 
 then instantly kindles it by the sudden light and color 
 of some moral affection;" the "air of freedom and 
 nature which he has contrived to impart to most of his 
 distinguished characters, and with which no poet more 
 modern than Shakespeare has ventured to represent 
 persons of such dignity." At the same time, he re- 
 marks that Scott has "dazzled the reader with the splen- 
 dor, and even warmed him with the transient heat of 
 various affections; but he has nowhere fairly kindled 
 him with enthusiasm, or melted him into tenderness;" 
 and he thinks it quite obvious that "Mr. Scott has not 
 aimed at writing either in a pure or a very consistent 
 style." 
 
 He had not written of Marmion so approvingly, 
 although it was brought out by Constable, who was 
 publishing the Bdinhurgh. It is said that Jeffrey 
 rather characteristically sent the article to Scott with 
 a note saying that he was coming to dinner on the fol- 
 lowing Tuesday. Scott felt the sting of the review, 
 but tried to hide his feelings. Mrs. Scott, however, was 
 but frigidly polite, and as Jeffrey was taking leave for- 
 got even her cold politeness, saying in her broken Eng- 
 lish: "Well, guid night, Mr. Jeffrey; dey tell me you 
 have abused Scott in the Review; and I hope Mr. Con- 
 stable has paid you well for writing it." 
 
 These quotations have been given partly to afford a 
 
30 
 
 glimpse of Jeffrey when he was at his best and partly 
 to refute the assumption that he was always finding 
 fault and wounding the feelings of authors. He had, 
 it is true, some very decided views about poetry, which 
 in those earlier days of the nineteenth century was a 
 serious matter. People read the galloping verses of 
 Scott then as eagerly as in later times they devoured 
 novels. But "suddenly and without any warning," as 
 Besant says, "the people of Great Britain left off read- 
 ing poetry." It must be observed that both of the 
 poets so favorably regarded by Jeffrey were Scotchmen 
 like himself; when he came to deal with Englishmen 
 he was possibly open to the charge of undue severity. 
 Yet Southey was not much vexed by the review of 
 Thalaba. He called it "dishonest" in some of its asser- 
 tions, and justly remarks that the first part, evidently 
 an answer to Wordsworth's Preface to the second edi- 
 tion of the Lyrical Ballads, is utterly irrelevant to 
 Thalaba. "The review altogether is a good one," he 
 writes to a friend, and adds, with regard to some of 
 the adverse criticism, "when any Scotchman's book 
 shall come to be reviewed, then see what the Edinburgh 
 critics will say." A review of Madoc was published 
 in the number for October, 1805, — it was both severe 
 and complimentary. It was sent to Southey before it 
 appeared, and Jeffrey wrote to Horner: "Southey is 
 to be here to-day with P. Elmsley. I mean to let him 
 read my review of Madoc before I put myself in the 
 way of meeting with him. He is too much a man of 
 the world, I believe, in spite of his poesy, to decline 
 
31 
 
 seeing me, whatever he may think of the critic." They 
 did meet, and Southey wrote to Will Taylor, on October 
 22, 1805 : "I have seen Jeffrey, etc. I met him in good 
 humor, being by God's blessing, of a happy temper. 
 Having seen him, it would be impossible to be angry 
 at anything so diminutive. We talked upon the ques- 
 tion of taste, on which we are at issue; he is a mere 
 child upon that subject. I never met with a man who 
 was so easy to checkmate." Southey evidently felt the 
 censure more keenly than he would have been willing to 
 confess. As Cockburn says : "Jeffrey's being a child 
 in taste, and easily checkmated in discussion will prob- 
 ably strike those who knew him as novelties in his char- 
 acter." The fact is that if Jeffrey made any mistake 
 in the review of Madoc, it was in lauding the poem too 
 highly. It was one of poor Southey's stupendous 
 failures. 
 
 Dr. Winchester thinks that Jeffrey's criticism "has 
 always a certain hard common-sense. It is clear, and 
 sane, level to the comprehension of everybody. There 
 is nothing subtle in it. He never goes much below the 
 surface." The learned essayist then calls Jeffrey dog- 
 matic and superficial, and says that he was unable to 
 apply any historical method in criticism ; inconsistent, 
 with taste narrowed in its range, on the one side by that 
 hard common sense of his, and on the other by "a 
 rather prim sentimentality." Dr. Winchester seems 
 disposed to find fault with Jeffrey because in the first 
 quarter of the nineteenth century he did not write in 
 the manner of the first decade of the twentieth. But 
 
32 
 
 it is not easy to understand why he should accuse 
 Jeffrey of ignoring Keats because "the Edinburgh had 
 no word of recognition for him, and only broke silence 
 in 1820, when his brief career was closed." The article 
 appeared in August, 1820, and Keats died in his twenty- 
 sixth year, in February, 1821 ; so that the delay was not 
 extraordinary. Bndymion first appeared in 1818 and 
 attracted little attention at the time. The "Lamia, 
 Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems," 
 which was the immediate occasion of the review, was 
 published early in July, 1820. So that to the ordinary 
 mind it appears that one must be extremely anxious to 
 find fault who would censure Jeffrey for neglecting 
 Keats. 
 
 In my younger days, Chambers' Cyclopcedia of Eng- 
 lish Literature was regarded as a trustworthy guide, 
 and I am disposed to believe that it deserved its title. 
 Its verdict upon Jeffrey bears the impress of fairness 
 and candor. "There is some ground," says the im- 
 partial writer who has manifestly no desire to be 
 "smart" or censorious, "for charging upon the Edin- 
 burgh Review, in its earlier career, an absence of proper 
 respect and enthusiasm for the works of living genius. 
 Where no prepossession of the kind intervened, Jeffrey 
 was an admirable critic. If he was not profound, he 
 was interesting and graceful. His dissertations on the 
 works of Cowper, Crabbe, Byron, Scott, and Campbell, 
 and on the earlier and greater lights of our poetry, as 
 well as those on moral science, national manners, and 
 views of actual life, are expressed with great eloquence 
 
33 
 
 and originality, and in a fine spirit of humanity. His 
 powers of perception and analysis were quick, subtle 
 and penetrating, and withal comprehensive; while his 
 brilliant imagination invested subjects, that in ordinary 
 hands would have been dry and uninviting, with 
 strong interest and attraction. He seldom gave full 
 scope to his feelings and sympathies, but they occasion- 
 ally broke forth with inimitable effect and kindled up 
 the pages of his criticism.' 
 
 The same writer, later on, observes with much 
 force, that "as a literary critic, we may advert to the 
 singular taste and judgment which Lord Jeffrey ex- 
 ercised in making selections from the works he re- 
 viewed, and interweaving them, as it were, with the text 
 of his criticism. Whatever was picturesque, solemn, 
 pathetic, or sublime, caught his eye, and was thus intro- 
 duced to a new and vastly extended circle of readers, 
 besides furnishing matter for various collections of 
 extracts and innumerable school exercises. The chief 
 defect of his writing is the occasional diffuseness and 
 carelessness of his style. He wrote as he spoke, with 
 great rapidity and with a flood of illustration." I am 
 not sure that an author who "writes as he speaks" is 
 not, after all, as satisfactory as one who observes the 
 law of reticence with severity and strictness. Surely 
 his work is readable, and as the eye runs rapidly over 
 the printed page, no time is wasted. The colloquial 
 style is, however, not favored by every reader. Many 
 prefer that their mental pabulum should be supplied in 
 
34 
 
 condensed tablets, and prefer the concise, the epigram- 
 matic method. 
 
 Some remarks of Jeffrey, in his review of Camp- 
 bell's Specimens of the British Poets (1819), impress 
 me as significant of his methods of judgment. He says : 
 "As the materials of enjoyment and instruction ac- 
 cumulate around us, more and more, we fear, must 
 thus be daily rejected and left to waste. For while our 
 tasks lengthen, our lives remain as short as ever; and 
 the calls on our time multiply, while our time itself is 
 flying swiftly away. This superfluity and abundance 
 of our treasures, therefore, necessarily render much of 
 them worthless ; and the veriest accidents may, in such 
 a case, determine what part shall be preserved, and 
 what thrown away and neglected. When an army is 
 decimated, the very bravest may fall ; and many poets, 
 worthy of eternal remembrance, have probably been 
 forgotten, merely because there was not room in our 
 memories for all." And looking forward to 1919, he 
 says: "Our living poets will then be nearly as old as 
 Pope and Swift are at present, — but there will stand 
 between them and that generation nearly ten times as 
 much fresh and fashionable poetry as is now interposed 
 between us and those writers ; — and if Scott and Byron 
 and Campbell have already cast Pope and Swift a 
 good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions 
 are they themselves likely to be presented in the eyes 
 of our great grandchildren ? The thought, we own, is 
 a little appalling; — and we confess we see nothing 
 better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable 
 
35 
 
 place in some new collection of specimens — the cen- 
 tenary of the present publication. There — if the 
 future editor have anything like the indulgence and 
 veneration for antiquity of his predecessor — there shall 
 posterity still hang with rapture on the half of Camp- 
 bell, — and the fourth part of Byron, — and the sixth of 
 Scott, — and the scattered tythes of Crabbe, — and the 
 three per cent, of Southey, — while some good-natured 
 critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than 
 half prefer them to those by whom they have been 
 superseded! — It is an hyperbole of good-nature, how- 
 ever, we fear, to ascribe to them even those dimensions 
 at the end of a century. After a lapse of two hun- 
 dred and fifty years, we are afraid to think of the 
 space they may have shrunk into. We have no 
 Shakespeare, alas ! to shed a never-setting light on his 
 contemporaries! — and if we continue to write and 
 rhyme at the present rate for two hundred years 
 longer, there must be some new art of short-hand 
 reading invented, — or all reading will be given up in 
 despair." The error he made was in supposing that 
 in the twentieth century, poetry would be a matter of 
 interest to the general reader. We know that nobody 
 cares much now for poetry; it has ceased to be a sub- 
 ject of concern to any but the few; if it is read 
 at all, it is only by the student of literature, for the 
 multitude of men find their food for thought in science, 
 sociology and fiction. The man at the club would stare 
 in hopeless surprise at any reference to Pope, or 
 Crabbe, or even Campbell, modern as he is, and say 
 
36 
 
 to himself that his interlocutor was a queer old ante- 
 diluvian, and a mere burrower in the rubbish of long 
 ago. 
 
 Naturally Jeffrey, as the responsible editor, was 
 compelled sometimes to suffer vicariously for the 
 offenses of others. Everyone knows the biting review 
 of "Hours of Idleness," which Brougham wrote for 
 the number of January, 1808, and how Byron fumed 
 furiously in the somewhat labored satire of "English 
 Bards and Scottish Reviewers," pouring forth his 
 vitriolic wrath upon Jeffrey in particular. But Byron 
 repented of his assault when in later years he came to 
 know the worth of the man he libelled. He had said : 
 
 "Believe a woman or an epitaph, 
 Or any other thing that's false, before 
 You trust in critics, who themselves are sore ; 
 Or yield one single thought to be misled 
 By Jeffrey's heart or Lambe's Boeotian head." 
 
 In 181 6 he wrote: "This was not just. Neither the 
 heart nor the head of these gentlemen are at all what 
 they are here represented. At the time this was writ- 
 ten, I was personally not acquainted with either." 
 Later in the satire he exclaimed : 
 
 "Health to immortal Jeffrey ! once in name 
 England could boast a judge almost the same !" 
 
 To compare Jeffrey with Jeffreys seems to have 
 been a favorite occupation of wounded authors in 
 those days: each one appeared to think that his con- 
 ceit was original. Byron goes on to give vent to a 
 
37 
 
 tirade somewhat tedious, in the course of which he 
 makes much of the Moore duel, described later on. 
 But in his Diary (1814) he recorded his recantation. 
 "I have often," he says, "since my return to England, 
 heard Jeffrey most highly commended by those who 
 knew him, for things independent of his talents. I 
 admired him for this — not because he has praised me, 
 but because he is, perhaps, the only man who, under 
 the relations in which he and I stand or stood with 
 regard to each other, would have had the liberality 
 to act thus : none but a great soul dared hazard it — a 
 little scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end 
 of. the chapter." Jeffrey, in 1812, reviewing the first 
 and second cantos of Childe Harold, had referred to 
 the scurrilous stings of the satire by saying that "per- 
 sonalities so outrageous were only injurious to their 
 author." Byron tried to make amends in the tenth canto 
 of Don Juan by saying: 
 
 "And all our little feuds, at least all mine, 
 Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe 
 
 (As far as rhyme and criticism combine 
 To make such puppets of us things below). 
 
 Are over; Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!' 
 I do not know you, and may never know 
 
 Your face — but you have acted on the whole 
 
 Most nobly, and I own it from my soul. 
 
 And when I use the phrase of 'Auld Lang Syne !' 
 'Tis not &ddressed to you— the more's the pity 
 
 For me, for I would rather take my wine 
 
 With you, than aught (save Scott) in your 
 proud city." 
 
38 
 
 Miss Anna Seward, that plump Swan of Lichfield 
 whose story has been told so charmingly of late by 
 E. V. Lucas, was plainly enraged when she wrote to 
 Sir Walter Scott on June 20, 1806: "Not even you can 
 teach me to esteem him whom you call your little friend 
 Jeffrey," the Edinburgh Reviewer. Jefferies ought to 
 have been his name, since so similar his nature. On 
 his self-placed bench of decision on poetic works, he 
 is all that Jefferies was when tyranny had thrown the 
 judicial robe on his shoulder." 
 
 It was in this year, 1806, when Jeffrey made such 
 an attack upon the Odes and Epistles of Thomas Moore 
 that a rather comical duel followed, which be- 
 gan by Moore's telling Jeffrey a funny story 
 and ended by the timely arrival of the police 
 who haled the Scotchman and the Irishman, with 
 their seconds, Horner and Hume, to Bow Street, where 
 all began to talk on literary subjects. "But whatever 
 was the topic," writes Moore in his voluminous 
 Memoirs, "Jeffrey, I recollect, expatiated upon it with 
 all his peculiar fluency and eloquence; and I can now 
 most vividly recall him to my memory, as he lay upon 
 his back on a form which stood beside the wall, pour- 
 ing volubly forth his fluent but most oddly pronounced 
 diction, and dressing his subject out in every variety 
 of array that an ever rich and ready wardrobe of 
 phraseology could supply." They took a liking each 
 to the other and became warm friends; and Moore 
 records with pride how Jeffrey said to him, twenty-one 
 
39 
 
 years later, referring to the Life of Sheridan, "Here 
 is a convincing proof that you can think and reason 
 solidly and manfully, and treat the gravest and most 
 important subjects in a manner worthy of them." 
 
 The poet had some provocation, for in a review of 
 his poems (Edinburgh Review, No. xvi., July, 1806), 
 Jeffrey had written of him as "the most licentious of 
 modern versifiers, and the most poetical of the propa- 
 gators of impiety," adding what Moore understood to 
 be a charge of mercenary motives. The duelists met 
 at Chalk Farm, but the police interfered and it was 
 found that one of the pistols had no ball in it. So 
 Byron, in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers could 
 not refrain from saying: 
 
 "Can none remember that eventful day, 
 That ever glorious, almost fatal fray. 
 When Little's leadless pistol met his eye 
 And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by?" 
 
 Moore insisted that his pistol was loaded, and tried 
 to send a challenge to Byron, but the friend to whom it 
 was entrusted contrived to forget all about it. Theo- 
 dore Hook, in the Man of Sorrow perpetrated this epi- 
 gram: 
 "When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said, 
 
 A reverse he display'd in his vapor, 
 For while all his poems were loaded with lead, 
 
 His pistols were loaded with paper! 
 For excuses^ Anacreon old custom may thank, 
 
 Such a salvo he would not abuse, 
 For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank, 
 Which is fired away at Reviews." 
 
40 
 
 The whole story is told fully in Moore's Memoirs 
 as well as by Cockburn, and it is the subject of com- 
 ment in many other contemporary works. In Clay- 
 den's account of "Rogers and his Contemporaries," 
 other details are furnished. The banker-poet is 
 brought into the field. "Jeffrey," says Clayden, "had 
 written a slashing review of Moore's Epistles, Odes 
 and other Poems, in the Bdinburgh Review for July, 
 1806, and was apparently conscious that he had done 
 Moore injustice. Rogers met him at Lord Fincastle's 
 at dinner in the early summer, and the conversation 
 turned on Moore. Lord Fincastle described the new 
 poet as having great amenity of manner, and Jeffrey 
 laughingly replied, 'I am afraid he would not show 
 much amenity to me.' The insult and challenge fol- 
 lowed soon after this conversation, and a meeting was 
 arranged at Chalk Farm. William Spencer had heard 
 of it, and had told the police, and, when the combatants 
 were about to fire, the police appeared and took them 
 all off to the station. Moore sent for Spencer to bail 
 him, but Rogers had heard of the arrest and was on 
 the spot in time to give the necessary security." This 
 quarrel of two friends gave Rogers an opportunity 
 of playing his favorite part of peacemaker. He car- 
 ried messages between the combatants, containing, as 
 Moore says, those formalities of explanation which the 
 world requires, and arranged that they should meet at 
 his house." Rogers, in his Table Talk, gives a brief 
 account of his relation to the duel, and adds: "The 
 poet and the critic were mutually reconciled by means 
 
41 
 
 of Horner and myself: they shook hands with each 
 other in the garden behind my house." They may have 
 shaken hands there, but it is doubtful whether Rogers 
 really had as much to do with the reconciliation as all 
 this implies. In Clayden's book is given in full the letter 
 of Jeffrey to Rogers, written from Edinburgh, July 30, 
 1819, in which his generous liberality is exhibited. He 
 says : "I have been very much shocked and disturbed 
 by observing in the newspapers the great pecuni- 
 ary calamity which has fallen on our excellent friend 
 Moore, and not being able to get any distinct informa- 
 tion either as to its extent, or its probable consequences, 
 from anybody here, I have thought it best to relieve my 
 anxiety by applying to you, whose kind concern in him 
 must both have made you acquainted with all the partic- 
 ulars, and willing, I hope, to satisfy the enquiries of 
 one who sincerely shares in that concern. * * * j 
 have, unfortunately, not a great deal of money to spare. 
 But if it should be found practicable to relieve him 
 from this unmerited distress by any contribution, I beg 
 leave to say that I shall think it an honor to be allowed 
 to take share in it to the extent of 300 /. or 500 /., and 
 that I could advance more than double the sum named 
 above upon any reasonable security of ultimate repay- 
 ment, however long postponed." 
 
 In his own account of the Moore affair, Jeffrey, 
 writing to his friend, George Bell (August 22, 1806), 
 says: "Moore agreed to withdraw his defiance; and 
 then I had no hesitation in assuring him (as I was 
 ready to have done at the beginning, if he had applied 
 
42 
 
 amicably) that in writing the review I considered 
 myself merely as the censor of the morality of his 
 book, and that I intended to assert nothing as to the 
 personal motives or personal character of the author, 
 of whom I had no knowledge at the time. * * * We 
 have since breakfasted together very lovingly. * * * 
 You are too severe upon the little man. He has be- 
 haved with great spirit throughout this business. He 
 really is not profligate, and is universally regarded, 
 even by those who resent the style of his poetry, as 
 an innocent, good-hearted, idle fellow. * * * We 
 were very near going to Hamburgh after we had been 
 bound over here ; but it is much better as it is. I am 
 glad to have gone through this scene, both because it 
 satisfies me that my nerves are good enough to enable 
 me to act in conformity to my notions of propriety 
 without any suffering, and because it also assures me 
 that I am really as little in love with life as I have been 
 for some time in the habit of professing." This indif- 
 ference to life arose from the depression caused by the 
 death of his sister Mary (Mrs. Napier) and by a still 
 greater affliction which for a time threatened to drive 
 him from his literary and professional work. His 
 wife, whom he loved devotedly, died on August 8, 1805. 
 
 The Edinburgh was not destined to continue long 
 without a rival. Its open disapproval of the war with 
 France, rather than its advocacy of domestic reforms, 
 not only aroused the indignation of the Tories but 
 offended many of the moderate men of the class who 
 
43 
 
 consider it to be unpatriotic to oppose a. government 
 during the pendency of a conflict in which the nation 
 may be at the time engaged, however they may have de- 
 plored the beginning of such a conflict. We had ex- 
 amples of our own in the Civil War of 1861-1865, and 
 in the Spanish War of 1898. The final offense which 
 provoked the loyal Britons was a review by Jeffrey 
 (with some help from Brougham) of Don Pedro 
 Ceballos's account of the French Usurpation in 
 Spain, which appeared in the number for October, 1808. 
 Jeffrey "dared to despair of what was then called the 
 regeneration of Spain; and this at the very moment 
 when the hearts of most of the English people were 
 agitated with delight in the belief that this glorious 
 change had already begun and that the Peninsula 
 was henceforth to be inhabited by a population of 
 patriots."* Jeffrey was more accurate in his forecast 
 than he was a little later when he wrote to Horner 
 that his "honest impression" was that Bonaparte would 
 be "in Dublin in about fifteen months, perhaps sooner." 
 In that event, he said he would "try to go to America." 
 The Tories brought out their Quarterly Review in 
 February, 1809, and Sir Walter Scott went over to 
 it. It does not seem to have injured the Edinburgh 
 seriously. When Jeffrey saw the first number he 
 wrote : "I have seen the Quarterly this morning. It is 
 an inspired work, compared with the pen prattle of 
 Cumberland. But I do not think it very formidable; 
 and if it were not for our offences, I should have no 
 
 ♦Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey. 1-192. 
 
44 
 
 fear about its consequences." In March he wrote to 
 Horner : "Tell me what you hear, and what you think 
 of this new Quarterly; and do not let yourself imagine 
 that I feel any unworthy jealousy, and still less any 
 unworthy fear, on the occasion. My natural indolence 
 would have been better pleased not to be always in sight 
 of an alert and keen antagonist. But I do rejoice at 
 the prospect of this kind of literature, which seems to 
 be more and more attended to than any other, being 
 generally improved in quality, and shall be found to 
 have set an example." This was manifestly said in 
 all sincerity, and Jeffrey was shrewd enough to per- 
 ceive that rivalry and competition would advance the 
 fortunes of his Review instead of retarding them. In 
 fact, the Edinburgh was not at first particularly Whig- 
 gish. Scott, who was anything but a Whig, had been 
 a contributor for years before the Ceballos article ap- 
 peared, and as late as 1807 advised Southey to follow 
 his example. In November, 1808, Scott wrote to his 
 brother-in-law, saying that Jeffrey had "offered terms 
 of pacification, engaging that no party politics should 
 again appear in his 'Review'," but after this letter 
 had been given out in Lockhart's Life, Jeffrey insisted, 
 in the preface to his collected essays, that he had been 
 misunderstood and added that he had told Sir Walter 
 that he had for six years regarded politics as "the right 
 leg" of the Review. The real attitude of Jeffrey is 
 shown by a letter which he wrote to Horner, on Decem- 
 ber 6, 1808, quoted by Horner in his Memoirs (i. 
 464) when, asking help in the day of need, he told Hor- 
 
45 
 
 ner to write anything, "only no party politics, and noth- 
 ing but exemplary moderation and impartiality on all 
 politics." In fact, while his contributors were all 
 inclined to liberalism, Jeffrey himself wrote very few 
 political essays. His tendency was Whiggish, but he 
 was not enthusiastic; he was not a sympathizer with 
 Cobbett or Bentham, and even thought that Carlyle was 
 too much in earnest. The radicals. Sir Leslie Stephen 
 says, regarded him as a mere trimmer. So he met 
 with the approval of neither faction of extremists, the 
 usual fate of honest men who have a strong sense of 
 justice and abhor tyranny whether of the mob or of 
 the aristocracy. 
 
 In 1803 he decided not to accept a professorship 
 of moral and political science in a college at Calcutta, 
 although, according to Horner, his professional income 
 was then only about £240. In that year he "became 
 an ensign in a volunteer regiment, with a strong con- 
 viction that an invasion was imminent, but showed so 
 little military aptitude, that he was never at home in 
 his uniform, and could hardly, according to Cockburn, 
 "face his company to the right or left." His social suc- 
 cess, however, was marked, but he was despondent, as 
 we have seen, after the death of his sister and of his 
 wife, following the loss of his child, born in September, 
 1802, and dying in October of the same year. He 
 bravely worked on and with courage pursued his way 
 both in society and in his literary and professional 
 labors. His practice grew, and, although he was neither 
 learned nor profound, he was successful before juries 
 
46 
 
 and often argued appeals in the House of Lords. 
 After 1807 he had, as Cockburn says, an "unchallenged 
 monopoly on one side," before the general assembly, 
 and when the jury system for the trial of issues of 
 fact in civil cases was introduced in 1816, he was 
 employed in almost every trial. His manner 
 was artificial, he had a tendency to refine too 
 much, but he had an excellent memory for details, 
 much sagacity, and a charm of manner which 
 was most effective before juries and popular bodies. 
 He was engaged in the trial of Maclaren and Bird 
 for sedition in 181 7, and defended successfully several 
 criminals. So his repute as a lawyer increased in spite 
 of his editorial occupations. 
 
 In 18 10 he removed from Queen Street to 92 George 
 Street, which was his Edinburgh home until he moved 
 to 24 Moray Place in 1827. In 18 10 he became ac- 
 quainted with a daughter of Charles Wilkes of New 
 York, who was visiting in Scotland in company with 
 her aunt. She was a grand-niece of John Wilkes and 
 a near connection of Captain Charles Wilkes, long 
 years afterwards famous as an explorer and as the 
 captor of Mason and SHdell. He fell in love with her, 
 and after her return to America decided to go there, 
 leaving his clients to look after themselves as best they 
 might and entrusting the Review to his friends. He 
 had a most uncomfortable voyage, but reached New 
 York in October, 181 3, and married Miss Wilkes very 
 soon afterwards, returning to England in February, 
 1814. 
 
47 
 
 It may not be without interest to Americans to re- 
 member that he never shared in the hostility towards 
 them which was prevalent in his time. Perhaps his 
 personal experiences in the United States in 1813-1814 
 and his marriage to an American woman were account- 
 able in part for his friendliness. On his visit he had 
 two interviews with the men whom Lord Cockburn — 
 with the fine indifference of a Briton to the names of 
 our public officials— calls "Mr. Munroe, the Secretary" 
 and "Mr. Maddison, the President," with whom he dis- 
 cussed fully the problems of the pending war; and he 
 dined with the President.* 
 
 Naturally his views were not in accord with those 
 of Madison and Monroe, but the debate appears, by 
 Jeffrey's account, to have been conducted with dignity 
 and courtesy although without any practical result. 
 The truth is that neither party to the "War of 181 2" 
 could afford to boast very much about the merits of 
 its cause, and both of the belligerents were wrong in 
 many ways. In May, 1820, Jeffrey published an article 
 in the Bdinburgh on the jealousies between America 
 and Great Britain, of which Cockburn says : "He had 
 constantly endeavored to remove the irritations which 
 made these two kindred nations think so uncharitably 
 and so absurdly of each other." When Jeffrey re- 
 printed the paper in his Selected Contributions he added 
 in a note: "There is no one feeling, having public con- 
 
 *Cockburn, I., 226-227. It is curious that long years afterwards, 
 Sir Alexander James Cockburn, at a dinner, asked a relative of mine why 
 Chief Justice Chase did not come over to England, as they would be 
 glad to do him honor. Chase had died some time before, but the Lord 
 Chief Justice had not heard of it. 
 
48 
 
 cerns for its object, with which I have been so long and 
 so deeply impressed, as that of the vast importance of 
 our maintaining friendly, and even cordial relations, 
 with the free, peaceful, moral, and industrious States 
 of America — a condition upon which I cannot help 
 thinking that not only our own freedom and prosperity, 
 but that of the better part of the world, will ultimately 
 be found to be more and more dependent." 
 
 Like many Britons, he was at his worst in a foreign 
 country and appears to have created an impression 
 wholly erroneous regarding his personality. George 
 Ticknor, who met him in the United States, and after- 
 wards again in Edinburgh in 1819, says in his Journals 
 that Jeffrey "both here and in his own house and all 
 society, was a much more domestic, quiet sort of per- 
 son than we found him in America." One of the best 
 pen portraits of him is given by Ticknor in a letter to 
 his friend, Charles S. Davies of Portland, dated on Feb- 
 ruary 8, 1 814,* in which he says : 
 
 "I had seriously intended to send you a sketch of 
 the Abraham of the Edinburgh Review, while I was 
 running over with speculations and opinions about 
 him. * * * 
 
 You are to imagine * * * before you, a short, 
 stout little gentleman, about five and a half feet high, 
 with a very red face, black hair, and black eyes. You 
 are to suppose him to possess a very gay and animated 
 countenance, and you are to see in him all the restless- 
 ness of a will-o'-wisp, and all that fitful irregularity 
 
 ♦Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, I., 43. 
 
49 
 
 in his movements which you have heretofore appro- 
 priated to the pasteboard Merry Andrews whose 
 Hnibs are jerked about with a wire. These you are to 
 interpret as the natural indication of the impetuous and 
 impatient character which a further acquaintance de- 
 velops. 
 
 "He enters a room with a countenance so satisfied, 
 and a step so light and almost fantastic, that all your 
 previous impressions of the dignity and severity of the 
 Edinburgh Review are immediately put to flight, and, 
 passing at once to the opposite extreme, you might, 
 perhaps, imagine him to be frivolous, vain, and super- 
 cilious. He accosts you, too, with a freedom and 
 familiarity which may, perhaps, put you at your ease, 
 and render conversation unceremonious; but which, 
 as I observed in several instances, were not very toler- 
 able to those who had always been accustomed to the 
 delicacy and decorum of refined society. Mr. Jeffrey, 
 therefore, I remarked, often suffered from the pre- 
 possessions of those he met, before any regular conver- 
 sation commenced, and almost before the tones of his 
 voice were heard. It is not possible, however, to be 
 long in his presence without understanding something 
 of his real character — for the same promptness and 
 assurance which mark his entrance into a room carry 
 him at once into conversation. The moment a topic is 
 suggested — no matter what or by whom — he comes 
 forth, and the first thing you observe is his singular 
 fluency. 
 
 "He bursts upon you with a torrent of remarks, and 
 
so 
 
 you are for some time so much amused with his earnest- 
 ness and volubility, that you forget to ask yourself 
 whether they have either appropriateness or meaning. 
 When, however, you come to consider his remarks 
 closely, you are surprised to find that, notwithstanding 
 his prodigious rapidity, the current of his language 
 never flows faster than the current of his thoughts. 
 You are surprised to discover that he is never, like 
 other impetuous speakers, driven to amplification and 
 repetition in order to gain time to collect and arrange 
 his ideas ; you are surprised to find that, while his con- 
 versation is poured forth in such a fervor and tumult 
 of eloquence that you can scarcely follow or compre- 
 hend it, it is still as compact and logical as if he were 
 contending for a victory in the schools or for a decision 
 from the bench. 
 
 "After all this, however, you do not begin to under- 
 stand Mr. Jeffrey's character; for it is not until you 
 become interested in the mere discussion, until you 
 forget his earnestness, his volubility, and his skill, that 
 you begin to feel something of the full extent of his 
 powers. You do not, till then, see with how strong 
 and steady a hand he seizes the subject, and with what 
 ease, as well as dexterity, he turns and examines it on 
 every side. You are not, until then, convinced that he 
 but plays with what is the labor of ordinary minds, and 
 that half his faculties are not called into exercise by 
 what you at first suppose would tax his whole 
 strength. And, after all, you are able to estimate him, 
 not by what you witness, — for he is always above a 
 
51 
 
 topic which can be made the subject of conversation, — 
 but by what you imagine he would be able to do if he 
 were excited by a great and difficult subject and a pow- 
 erful adversary. 
 
 "With all this, he preserves in your estimation a 
 transparent simplicity of character. You are satisfied 
 that he does nothing for effect and show ; you see that 
 he never chooses the subject, and never leads the con- 
 versation in such a way as best to display his own 
 powers and acquirements. You see that he is not ambi- 
 tious of being thought a wit; and that, when he has 
 been most fortunate in his argument or illustration, he 
 never looks round, as some great men do, to observe 
 what impression he has produced upon his hearers. In 
 short, you could not be in his presence an hour with- 
 out being convinced that he has neither artifice nor 
 affectation; that he does not talk from the pride of 
 skill or of victory, but because his mind is full to over- 
 flowing, and conversation is his rehef and pleasure. 
 
 "But notwithstanding everybody saw and acknowl- 
 edged these traits in Mr. Jeffrey's character, he was 
 very far from winning the good opinion of all. There 
 were still not a few who complained that he was super- 
 cilious, and that he thought himself of a different and 
 higher order from those he met; that he had been used 
 to dictate until he was unwilling to listen, and that he 
 had been fed upon admiration until it had become com- 
 mon food, and he received it as a matter of course. 
 
 "There is some ground for this complaint, but I 
 think the circumstances of the case should take its edge 
 
52 
 
 from censure. It seems to me that Mr. Jeffrey has 
 enough of that amiable feeling from which politeness 
 and the whole system of the petite morale springs. But 
 that he has not learned the necessary art of distributing 
 it in judicious proportions. He shows the same degree 
 of deference to every one he meets; and, therefore, 
 while he flatters by his civility those who are little 
 accustomed to attention from their superiors, he dis- 
 appoints the reasonable expectations of those who have 
 received the homage of all around them until it has 
 become a part of their just expectations and claims. 
 
 "This, at least, was the distinction here. The young 
 men and the literary men all admired him ; the old men 
 and the politicians found their opinions and dignity 
 too little regarded by the impetuous stranger. The 
 reasons of this are to be sought, I think, in his educa- 
 tion and constitution; and I was, therefore, not dis- 
 posed to like him less for his defect. I was not dis- 
 posed to claim from a man who must have passed his 
 youth in severe and solitary study, and who was not 
 brought into that class of society which refines and 
 fashions all the external expressions of character, until 
 his mind and habits were matured, and he was brought 
 there to be admired and to dictate. I was not disposed 
 to claim from him that gentleness and delicacy of man- 
 ners which are acquired only by early discipline, and 
 which are most obvious in those who have received, 
 perhaps, their very character and direction from early 
 collision with their superiors in station or talent. 
 
 "Besides, even admitting that Mr. Jeffrey could have 
 
53 
 
 early been introduced to refined society, still I do not 
 think his character would have been much changed ; or, 
 if it had been, that it would have been changed for 
 the better. I do not think it would have been possible 
 to have drilled him into the strict forms of society and 
 bienseance without taking from him something we 
 should be very sorry to lose. 
 
 "There seems to me to be a prodigious rapidity in his 
 mind which could not be taken away without diminish- 
 ing its force ; and yet it is this rapidity, I think, which 
 often offended some of my older friends, in the form 
 of impatience and abruptness. He has, too, a prompt- 
 ness and decision which contribute, no doubt, to the 
 general power of his mind, and certainly could not be 
 repressed without taking away much of that zeal which 
 carries him forward in his labors, and gives so lively 
 an interest to his conversation; yet you could not be 
 an hour in his presence without observing that his 
 promptness and decision very often make him appear 
 peremptory and assuming. 
 
 "In short, he has such a familiar acquaintance with 
 almost all the subjects of human knowledge, and con- 
 sequently such an intimate conviction that he is right, 
 and such a habit of carrying his point; he passes, as it 
 seems to me, with such intuitive rapidity from thought 
 to thought, and subject to subject, that his mind is com- 
 pletely occupied and satisfied with its own knowledge 
 and operations, and has no attention left to bestow on 
 the tones and manner of expression. He is, in fact, so 
 much absorbed with the weightier matters of the dis- 
 
54 
 
 cussion, — with the subject, the argument, and the illus- 
 trations, — that he forgets the small tithe of humanity 
 and forbearance which he owes to every one with 
 whom he converses; and I was not one of those who 
 ever wished to correct his forgetfulness, or remind 
 him of his debt." 
 
 This is all very graphic, but it is amazing to observe 
 the lofty superiority of the young New Englander of 
 twenty-three, for that was Ticknor's age when he thus 
 delivered his judgment. One may indulge in a little 
 merriment over his airy affectation of social superior- 
 ity. When we realize what Jeffrey's social life had 
 been, the patronizing tone, the assumption of dig- 
 nity, conveyed by the lad's phrases, moves us to 
 laughter. The solemn prigs of Massachusetts of 1814 
 — so wise and great in their petty environment! — 
 what was their dull, provincial society compared with 
 that in which Jeffrey had been an ornament for years ! 
 Still, most of Ticknor's commentaries are worthy of 
 notice ; much may be forgiven to a confirmed Bostonian, 
 who considers the Bostonian standard as the highest 
 ever attained or ever dreamed of by mortal man. 
 
 Despite the air of tolerance which Mr. Ticknor dis- 
 plays with regard to Jeffrey in social life, it may not be 
 amiss to recall that in a circle at least as worthy of es- 
 teem as that of Boston, he was received without ques- 
 tion. He was always welcome in the refined precincts 
 of Holland House, and indeed in all the Whig society 
 of London, but as Mr. Sanders says in "The Holland 
 
55 
 
 House Circle," the appearances there of "the hard 
 working Scotch lawyer and vigorous, if obscurantist 
 writer, were comparatively rare except during the brief 
 period when he sat in the Reform Parliament." In 
 1811 his London campaign included a large dinner 
 party at Holland House, where the hostess was "in 
 great gentleness and softness," and where he failed to 
 appreciate the charm of Lady Caroline Lamb. He 
 seems not to have revisited Holland House until 1840, 
 when he had "a sweet walk under the cedars and in the 
 garden, where he listened in vain for the nightingales ; 
 though Lord Holland and Allen challenged them to 
 answer by divers fat and asthmatical whistles." Jef- 
 frey kept up his acquaintance with Lady Holland in her 
 widowhood.* That lady writes of him to Mrs. Creevey 
 in 1 8 14, "Do not be surprised at receiving a visit from 
 that very dear little man, who has the best heart and 
 temper, although the authors of the day consider him 
 as their greatest scourge. * * * You will think as 
 much of his acquaintance, as he is full of wit, anecdote 
 and lively sallies."t 
 
 IV. 
 His devotion to his family was one of his most 
 charming traits. In 181 5 he took up his country resi- 
 dence at Craigcrook, three miles northwest of Edin- 
 burgh. Moore, visiting him there in 1825, says: 
 "Jeffrey cannot bear to stir without his wife and child; 
 requires something living and breathing near him and 
 
 *The Holland House Circle. 257- London, 1908. 
 tCreevey Paper's. I, 205. 
 
56 
 
 is miserable when alone." Craigcrook had been the 
 home of Constable, and his son, Thomas Constable, 
 quotes a letter from Jeffrey to his father, written 
 August 25, 1814, to show "the unfailing consideration 
 and the liberal kindness that were Mr. Jeffrey's eminent 
 characteristics," offering, although he could not use 
 the place for some considerable time, to pay for it at 
 any time or to grant any moderate accommodation in 
 money if any exigency in Constable's affairs required 
 it. He also gives another letter to illustrate Jeffrey's 
 liberality. By some carelessness, there had been delay 
 in paying for an article in the Review. Jeffrey wrote 
 to Constable: "Here, by God's grace, is Mr. ly.'s 
 honorarium. Pray let it be sent off instantly to him, at 
 Longman's & Co., and desire them to pay him or offer 
 him ten guineas for the delay and disappointment. I 
 mulct myself in this fine. * * * x deserve this for 
 my negligence, and besides it is right that the Review 
 and its management should not be liable to the impu- 
 tation of shabbiness, even from the shabby." Two 
 letters from Jeffrey to Hazlitt, written in 1818, are 
 given by Constable, relating to a proposed suit at law 
 which Hazlitt wished to begin against Blackwood's 
 Magazine, which are too long for full quotation, but 
 which show distinctly "the generous, yet wise and 
 honest nature of the writer."* 
 
 In one of these letters he says : "I am concerned to 
 find your health is not as good as it should be, and that 
 you would take more care of it if your finances were 
 
 ♦Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondence (1873). 
 
&1 
 
 in better order. We cannot let a man of genius suffer 
 in this way, and I hope you are in no serious danger. 
 I take the liberty of enclosing £ioo, a great part of 
 which I shall owe you in a few weeks, and the rest you 
 shall pay me back in reviews whenever you can do so 
 without putting yourself to any uneasiness. If you 
 really want another £ioo tell me so plainly and it shall 
 be heartily at your service." One morning he received 
 a letter from Hazlitt, saying, "I am dying; can you 
 send me £io and so consummate your many kindnesses 
 to me?" Jeffrey sent a check for £50, but whether it 
 saved Hazlitt's life I am unable to discover. 
 
 The house in Moray Place, then the new part of 
 Edinburgh, looked out on the Forth on one side and to a 
 green garden on the other. Macaulay, no doubt in- 
 tending to confer upon it the highest badge of dis- 
 tinction which an Englishman can bestow upon a dwell- 
 ing-place, pronounced it to be "really equal to the 
 houses in Grosvenor Square." Macaulay stopped with 
 him there in 1828, and wrote to his mother:* "In one 
 thing, as far as I have observed, he is always the same ; 
 and that is the warmth of his domestic affections. 
 Neither Mr. Wilberforce nor my uncle Babington 
 comes up to him in this respect. The flow of his kind- 
 ness is quite inexhaustible. Not five minutes pass 
 without some fond expression or caressing gesture to 
 his wife or his daughter. He has fitted up a study for 
 himself, but he never goes into it. Law papers, reviews, 
 whatever he has to write, he writes in the drawing 
 
 ♦Trevelyan's Macaulay. I. 143 (Am. Edn.). 
 
58 
 
 room or in his wife's boudoir. When he goes to other 
 parts of the country on a retainer, he takes them in 
 the carriage with him. I do not wonder that he should 
 be a good husband; for his wife is a very amiable 
 woman. But I was surprised to see a man so keen and 
 sarcastic, so much of a scoffer, pouring himself out 
 with such simplicity and tenderness in all sorts of 
 affectionate nonsense." 
 
 On July 2, 1829, he was unanimously elected Dean 
 of the Faculty of Advocates, a position of honor. His 
 opinion was that the "head of a great law corporation" 
 should not "continue to be the conductor of what might 
 be fairly enough represented as in many respects a 
 party journal." So he withdrew from the manage- 
 ment of the Edinburgh Review. The number for June, 
 1829, was the last one edited by him, and thereafter 
 he contributed to the magazine not more than five or 
 six articles. 
 
 A few years later his friend Cockburn urged him 
 in vain to undertake some work of original composi- 
 tion, but he could not be persuaded. In reply to Cock- 
 burn he wrote, on August 28, 1835: "I have been 
 delighting myself with Mackintosh. I only got the book 
 two days ago and have done nothing but read it ever 
 since. The richness of his mind intoxicates me. And 
 yet do not you think he would have been a happier 
 man, and quite as useful and respectable, if he had 
 not fancied it a duty to write a great book? And is 
 not this question an answer to your exhortation to 
 
59 
 
 me to write a little one ? I have no sense of duty that 
 way, and feel that the only sure or even probable result 
 of the attempt would be hours and days of anxiety, and 
 unwholesome toil, and a closing scene of mortification." 
 Of his two hundred contributions to the Bdinburgh, 
 seventy-nine were selected for publication in book form, 
 in 1843; s-^id a second edition, of three volumes, was 
 issued five years later. These essays are not read 
 now as are those of Macaulay, Hazlitt, Carlyle, or 
 Mackintosh ; because, while they have a certain charm 
 and brightness, they possess no lasting qualities of 
 style or of substance. They seem to be too fluent. As 
 Dr. Samuel McChord Crothers said recently at Prince- 
 ton — and he found it worth repeating in his interest- 
 ing paper on the Autocrat in the Atlantic Monthly for 
 August, 1909: "The writer who is usually fluent 
 should take warning from the instructions which 
 accompany his fountain-pen: 'when this pen flows too 
 freely it is a sign that it is nearly empty and should 
 be filled'." They seem to be wanting in depth and 
 solidity. An American writer well says: "He was 
 French in his literary aptitudes and qualities; never 
 heavy: touching things with a feather's point, yet 
 touching them none the less surely." But touching 
 things with a feather's point, however surely, leaves 
 but a slight impression and time effaces it without 
 mercy. Yet it has also been said of him that he "with 
 his clear, legal mind, his stabbing and brilliant manner 
 of expression, his sarcasm, cold and sharp-edged as a 
 Toledo blade, unfortunately only too capable of wound- 
 
60 
 
 ing too deeply — won the position of the greatest Eng- 
 lish critic of all time and of the most eminent Scottish 
 lawyer of the day — achieving the highest honors open 
 to the advocates of Edinburgh."* It is the fate of 
 men like him to be overestimated by their contempo- 
 raries and underrated by those who come after them. 
 
 He wrote for the Edinburgh a long review of Ali- 
 son's Essays on Taste, which, in 1816, he used for 
 the article on Beauty in the Encyclopcedia Britannica 
 This appeared later as a small volume. 
 
 His letters were always delightful; those to the 
 American relatives of his wife, describing her new 
 home life, are admirable. He wrote often to Mrs. 
 Waddington — Georgiana Port, grand-niece of Mrs. 
 Delany, — and in some of his letters to her he speaks 
 quite frankly on literary matters. In 18 12 he writes: 
 "As for Alison, its review, which you call abuse, is the 
 best I ever wrote on a matter of free speculation, and 
 Burke and Price are both wrong. This is one of the 
 few things I am sure about, and I really have a strong 
 desire to convert you to the right path. For Madame 
 de Stael, I have never seen her U Allemagne yet, and 
 never asked for it. You see what a savage I am. More- 
 over, I do not greatly admire her, and I do not tolerate 
 idolatry. Corinne is clever, and upon the strength of 
 your recommendation I shall get the other immediately 
 and review it candidly, if I find I have anything to 
 say about it. * * * There are some wild poems pub- 
 
 ♦Curwen. History of Booksellers. 117. 
 
61 
 
 lished here by a lad of the name of Wilson [The Isle of 
 Palms was published early in 1812], a seraph of the 
 Lalce School, and very amiable. Lord Byron has also 
 published a quarto of a strange sort of gloomy, misan- 
 thropical poetry* — but powerful and vigorous. I have 
 thoughts of reviewing both." 
 
 In 18 14, answering Mrs. Waddington's request to 
 review Madame D'Arblay's latest book — she was no 
 longer the great Fanny Burney and had lost the art 
 which made Johnson and Burke sit up all night to read 
 Evelina — he writes: "I don't know what to say to 
 you about the Wanderer. The cry is pretty general 
 against it, and among judicious and good people as 
 well as others. There is no disguising the fact, and I 
 am afraid there is only one way of accounting for it, 
 not that the judges are — but that the work is bad. If 
 a popular work — I mean a work intended to please and 
 instruct general readers — is generally disliked, how 
 can it be a good work? There is no way of getting 
 over that. Yet you must know that I like the book 
 better than anybody I meet with here — and better than 
 anybody almost that I have heard of but you. I think 
 it has great faults, but I do not think it very much in- 
 ferior to her earlier works, the faults of which seem to 
 be forgotten in order to contrast their excellence with 
 the faults of this, which is worse written than they are, 
 and a little more diffuse, but has the same merits of 
 brilliant coloring, decided character, and occasional 
 elegance. Now I can't tell whether I shall review it 
 
 *The first tjvo cantos of Childe Harold. 
 
62 
 
 or not, nor can I promise to speak of it as you do, if I 
 should. Gently and favorably I certainly shall speak, 
 because I have the highest veneration for the personal 
 character of the author ; but I must speak what I think. 
 I do not think it quite pretty in her not to say a word in 
 that long, foolish preface, of Miss Edgeworth or 
 Madame de Stael, and to praise herself so directly. 
 The last may be partly simplicity of character ; the first 
 looks petty." 
 
 It was not until February, 1815, that the partly- 
 promised review appeared, mainly a discussion of the 
 general subject of "novels of manners." As to the 
 book itself, he calls attention to the absurdities of the 
 plot observing "that in the conduct of a story she never 
 excelled, while her characters are equally superficial 
 and confined." "We are sorry," he concludes, " to speak 
 so disadvantageously of the work of so excellent and 
 favorite a writer; and the more so as we perceive no 
 decay of talent, but only a perversion of it."* Most 
 of us would think that he was too gentle in dealing 
 with the stupid story, whose style Macaulay described 
 as "a barbarous patois," a sort of "broken Johnsonese," 
 and one marvels that it could have been written by the 
 author of the Diary, which ranks with that of Pepys, 
 among the best in the language. 
 
 The second volume of Cockburn's L,ife is made up 
 entirely of letters. They are far more interesting 
 than the Life itself, which is a stupid affair, containing 
 long accounts of men who happened to be friends and 
 
 ♦Side-L,ights on the Georgian Period : George Paston, 48. 
 
63 
 
 acquaintances of Jeffrey's and of the biographer, but 
 who might have been dismissed with a mere reference. 
 It is not divided into chapters and, worst of all, it has 
 no index. Some original unpublished letters are in 
 my possession. From the letter to his sister I have 
 already quoted. Most of them are to John Richard- 
 son, an eminent Scottish solicitor, of whom Jeffrey was 
 very fond. Unfortunately the chirography is so atro- 
 cious that it almost defies translation. Of his wretched 
 scrawl Lady Holland says in her Memoirs of Sydney 
 Smith: "My father wrote to him, on receiving one of 
 his letters, 'My dear Jeffrey: — We are much obliged 
 by your letter, but should be still more so were it legi- 
 ble. I have tried to read it from left to right, and Mrs. 
 Sydney from right to left, and we neither of us can 
 decipher a single word of it.' " In one of these letters, 
 dated November lo, 1818, he mentions the recent death 
 of Romilly by suicide, and says: "It is a tremendous 
 revelation, this of Romilly's death, and yet I cannot 
 help considering it as rather an heroic ending." The 
 rest is undecipherable — unless by some expert in 
 Assyrian inscriptions. In another, written from Edin- 
 burgh on February 8, 1825, he reveals his kindly senti- 
 ments in regard to Thomas Campbell. He says : 
 
 "My dear Richardson: — Altho' the new No. of 
 the Review will be out within ten days, I am tempted 
 to gratify Campbell's natural impatience to know how 
 we have treated him, by sending him a separate copy 
 of my article on his new volume,* and not being sure 
 
 ♦Campbell's Theodoric, and Other Poems : No. 82. Article I. 
 
64 
 
 of his address, I take the liberty of enclosing it to you. 
 You may perhaps like to take a look of it in passing, 
 and think this privilege a sufficient indemnification for 
 the double postage to which it will subject you, — if not, 
 you must put it to my account. You will see I have 
 treated him kindly — indeed I should not have the heart, 
 I am afraid, to treat him otherwise, even if I thought 
 he deserved it. But I really think, in substance, 
 all I have said of him, tho' I might have expressed it 
 less warmly and added other thoughts. Give my love 
 to him and tell me how near I have come to pleasing 
 him. You see I have done him the honor of placing 
 him at the fore of the No. and consequently I have had 
 this sheet by me for a fortnight. But I have forborne 
 sending it for fear of its contents finding their way 
 into some newspaper or magazine — against the possi- 
 bility of which I beg you to caution the said Editorial 
 pest, and to secure obedience to this caution I would 
 recommend his burning the said sheet as soon as he 
 has sufficiently perused it. * * * ^/q ^re a lit- 
 tle anxious about the Judicature Bill. When you hear 
 any certain tidings of it, do let us know. What is the 
 worshipful the Solr. Gen. doing up among you? What 
 trim is Brougham in? What is to be done with Ire- 
 land? We have a strong paper on that subject in this 
 No, which I am anxious to have out before decisive 
 measures are adopted." 
 
 Another letter is to Talfourd, and it is an additional 
 disclosure of his generous disposition: 
 
65 
 
 Edinburgh, 9 May, 1836. 
 
 My dear Serjeant — I wrote to Spring Rice the 
 
 day after I received your new supplication for poor 
 
 Leigh Hunt, and entreated him to confer favorably 
 
 with you on the subject. Yesterday I had his answer, 
 
 saying that he had nothing whatever to say as to 
 
 selecting or suggesting who should have pensions, and 
 
 that this was strictly and entirely in the department of 
 
 Lord Melbourne, to whom, however, he promised to 
 
 communicate what I had written. I have been making 
 
 an application very nearly to the same effect with your 
 
 friend. Dr. Bowring, with whom I suppose you are 
 
 in communication, and whom I beg you will assure of 
 
 my most hearty concurrence in so kind a suit. He 
 
 seems to think Lord M. well disposed and if you get 
 
 up a tolerable show of conservative auxiliaries, I shall 
 
 have good hopes of success. I shall be most happy to 
 
 hear of your progress, and to lend any little aid in 
 
 my power. I have still a pleasing presentiment that 
 
 I am to have the gratification of seeing you here in the 
 
 course of the summer. In the meantime pray do not 
 
 forget me. 
 
 Always very faithfully yours. 
 
 To Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, &c., &c., 
 
 Almost every one who refers to Macaulay's early 
 life quotes what Jeffrey wrote to him in acknowledg- 
 ing the receipt of the manuscript of the essay on Milton, 
 which appeared in the Edinburgh in August, 1825: 
 
66 
 
 "The more I think the less I can conceive where you 
 picked up that style." It was a hasty remark, no 
 doubt, and not meant to be embalmed for posterity; 
 for Jeffrey surely knew that "style" is the result either 
 of an inborn power of using language in a particular 
 way or of care, study and wide reading; it is never 
 "picked up." 
 
 It was easy for him to detect the signs of promise 
 in a young contributor. He recognized Carlyle's merit 
 at once, and the record of his relations with the Carlyles 
 is an honorable one. He soon became their friend and 
 benefactor, and for several years the articles in the 
 Review were one of the main sources of their income. 
 It was difficult for Carlyle to be grateful to any one; 
 but he came very near to gratitude towards Jeffrey. 
 In the "Two Note Books," he says (1830), "Francis 
 Jeffrey the other week offered me a hundred a year, 
 having learned that this sum met my yearly wants; 
 he did it neatly enough, and I had no doubt of his 
 sincerity." In his "Reminiscences" he writes: "Jef- 
 frey about this time generously offered to confer on 
 me an annuity of £100." Charles Eliot Norton, in his 
 footnote to this passage, refers to Carlyle's acute 
 analysis of his own and Jeffrey's feelings in the matter, 
 and adds that Carlyle hardly does justice to the sim- 
 plicity of Jeffrey's kind intention. Carlyle refused to 
 receive the gift, and perhaps he was right. 
 
 Froude gives us the story of the proposed annuity 
 quite fully. He says : "Jeffrey's anxiety to be of use 
 did not end in recommendations to Napier. He knew 
 
67 
 
 how the Carlyles were situated in money matters. He 
 knew that they were poor, and that their poverty had 
 risen from a voluntary surrender of means which were 
 properly their own, but which they would not touch 
 while Mrs. Welsh was alive. He knew also that Car- 
 lyle had educated and was still supporting, his brother 
 out of his own slender earnings. He saw, as he sup- 
 posed, a man of real brilliancy and genius weighed 
 down and prevented from doing justice to himself by 
 a drudgery which deprived him of the use of his more 
 commanding talents; and with a generosity the merit 
 of which was only exceeded by the delicacy with which 
 the offer was made, he proposed that Carlyle should 
 accept a small annuity from him. Here again I regret 
 that I am forbidden to print the admirable letter in 
 which Jeffrey conveyed his desire, to which Carlyle in 
 his own mention of this transaction has done but scanty 
 justice. The whole matter, he said, should be an 
 entire secret between them. He would tell no one — 
 not even his wife. He bade Carlyle remember that 
 he, too, would have been richer if he had not been him- 
 self a giver where there was less demand upon his 
 liberality. He ought not to wish for a monopoly of 
 generosity, and if he was really a religious man he must 
 do as he would be done to ; nor, he added, would he have 
 made the offer did he not feel that in similar circum- 
 stances he would have freely accepted it himself. To 
 show his confidence he enclosed 50 /., which he expected 
 Carlyle to keep, and desired only to hear in reply that 
 they had both done right.''^ 
 
68 
 
 Later in the Note Books Carlyle records a visit 
 of the Jeffreys and thus delivers himself : "Very good 
 and interesting beyond wont was our worthy Dean. 
 He is growing old, and seems dispirited and partly 
 unhappy." Jeffrey was then fifty-seven and could not 
 have been remarkably aged. "Jeffrey's essential tal- 
 ent sometimes seems to me to have been that of a Gol- 
 doni; some comic Dramatist, not without a touch of 
 true lyrical pathos. He is the best mimic (in the low- 
 est and highest senses) I ever saw. * * * He is 
 one of the most loving men alive; has a true kindness, 
 not of blood and habit only, but of soul and spirit. He 
 cannot do without being loved. * * * i have heard 
 him say: 'If Folly were the happiest, I would be a 
 fool.' Yet his daily Life belies this doctrine, and says : 
 'Tho' Goodness were the most wretched, I would be 
 Good.' In conversation he is brilliant (or rather spark- 
 ling) lively, kind, willing either to speak or listen, and 
 above all men I have ever seen, ready and copious. On 
 the whole, exceedingly pleasant in light talk. Yet 
 alas light, light, too light! He will talk of nothing 
 earnestly, tho' his look sometimes betrays an earnest 
 feeling. * * * He is not a strong man in any 
 shape; but nimble and tough. He stands midway be- 
 twen God and Mammon; and his preaching thro' life 
 has been an attempt to reconcile these. Hence his pop- 
 ularity; a thing easily accountable when one looks at 
 the world and at him; but little honourable to either. 
 Literature! Poetry! except by active indestructible 
 Instinct, which he has never dared to avow, yet being 
 
a true Poet (in his way) could never eradicate — he 
 knows not what they mean. A true Newspaper Critic, 
 on the great scale ; no priest, but a Concionator ! Yet 
 on the whole he is about the best man I ever saw. 
 Sometimes I think he will abjure the Devil (if he live) 
 and become a pure Light. Already he is a most tricksy 
 dainty beautiful little spirit ; I have seen gleams on the 
 face and eyes of the man that let you look into a higher 
 country. God bless him !" 
 
 And this is the tribute paid by one who never did 
 to anybody an act of disinterested kindness, an alleged 
 philosopher who was always finding fault but was of no 
 practical value to the world, to a man who was always 
 doing good, a kindly, helpful man, whose life was love 
 and who neither attained nor wished to attain that emi- 
 nence as "a pure light" which manifests itself by the 
 perpetual scolding of others. 
 
 Jane Welsh Carlyle partially atones for the dubious 
 praise accorded by her surly spouse. "Lord Jeffrey" 
 she writes "came unexpectedly while the Count 
 [D'Orsay] was here. What a difference! The prince 
 of critics, and the prince of dandies. How washed out 
 the beautiful dandiacal face looked beside that little 
 clever old man's. The large blue dandiacal eyes, you 
 would have said, had never contemplated anything more 
 than the reflection of the handsome personage they 
 pertained to, in a looking glass ; while the dark, pene- 
 trating eyes of the other had been taking note of most 
 things in God's universe, ?ven seeing a good way into 
 
70 
 
 mill stones.* Another worthy female — Harriet Marti- 
 neau, who sneered at almost any one — thought Jeffrey 
 "one of the most egregious flatterers of vain women in 
 general." He had evidently flattered the lady atro- 
 ciously. In her Autobiography, she expands her view, 
 saying : 
 
 "Whatever there might be of artificial in Jeffrey's 
 manners — of a set 'company state of mind' and mode 
 of conversation, — there was a warm heart underneath, 
 and an ingenuousness which added captivation to his 
 intellectual graces. He could be absurd enough in his 
 devotion to a clever woman; and he could be highly 
 culpable in drawing out the vanity of a vain one, and 
 then comically making game of it; but his better nature 
 was always within call; and his generosity was unim- 
 peachable in every other respect." 
 
 With regard to Jeffrey's behavior towards women, 
 Carlyle in his Reminiscences, has some pleasant things 
 to say: 
 
 "He had much the habit of flirting about with 
 women, especially pretty women, much more the both 
 pretty and clever; all in a weakish, mostly dra- 
 matic, and wholly theoretic way (his age now 
 fifty gone); would daintily kiss their hands in 
 bidding good morning, offer his due homage, as he 
 phrased it; trip about, half like a lap-dog, half like a 
 human adorer, with speeches pretty and witty, always 
 of trifling import. I have known some women (not 
 the prettiest) take offence at it, and awkwardly draw 
 
 ♦Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. (1883.) 
 
71 
 
 themselves up, but without the least putting him out. 
 The most took it quietly, kindly, and found an enter- 
 tainment to themselves in cleverly answering it, as he 
 did in partly offering it ; pertly, yet with something of 
 real reverence, and always in a dexterous, light way, 
 * * * An airy environment of this kind was, when- 
 ever possible a coveted charm in Jeffrey's way of life." 
 
 Carlyle in his Reminiscences has left these records 
 of his impressions of the man who so befriended him in 
 the hour of need : 
 
 "I used to find in him a finer talent than any he 
 has evidenced in writing. This was chiefly when he 
 got to speak Scotch, and gave me anecdotes of old 
 Scotch Braxfield and vernacular (often enough but 
 not always cynical) curiosities of that type, which he 
 did with a greatness of gusto quite peculiar to the topic, 
 with a fine and deep sense of humor, of real comic 
 mirth, much beyond what was noticeable in him other- 
 wise, not to speak of the perfection of the mimicry, 
 which itself was something. I used to think to myself, 
 'Here is a man whom they have kneaded into the shape 
 of an Edinburgh reviewer, and clothed the soul of in 
 Whig formulas and blue and yellow; but he might have 
 been a beautiful Goldoni too, or something better in that 
 kind, and have given us comedies and aerial pictures 
 true and poetic of human life in a far other way.' There 
 was something of Voltaire in him, something even 
 in bodily features; those bright-beaming, swift and 
 piercing hazel eyes, with their accompaniment of rapid, 
 keen expression in the other lineaments of face, resem- 
 
72 
 
 bled one's notion of Voltaire; and in the voice, too, 
 there was a fine half -plangent kind of metallic ringing 
 tone which used to remind me of what I fancied Vol- 
 taire's voice might have been; Voix sombre et majes- 
 teuse,' Duvernet calls it." 
 
 V. 
 
 They must have been greatly addicted to talk for 
 talk's sake in those days. There appears to have been 
 far more interchange of words among the men of let- 
 ters than there has been among the writers of recent 
 generations. We read so much in all their interminable 
 memoirs and in their voluminous correspondence, about 
 "talk," and the merits of the talkers — talk at clubs, 
 at dinners, in the salons, — talk morning, noon and 
 night — that it is puzzling to find out how they ever 
 found time to work. It must be owned that we are 
 not favored with many records of what was actually 
 said, the few volumes of "Table Talk" being manifestly 
 edited for publication so as to take all the spontaneity 
 out of them; and the "jests" and "anecdotes" which 
 have been preserved to us seem mostly flat, stale and 
 unprofitable, although there are a few deserving im- 
 mortality, such as the one about Jeffrey's damning the 
 North Pole and the resulting accusation by Sydney 
 Smith of using disrespectful language about, the equa- 
 tor. An example of the dreariness of some of these 
 talks is afforded by the discussion between Moore, 
 Rogers and Lord Holland and later between Moore 
 and John Wilson about the wonderful joke of Sheridan 
 
Y3 
 
 delivered to Tarleton, and Lord John Russell's ludicrous 
 note thereon in his edition of Moore's Memoirs. Moore 
 expresses rather a gloomy opinion of this joke or bon 
 mot. Lord Russell appends this portentous remark: 
 "Sheridan's joke to Tarleton. Any one might think 
 the wit poor (although I do not agree with them) but 
 the joke is clear enough. 'I was on a horse, and now 
 I'm on an elephant,' i. e., 'I was high above others, but 
 now I am much higher.' 'You were on an ass, and 
 now you're on a mule,' said Sheridan : i. e., 'You were 
 stupid and now you're obstinate.' For quick repartee 
 in conversation, there are few things better. J. R." 
 There are luckily no such scintillations of wit 
 charged against Jeffrey, but the tradition 'concerning 
 him gives him the highest reputation as an entertain- 
 ing talker. He was not addicted to the telling of 
 anecdotes or "stories," but was "bubbling over with 
 engaging book-lore and poetic hypotheses, and eager 
 to put them into those beautiful shapes of language 
 which come — -as easily as water flows — to his pen or 
 to his tongue. * * * One did not, after conversing 
 with him, recall great special aptness of remark or 
 of epithet, so much as the charmingly even flow of 
 apposite and illustrative language — ^void of all extrav- 
 agances and of all wickednesses too."* His biogra- 
 rapher says of his conversation : "The listener's pleas- 
 ure was enhanced by the personal littleness of the 
 speaker. A larger man could scarcely have thrown 
 off Jeffrey's conversational flowers without exposing 
 
 *Donald G. Mitchell, English Letters and Kings, 93. 
 
74 
 
 himself to ridicule. But the liveliness of the deep 
 thoughts, and the flow of the bright expressions that 
 animated his talk, seemed so natural and appropriate 
 to the figure that uttered them, that they were heard 
 with something of the delight with which the slender- 
 ness of the trembling throat and the quivering of the 
 wings make us enjoy the strength and clearness of the 
 notes of a httle bird/'* This description produces 
 rather a belittling effect, reminding one of a 
 canary bird in a cage, and it may be doubted if the sub- 
 ject of it would have relished it greatly. 
 
 Haydon, writing to Miss Mitford from Edinburgh 
 in 1820, is not as enthusiastic as some others,, and re- 
 marks that "Jeffrey has a singular expression, poignant,, 
 bitter, piercing — as if his countenance never lighted up 
 but at the perception of some weakness in human nature. 
 Whatever^ your praise to Jeffrey, he directly chuckles 
 out some error that you did not perceive. Whatever 
 your praise to Scott, he joins heartily with yourself, 
 and directs your attention to some additional beauty, 
 The face of Scott is the expression of a man whose great; 
 pleasure has been to shake Nature by the hand; while 
 to point at her with his finger, has certainly, from his 
 expression, been the chief enjoyment of Jeffrey."t 
 
 Richard Harris Barham records that Moore spoke 
 of Jeffrey as an excellent judge, and remarked on the 
 difference between his conversation and, that of Scott; 
 Scott was all anecdote, without any intermediate rnat- 
 
 *Lord Cockburn: Life, I, 364. 
 
 IB. R. Haydon and Hjs Friends^, in. 
 
■75 
 
 ter, all fact, while Jeffrey had a. profusion of ideas all 
 worked up into the highest flight of fancy, but no f acbt. 
 Moore preferred Scott's talk, as he got tired of 
 Jeffrey's. ' i 
 
 One reason why different people had opposing opin- 
 I ions in regard to Jeffrey's personality and conversa- 
 tion) is given by Macaulay in the letter to his mother 
 from which a quotation has already bfeen given, — a 
 letter written with the power and vividness of expres- 
 sion which marked not only his published work but 
 even his private correspondence. He said: "I will com- 
 mence with Jeffrey. I had almost forgotten his per- 
 son; and, indeed, I should not wonder if even now I 
 were to forget it again. He has twenty faces, almost 
 as much unlike each other as my father's to Mr. Wil- 
 berf orce's, and infinitely more unlike to each other than 
 those of near relations often are, infinitely more unlike, 
 for ejiample, than those of the two Grants. When abso- 
 lutely quiescent, reading a paper, or hearing a conver- 
 sation in which he takes no interest, his countenance 
 shows no indication whatever of intellectual superiority 
 of anyikind. But as soon as he is interested, and opens 
 his eyes upon you, the change is like magic. There is a 
 flash in his glance, a violent contortion in his frown, 
 an exquisite humor in his sneer, and a sweetness and 
 brilliancy in his smile, beyond anything that I ever 
 witnessed. A person who had seen him in only one 
 state would not know him if he saw him in another. 
 For he has not, like Brougham, marked features which 
 in all moods of mind remain unaltered, The mere out- 
 
76 
 
 line of his face is insignificant. The expression is every- 
 thing, and such power and variety of expression I never 
 saw in any human countenance, not even in that of 
 the most celebrated actors. I can conceive that Garrick 
 may have been like him. I have seen several pictures 
 of Garrick, none resembling another, and I have heard 
 Hannah More speak of the extraordinary variety of 
 countenance by which he was distinguished, and of the 
 unequalled radiance and penetration of his eye. The 
 voice and delivery of Jeffrey resemble his face. He 
 possesses considerable power of mimicry, and rarely 
 tells a story without imitating several different accents. 
 His familiar tone, his declamatory tone, and his 
 pathetic tone are quite different things. Sometimes 
 Scotch predominates in his pronunciation; sometimes 
 it is imperceptible. Sometimes his utterance is snappish 
 and quick to the last degree; sometimes it is remark- 
 able for rotundity and mellowness. I can easily con- 
 ceive that two people who had seen him on different 
 days might dispute about him as the travelers in the 
 fable disputed about the chameleon." 
 
 Mrs. Grant of Laggan, usually styled "the cele- 
 brated," writes of a visit she received from Scott and 
 Jeffrey : "You would think that the body of each was 
 formed to lodge the soul of the other. Jeffrey looks 
 the poet all over : the ardent eye, the nervous agitation, 
 the visibly quick perceptions keep one's attention awake 
 in the expectation of flashes of genius ; nor is that ex- 
 pectation disappointed, for his conversation is in a high 
 degree fluent and animated, Walter Scott has not a 
 
77 
 
 gleam of poetic fire in his countenance, which merely 
 suggests the idea of plain good sense." She confessed 
 that she was unable to refrain from liking "the arch- 
 critic" in spite of his manifold literary offenses. 
 
 Macaulay thought his conversation very much like 
 his countenance and his voice, of immense variety, 
 sometimes plain and unpretending, sometimes brilliant 
 and rhetorical ; a shrewd observer, fastidious, and while 
 not altogether free from affectation himself, having 
 a peculiar loathing for it in other people. "He has a 
 particular contempt" Macaulay adds "in which I most 
 heartily concur with him, for the fadaises of blue- 
 stocking literature, for the mutual flatteries of coteries, 
 the handing about of vers de societe, the albums, the 
 conversaziones, and all the other nauseous trickeries 
 of the Sewards, Hayleys, and Sothebys. I am not 
 quite sure that he has escaped the opposite extreme, 
 and that he is not a little too desirous to appear rather 
 a man of the world, an active lawyer, or an easy, care- 
 less gentleman, than a distinguished writer." Macau- 
 lay thought him to be hypochondriac, but that he was 
 "on the whole, the youngest looking man of fifty that 
 I know, at least when he was animated." In 1828, 
 when this was written, Jeffrey was fifty-five. 
 
 Of his conversation, Hazlitt says in his Spirit of 
 
 the Age : 
 
 "There is no subject on which he is not au fait : no 
 company in which he is not ready to scatter his pearls 
 for sport. * * * His only difficulty seems to be, 
 
78 
 
 not to speak, but to be silent. * * * He is never 
 absurd, nor has he any favorite poirits which he is 
 always bringing forward. It cannot be denied that 
 there is something bordering on petulance of manner, 
 but it is of that least offensive kind whicih may be 
 accounted for from merit and from success, and implies 
 no exclusive pretensions nor the least particle of ill- 
 will to others. On the contrary, Mr. Jeffrey is profuse 
 of his encomiums and admiration of others, but still 
 with a certain reservation of a right to differ or to 
 blame. He cannot rest on one side of a question; he 
 is obliged by a mercurial habit and disposition, to vary 
 his point of view. If he is ever tedious, it is from an 
 excess of liveliness; he oppresses from a sense of airy 
 lightness. He is always setting out on a fresh scent; 
 there are always rdoj.? of topics. * * * New causes 
 are called; he holds a brief in his hand for every possi- 
 ble question. This is a fault. Mr. Jeffrey is not obtru- 
 sive, is not impatient of opposition, is not unwilling 
 to be interrupted; but what is said by another seems 
 to make no impression on him ; he is bound to dispute, 
 to answer it, as if he was in Court, or as if he were in 
 a paltry Debating Society, where youftg beginners 
 were trying their hands. * * * He cannot help 
 cross-examining a witness, or stating the adverse view 
 of the question. He listens not to judge, but to reply. 
 In consequence of this, you can as little tell the impres- 
 sion your observations make on him as what weight 
 to assign to his." 
 
 Most of us have met men who are like Jeffrey in 
 
T9 
 
 these respects ; usually they are the bright, clever, self- 
 centered men, who consider themselves to bei on exhi- 
 bition. In talking with them, one can see at a glance 
 that they are thinking not of what you are, saying to 
 them but of what they will say when you have paused. 
 They are entertaining persons, but not always agree- 
 able in conversation. 
 
 Hazlitt further says: 
 > "Mr. Jeffrey shines in mixed company; he is not 
 good in 2i tete-a-tete. You can only show your wisdom 
 and your wit in general society; but in, private your 
 follies or your weaknesses are not the least interesting 
 topics ; and our critic has neither any of his own to 
 confess, nor does he take delight in hearing those of 
 others. Indeed, in Scotland generally, the display of 
 personal character, the indulging your whims and 
 humors in the presence of a friend is not much encour- 
 aged—every one there is looked upon in the light, of a 
 machine or a collection of topics., *- *> * The ac- 
 complished . and ingenious person of whom we speak, 
 has been a little infected, by the tone of, his countrymen 
 —he is too didactic, too pugnacious, too full of electri- 
 cal shocks, too much like a voltaic battery, and reposes 
 too little on his own excellent good sense, his own love 
 of ease, his cordial frankness of temper and unaffected 
 candor. He ought to have belonged to us !" 
 
 Lockhart is not quite as censorious as Hazlitt is, but 
 then Lockhart had a more amiable disposition. He 
 says, in. "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk'^: ., 
 
 "I have never, I believe, heard so many ideas thrown 
 
80 
 
 out by any man in so short a space of time, and appar- 
 ently with such entire negation of exertion. His con- 
 versation acted upon me like the first delightful hour 
 after taking opium. The thoughts he scattered so 
 readily about him (his words, rapid and wonderfully 
 rapid as they are, appearing to be continually panting 
 after his conceptions) — his thoughts, I say, were at 
 once so striking, and so just, that they took in succession 
 entire possession of my imagination, and yet with so 
 felicitous a tact did he forbear from expressing any one 
 of these too freely, that the reason was always kept in 
 a pleasing kind of excitement, by the endeavor more 
 thoroughly to examine their bearings. * * * j 
 have heard some men display more profoundness of re- 
 flection, and others a much greater command of the 
 conversational picturesque — but I never before wit- 
 nessed anything to be compared with the blending to- 
 gether of apparently little consistent powers in the 
 whole strain of his discourse. Such a power, in the 
 first place, of throwing away at once every useless part 
 of the idea to be discussed, and then such a happy redun- 
 dancy of imagination to present the essential and 
 reserved part in its every possible relation, and point of 
 view,— and all this connected with so much of the plain 
 savoir fake of actual existence, and such a thorough 
 scorn of mystification, it is really a very wonderful in- 
 tellectual coalition." 
 
 In the Reminiscences, Carlyle describes a scene in 
 his own home at Craigenputtoch. "One of the nights 
 there * * * encouraged possibly by the presence 
 
81 
 
 of poor James Anderson, an ingenious, simple, youngish 
 man, and our nearest gentleman neighbor, Jeffrey in 
 the drawing room was cleverer, brighter, and more 
 amusing than I ever saw him elsewhere. We had got to 
 talk of public speaking, of which Jeffrey had plenty to 
 say, and found Anderson and all of us ready enough to 
 hear. Before long he fell into mimicking of public 
 speakers, men unknown, perhaps imaginary generic 
 specimens ; and did it with such a felicity, flowing read- 
 iness, ingenuity, and perfection of imitation as I never 
 saw equalled, and had not given him credit for before. 
 Our cozy little drawing room, bright-shining, hidden 
 in the lowly wilderness, how beautiful it looked to us, 
 become suddenly as it were a Temple of the Muses! 
 The little man strutted about full of electric fire, with 
 attitudes, with gesticulations, still more with winged 
 words, often broken-winged, amid our admiring laugh- 
 ter; gave us the windy, grandiloquent specimen, the 
 ponderous stupid, the airy ditto, various specimens, as 
 the talk, chiefly his own, spontaneously suggested, of 
 which there was a little preparatory interstice between 
 each two. And the mimicry was so complete, you 
 would have said not his mind only, but his very body 
 became the specimens, his face filled with the expres- 
 sion represented, and his little figure seeming to grow 
 gigantic if the personage required it. At length he 
 gave us the abstruse costive specimen, which had a 
 meaning and no utterance for it, but went about clam- 
 bering, stumbling, as on a path of loose bowlders, and 
 ended in total down-break, amid peals of the heartiest 
 
82 
 
 laughter from us all. This of the aerial little sprite 
 standing there in fatal collapse, with the brightest of 
 eyes sternly gazing into utter nothingness and dumb- 
 ness, was one of the most tickling and genially ludicrous 
 things I ever saw, and it prettily winded up our little 
 drama." 
 
 VI. 
 
 Robert Pearse Gillies, that odd, unlucky, obscure 
 aspirant for honor as a poet and an editor, has left in his 
 book of recollections an account of Jeffrey which ex- 
 aggerates certain traits and must have been written 
 as of a time when the "little great man," as Hazlitt 
 calls him, was still young and perhaps a bachelor. He 
 says: 
 
 "Among the public characters who were always 
 to be met with at our balls and routs in those days, out 
 of sight and comparison the most distinguished was 
 Mr. Jeffrey. To every one who appreciated his talents, 
 the wonder was how he could reconcile his mode of life 
 in this respect with his literary and professional en- 
 gagement. But that he did so was very certain. He 
 seemed the gayest of the gay. He was invited every- 
 where, tried to make his appearance everywhere, and 
 on all such occasions his popularity (if possible) in- 
 creased. * * * To all appearances he cared not a 
 rush about habits of consecutive application. No one 
 could guess what portion of his day was appropriated 
 to literary tasks nor indeed could have imagined that he 
 really had any such tasks on hand. In the mornings, 
 from nine till two, he was on parade and professionally 
 
83 
 
 employed in the Parliament House. Thereafter, till 
 dinner time, weather permitting, he walked out or 
 promenaded on horseback. Never did it happen for a 
 single day during the season, that he had not divers 
 invitations both for dinner and evening parties. Of 
 the former, it is needless to say, he could accept only 
 one per diem; but it was quite possible during the even- 
 ing, to migrate from one rout to another, and this he 
 often did, winding up, of course, where the supper 
 party was most attractive and congenial." 
 
 Referring to Dugald Stewart and Sir Walter Scott, 
 their quiet homes and orderly libraries, he continues : 
 
 "Never did any fox-hunter or wild roue trample 
 more disdainfully on all such notions than Mr. Jeffrey ! 
 He had third-rate apartments in a 'land' situated in 
 Queen Street, where exclusive of the necessary law 
 books and the very newest publications, his entire 
 library consisted of a few motley tatterdemalion vol- 
 umes, for all the world likest to a set of worn out school 
 books, and such perhaps they really were. Truly there 
 appeared no great charm in that home to render it an 
 object of attachment and affection. Its arrangements 
 were not symmetrical nor indicated much attention to 
 comfort. The looking-glass over the chimney piece 
 remains yet in my remembrance, because within and 
 under its tarnished frame were located a preposterous 
 multitude of visiting cards and notes of invitation which 
 showered on him from all quarters, 'thick as the leaves 
 in Vallambrosa'." 
 
 Jeffrey did not occupy a "third-rate apartment in 
 
84 
 
 Queen Street" after his marriage, and it is quite ab- 
 surd to found a judgment upon a man's whole Hfe, on 
 a mode of living as a young bachelor. But even Gil- 
 lies, — a little envious — cannot withhold a slight trib- 
 ute of praise. He goes on to say : 
 
 "From all this and other traits which I might ad- 
 duce, who could have imagined that the gay, young 
 barrister was in truth the most adventurous and suc- 
 cessful student in town, the very man of all our Athenian 
 world who was most ready and able to grapple with a 
 difficult question, to torture and twist it by the process 
 of analysis and reasoning, till gleams of light the most 
 unexpected were thrown upon the subject, and who 
 when his reader or hearer thought that no more could 
 possibly be done, would start again de novo, not merely 
 with unabated but increased vivacity, adding more and 
 more of patient argument and brilliant illustration, till 
 at last a so-called essay (alias review) came forth, com- 
 prising materials that might serve as texts for future 
 volumes. 
 
 "This was not comprehensible yet was nevertheless 
 true— when did he elaborate his papers? There was 
 only one way of accounting for it— the old suggestion 
 as applied in the case of Chatterton, that he did not 
 sleep, but could betake himself to work with undimin- 
 ished zeal when the day's work of the world was done. 
 It would be rather too hypothetical to suppose that he 
 possessed a duality of mind, and could persist in ar- 
 ranging silently a critical argument with one, whilst 
 with the other he managed a nonsensical conversation 
 
85 
 
 at the supper table. However, there was one leading 
 peculiarity in Jeffrey's character, which perhaps ren- 
 dered time of some value in his case, that would other- 
 wise have been lost; I mean the grace and alacrity 
 wherewith, if opportunity offered, he could turn ordi- 
 nary conversation to account. If the most commonplace 
 remark was tendered on a subject in itself interesting, 
 he would rapidly reply with an illustration as original 
 as it was unexpected. And if his superficial neighbor 
 luckily ventured to differ from him in opinion, then he 
 would rouse and present the matter in a hundred new 
 lights (if needful) so as to carry his point. And this 
 argument taking its rise, perhaps, from a mere platitude 
 in the course of ordinary table-talk, or during a walk 
 to Corstorphin Hill, might dwell on his remembrance 
 and if committed afterwards to writing, serve for the 
 commencement of a leading article." 
 
 These diffuse and somewhat rambling remarks of 
 Gillies have been given so fully because they afford a 
 portrait of the real Jeffrey as he appeared to his con- 
 temporaries in his younger days, and throw much light 
 on his methods as they were before he attained celebrity 
 outside of the narrow walls of the Scotch "Athens." 
 These methods were never wholly abandoned, and the 
 result has been that what he wrote often conveys an 
 impression that he has not penetrated to the core of his 
 subject, but is playing around and about it with no 
 settled convictions and no wish to have any such con- 
 victions concerning it. Naturally writings of this kind 
 
86 
 
 have no permanence of interest, and soon become part 
 of the lumber of the past, read only by some curious 
 burrower in literary history. But the man, Jeffrey, 
 will be read of and remembered although his once- 
 dreaded reviews may have gone the way of most of the 
 ephemeral pages of the magazine. 
 
 Hazlitt certainly knew him well, and had abundant 
 occasion to experience the benefit of his generous 
 friendship. In the Spirit of the Age, Hazlitt further 
 says of him: 
 
 "The severest of critics, as he has been sometimes 
 termed, is the best natured of men. Whatever there 
 may be of wavering or indecision in Mr. Jefifrey's rea- 
 soning, or of harshness in his critical decisions, in his 
 disposition there is nothing but simplicity and kindness. 
 He is a person that no one knows without esteeming, 
 and who both in his public connections and private 
 friendships, shows the same manly uprightness and 
 unbiassed independence of spirit. At a distance, in his 
 writings, or even in his manner, there may be some- 
 thing to excite a little uneasiness and apprehension; in 
 his conduct, there is nothing to except against. He is 
 a person of strict integrity himself, without pretence or 
 affectation; and knows how to respect this quality in 
 others, without prudery or intolerance. He can cen- 
 sure a friend or a stranger, and serve him effectually 
 at the same time. He expresses his disapprobation, but 
 not as an excuse for closing up the avenues of his lib- 
 erality. He is a Scotchman without one particle of 
 hypocrisy, of cant, of servility, or selfishness in his 
 
87 
 
 composition. He has not been spoiled by fortune — ^has 
 not been tempted by power — is firm without violence, 
 friendly without weakness — a critic and even-tempered, 
 a casuist and an honest man — and amidst the toils of 
 his profession and the distractions of the world, retains 
 the gayety, the unpretending carelessness, and sim- 
 plicity of youth." 
 
 In Macvey Napier's Correspondence (London, 
 1879) he quotes Macaulay as saying, in 1843: 
 
 "When I compare him with Sydney and myself, I 
 feel, with humility perfectly sincere, that his range is 
 immeasurably wider than ours. And this is only as a 
 writer. But he is not only a writer ; he has been a great 
 advocate, and he is a great judge. Take him all in all, 
 I think him more nearly an universal genius than any 
 man of our time. * * * Jeffrey has tried nothing 
 in which he has not succeeded, except Parliamentary 
 speaking ; and there he obtained what to any other man 
 would have been great success, and disappointed his 
 hearers only because their expectations were extrav- 
 agant." 
 
 Doctor John Brown, in Horce Suhsecivos, speaks 
 of "Jeffrey, whom flattery, success, and himself cannot 
 spoil, or taint that sweet, generous nature — keen, in- 
 stant, unsparing, and true as a rapier ; the most pains- 
 taking and honest working of all clever men." 
 
 VII. 
 
 We have observed that in his earlier years at the 
 bar he had but little practice. His lack of early sue- 
 
88 
 
 cess has been ascribed partly to his Whig opinions; but 
 they could not have done him any serious harm. It 
 has also been said to be due to the general prejudice 
 against literary lawyers. This prejudice may have had 
 something to do with it ; for clients are inclined to be- 
 lieve that their lawyer should not think of anything but 
 their affairs and their cases and resent devotion to any 
 shrines but their own. The law is proverbially a jealous 
 mistress, but clients are even more jealous masters. 
 When a man has won a reputation as a lawyer he may 
 perhaps by way of digression, a holiday excursion, dab- 
 ble in literature; but not till then. If he makes a busi- 
 ness of literary work, he must give up hope of eminence 
 in the field of jurisprudence. After he has gained a 
 name in his profession, his dabblings are never regard- 
 ed seriously. Still, Jeffrey began to rise as a lawyer after 
 he became known as an editor and a reviewer. He was 
 at his best before juries, as may well be supposed, for 
 jurymen care very little about profundities and a good 
 deal about things that shine brightly on the surface. 
 The Monthly Magazine said of him, as a lawyer : 
 "When once he had made himself master of a case 
 and its bearings, he was always ready to debate it, even 
 at a moment's warning, however heterogeneous the 
 subject to which he had been tasking his faculties the 
 moment before. This might be owing to a habit which 
 he had in previous conversations with the party or his 
 agent, to ply them with all the arguments that could 
 be brought against them. Often have we known an 
 honest countryman, perplexed by his objections, re- 
 
monstrate with his attorney for having encouraged 
 him to proceed with a hopeless case, or for hav- 
 ing employed a pleader of so desponding a tempera- 
 ment; and immediately thereafter have we seen his 
 honest face grow momentarily broader and broader, 
 brighter and brighter, as Jeffrey, on stepping to the bar, 
 proceeded to demonstrate his right in a train of the 
 closest and most irrefragable reasoning." 
 
 One is amused and not displeased at the fact that, 
 as he found trouble in adjusting his forensic wig over 
 his black, bushy hair, he never wore it in court and was 
 for many years the only lawyer at the Scottish bar who 
 dared to dispense with that ornament. Despite this de- 
 fiance of professional custom, he became a leader in the 
 courts. He did excellent work in the trial of Maclaren 
 and Bird for sedition in 1817, and again in sedition 
 cases at Stirling in 1820, although he lost his causes. 
 In 1 82 1 he was made Lord Rector of the University of 
 Glasgow. When the Whigs came into power in 1830 
 he was made Lord Advocate. Carlyle writes in his 
 Note Book about that time : "Jeffrey is Lord Advocate 
 and M. P. Sobbed and shrieked at taking office, like 
 a bride going to be married." He may have shown 
 some emotion but his cross-grained friend, who was 
 given to thinking and writing in italics and with over- 
 abundant exclamation points, probably exaggerated it. 
 Jeffrey resigned his deanship and he set to work to get 
 the necessary seat in Parliament. Cockburn notes that 
 the income of his new office was about £3000 a year, but 
 between December, 1830 and May, 1832, he spent 
 
90 
 
 about f 10,000 in parliamentary contests. Elected for 
 the Forfarshire burghs, he lost his seat through some 
 defect in the proceedings, and was then chosen, April 
 6, 183 1, for Malton. He failed of election for Edin- 
 burgh and was in June again elected for Malton. After 
 the Reform Bill was passed he stood again for Edin- 
 burgh, and was elected December 19, 1832. He did 
 not achieve much success in Parliament, for he began 
 too late. He was never an orator, although in what 
 he said he was "always clean-cut, sensible, picturesque, 
 flowing smoothly, but rather on the surface of things 
 than into their depths." Mackintosh* spoke favorably 
 of the speech on reform which he delivered on March 
 4, 1 83 1, and it was published "at the special request of 
 government." He made other speeches which were 
 well regarded, but they were rather essays than 
 speeches. 
 
 Brougham in his Memoirs says, however : 
 "It was the custom to say he had failed in Parlia- 
 ment. I recollect meeting Sir Robert Peel the night he 
 made his first speech ; and in answer to my inquiry as to 
 its success, he said that Jeffrey had fired over their 
 heads, and was too clever for his audience." If one 
 may judge of the House of Commons of that day by 
 the House of the present, it could not have been diffi- 
 cult to accomplish that feat. 
 
 He was hampered by a distressing infirmity, suffer- 
 ing greatly from an affection of the trachea, and was 
 obliged to undergo an operation in October, 1831. He 
 
 *Memoirs, ii : 479. 
 
91 
 
 grew weary of his tasks, and while he preserved his 
 good temper and conciliatory ways, he found much of 
 the work quite distasteful, 
 
 Hazlitt in his Spirit of the Age gives a description 
 of Jeffrey's style of speaking. He says : 
 
 "He makes fewer blots in addressing an audience 
 than any one we remember to have heard. There is not 
 a hairbreadth space between any two of his words, 
 nor is there a single expression either ill-chosen or out 
 of place. He speaks without stopping to take breath, 
 with ease, with point, with elegance, and without 'spin- 
 ning the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of 
 his argument.' He may be said to weave words into any 
 shapes he pleases for use or ornament, as the glass- 
 blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath, and his 
 sentences shine like glass from their polished smooth- 
 ness, and are equally transparent. * * * When- 
 ever the Scotch advocate has appeared at the bar of the 
 English House of Lords, he has been admired by those 
 who were in the habit of attending to speeches there, 
 as having the greatest fluency of language and the 
 greatest subtlety of distinction of any one of the pro- 
 fession. The law-reporters were as little able to follow 
 him from the extreme rapidity of his utterance as from 
 the tenuity and evanescent nature of his reasoning." 
 
 The article in the New Monthly Magazine, (1831), 
 
 says: 
 
 "His delivery is not commanding — that, his figure 
 forbids — but it is fascinating. He rises, settles his 
 gown about his shoulders, and commences in a low tone 
 
92 
 
 of voice. For the first two or three sentences, he seems 
 beating about for ideas — words there are plenty. But 
 he soon comes upon the track. With the side of his 
 face turned towards the person or persons he is ad- 
 dressing, he fixes his serpent eye upon them and holds 
 them fast. At one time he leans forward and speaks in 
 tones as harsh as the grating of an earthenware plate 
 upon a working grindstone; again he stands erect, or 
 even casts himself backward, and without any sensible 
 motion of his lips, emits a continuous stream of most 
 melodious voice." 
 
 Lockhart in Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, (1819), 
 remarks of Jeffrey's oratory: 
 
 "I have told you in a former letter that his pronun- 
 ciation is wretched — it is a mixture of provincial Eng- 
 lish, with undignified Scotch, altogether snappish and 
 offensive, and which would be quite sufficient to render 
 the elocution of a more ordinary man utterly disgust- 
 ing ; but the flow of his eloquence is so overpoweringly 
 rapid, so unweariedly energetic, so entirely unlike 
 every other man's mode of speaking, that the pronunci- 
 ation of the particular words is quite lost to one's view, 
 in the midst of that continual effort which is required, 
 in order to make the understanding, even the ear of the 
 listener, keep pace with the glowing velocity of the 
 declamation. His words come more profusely than 
 words ever came before, and yet it seems as if they were 
 quite unable to follow, passihus cequis, the still more 
 amazing speed of his thought. You sit, while minute 
 follows minute uncounted and unheeded, in a state 
 
93 
 
 of painful excitation, as if you were in a room over- 
 lighted with gas, or close under the crash of a whole 
 pealing orchestra. 
 
 "This astonishing fluency and vivacity, if possessed 
 by a person of very inferior talents, might for a little be 
 sufficient to create an illusion in his favor ; and I have 
 heard that such things have been. But the more you 
 can overcome the effect of Mr. Jeffrey's dazzling rapid- 
 ity, and concentrate your attention on the ideas em- 
 bodied with such supernatural facility, the greater will 
 be your admiration. It is impossible to conceive the 
 existence of a more fertile, teeming intellect. The flood 
 of his illustration seems to be at all times rioting up to 
 the very brim — yet he commands and restrains it with 
 equal strength and skill; or, if it does boil over for a 
 moment, it spreads such a richness all around, that it 
 is impossible to find fault with its extravagance. * * * 
 If he be not the most delightful, he is certainly by far 
 the most wonderful of speakers." 
 
 James Grant, in Random Recollections, referring 
 to Jeffrey's first speech in Parliament, 1831, says: 
 
 "The amazing rapidity of his delivery operated 
 much against the speech. I think I never heard a per- 
 son, either in or out of the House, speak so fast as he did 
 on that occasion. The most experienced short-hand 
 reporters were unable to follow him. * * * Yet, 
 notwithstanding the rapidity with which Mr. Jeffrey 
 spoke on this occasion, he never so much as faltered 
 once, nor recalled a word which he uttered to substi- 
 tute one more suitable for it. His manner * * * 
 
94 
 
 was graceful, but it wanted variety. His voice was clear 
 and pleasant ; but it had no flexibility in its intonations. 
 He continued and ended in much the same tones as he 
 began. The same monotony characterized his gesticu- 
 lation." 
 
 vni. 
 
 Glad to be relieved of parliamentary drudgery, he 
 became a Lord of the Sessions in May, 1834, and after 
 a farewell dinner had been given to him by the Scot- 
 tish members, he assumed his judicial seat on June 7, 
 1834, and thus acquired his title of "Lord Jeffrey," for 
 he never reached the peerage. He usually passed his 
 winters in Edinburgh, and his summers at Craigcrook, 
 visiting London in the spring. In the summers he oc- 
 cupied himself in his garden and in reading. Sir Leslie 
 Stephen says: "He was a sloven in regard to books, 
 and had a 'wretched collection,' though in a 'moment of 
 infirmity' he joined the Bannatyne Club in 1826. He 
 had been one of the founders of the 'Friday Club,' in 
 1803, which endured for more than thirty years." As 
 a judge he gave great satisfaction, showing the same 
 qualities of tact, quickness and accuracy which marked 
 his career at the bar and in the world of letters. In 
 1841 he had a serious illness, from the effects of which 
 he never entirely recovered. In November, 1842, he 
 became a member of the first division of the court, 
 where he had three associates and where the opinions 
 were oral. Cockburn asserts that he was singularly 
 patient, painstaking and candid. His fault was over- 
 
95 
 
 volubility and mutability, which led him to interpose 
 a 'running margin of questions, suppositions and com- 
 ments' throughout the argument. But his urbanity and 
 openness of mind made him exceedingly popular, es- 
 pecially with the bar.* Some men are so constituted 
 mentally that they are unable to comprehend an argu- 
 ment except by interrupting the counsel and satisfying 
 themselves as the hearing proceeds, in regard to the 
 questions which occur to them at the moment. Such 
 judges annoy and disconcert lawyers, because they dis- 
 turb the orderly sequence of the argument and their 
 fidgety queries bring about a sort of medley, without 
 form or shape, instead of a well-arranged presentation 
 of the subject under consideration. In this way time 
 is often wasted and real injustice done. All sound law- 
 yers welcome questions by the court arising naturally 
 out of the particular matter with which they may hap- 
 pen to be dealing, but it is otherwise when a nimble 
 minded, restless judge insists upon darting from the 
 point immediately under consideration to some remote 
 field, which is to be entered upon later. The judge who 
 talks too much is as unsatisfactory as the one who never 
 opens his lips and listens with blank stolidity. Jeffrey's 
 personal charm, however, endeared him to all who prac- 
 tised before him. 
 
 Many of his contemporaries dwell upon his person- 
 ality, his appearance, and his manners. The author of 
 
 ♦Dictionary of National Biography, xxix, 275. 
 
96 
 
 the paper in the New Monthly Magazine (1831), to 
 which reference has been made, thus describes him : 
 
 "He is of low stature, but his figure is elegant and 
 well proportioned. This he seems to be aware of from 
 the assiduity with which he takes care that his little per- 
 sonage shall always be set out to the best advantage. 
 The continually varying expression of his countenance 
 renders it impossible to say what his features are. * * * 
 The face is rather elongated, the chin deficient, the 
 mouth well-formed, with a mingled expression of de- 
 termination, sentiment and arch-mockery; the nose is 
 slightly curved. * * * The brow never presents 
 the same appearance for two moments successively; 
 it is now smooth and unfurrowed, lofty and vaulted; 
 look again, and the skin is contracted upwards into a 
 thousand parallel wrinkles, offering the semblance of a 
 'forehead villainous low'. The eye is the most peculiar 
 feature of the countenance; it is large and sparkling, 
 but with a want of transparency that gives it the ap- 
 pearance of a heartless enigma." 
 
 Lockhart says of him, in Peter's Letters to his Kins- 
 folk: 
 
 "It is a face which any man would pass without ob- 
 servation in a crowd, because it is small and swarthy, 
 and entirely devoid of lofty or commanding outlines — 
 and besides, his stature is so low, that he might walk 
 close under your chin or mine without ever catching the 
 eye even for a moment. 
 
 "Mr. Jeffrey * * * is a very active-looking 
 man, with an appearance of extraordinary vivacity in 
 
97 
 
 all his motions and gestures. His face is one which 
 cannot be understood at a single look — perhaps it re- 
 quires, as it certainly invites, a long and anxious scru- 
 tiny before it lays itself open to the gazer. The features 
 are neither handsome, nor even very defined in their 
 outlines ; and yet the effect of the whole is as striking 
 as any arrangement either of more noble or more 
 marked features, which ever came under my view. The 
 forehead is very singularly shaped, describing in its 
 bend from side to side a larger segment of a circle than 
 is at all common ; compressed below the temples almost 
 as much as Sterne's; and throwing out sinuses above 
 the eyes, of an extremely bold and compact structure. 
 The hair is very black and wiry, standing in ragged, 
 bristly clumps out from the upper part of his head, but 
 lying close and firm lower down, especially about the 
 ears. Altogether, it is picturesque, and adds to the 
 effect of the visage. The mouth is the most expressive 
 part of his face. The lips are very fine, but they tremble 
 and vibrate, even when brought close together, in such 
 a way as to give the idea of an intense, never-ceasing 
 play of mind. There is a delicate kind of sneer almost 
 always upon them, which has not the least appearance 
 of ill-temper about it, but seems to belong entirely to 
 the speculative understanding of the man. 
 
 "I have said that the mouth is the most expressive 
 part of his face — and, in one sense, this is the truth, for 
 it is certainly the seat of all its rapid and transitory ex- 
 pression. But what speaking things are his eyes ! They 
 disdain to be agitated by those lesser emotions which 
 
98 
 
 pass over the lips; they reserve their fierce and dark 
 energies for matters of more moment; once kindled with 
 the heat of any passion, how they beam, flash upon 
 flash! The scintillation of a star is not more fervid. 
 Perhaps, notwithstanding this, their repose is even 
 more worthy of attention. With the capacity of emit- 
 ting such a flood of radiance, they seem to take a 
 pleasure in banishing every ray from their black, in- 
 scrutable, glazed, tarn-like circles. I think their pre- 
 vailing language is, after all, rather a melancholy than 
 a merry one — it is, at least, very full of reflection. Such 
 is a faint outline of this countenance, the features of 
 which (to say nothing at all of their expression), have, 
 as yet, baflled every attempt of the portrait painters. 
 * * * A sharp, and at the same time, very deep- 
 toned voice — a very bad pronunciation, but accompa- 
 nied with very little of the Scotch accent — a light and 
 careless manner exchanged now and then for an infinite 
 variety of more earnest expression and address — this 
 is as much as I could carry away from my first visit." 
 Dr. John Brown in his Horce SuhsecivcB (Third 
 Series, Edinburgh, 1882) said of Jeffrey's mouth that 
 it was "mobile and yet firm, arch, and kind, with a 
 beautiful procacity or petulance about it, that you 
 would not like absent in him, or present in any one else." 
 Robert Tomes in My College Days writes of him : 
 "I often peeped through the green curtain which 
 hung before his contracted judicial shell, and watched 
 the wondrous little man unravelling, in his quick, im- 
 patient way, the tangle of Scotch law. His restless per- 
 
99 
 
 son was in a state of perpetual movement; his eyes 
 turning here, there, and everywhere; his features at 
 constant play ; his forehead rippling in quick successive 
 wrinkles as if trying to throw off his close-fitting judi- 
 cial wig, which seemed to grasp his diminutive head 
 painfully, almost down to his eyebrows, and with its 
 great stiff curls of white horse-hair heavily to oppress 
 him with its weight. His arms, too, he was ever moving 
 with an uneasy action, as if he would rid himself of the 
 incumbrance of his official robe of scarlet, which cov- 
 ered his shoulders, and hung in loose folds from his 
 neck to his wrists." 
 
 Carlyle in his Reminiscences gives a vivid pen-pic- 
 ture of him, as he was apt to do when he dealt with 
 those who interested him: 
 
 "A delicate, attractive, dainty little figure as h^ 
 merely walked about, much more if he were speaking, 
 uncommonly bright black eyes, instinct with vivacity, 
 intelligence, and kindly fire; round brow, delicate oval 
 face full of rapid expression, figure light, nimble, 
 pretty though so small, perhaps hardly five feet in 
 height. He had his gown, almost never any wig, wore 
 his black hair rather closely cropt ; I have seen the back 
 part of it jerk suddenly out in some of the rapid ex- 
 pressions of his face, and knew even if behind him that 
 his brow was then puckered, and his eyes looking arch- 
 ly, half contemptuously out, in conformity to some con- 
 clusive little cut his tongue was giving." 
 
 E^lsewhere Carlyle says : 
 
 "His accent was * * * singular, but it was by 
 
100 
 
 no means Scotch; at his first going to Oxford (where 
 he did not stay long) he had peremptorily crushed 
 down his Scotch (which he privately had in store in 
 excellent condition to the very end of his life, producible 
 with highly ludicrous effect on occasion), and adopted 
 instead a strange, swift, sharp-sounding, fitful modu- 
 lation, part of it pungent, quasi-labrant, other parts 
 of it cooing, bantery, lovingly quizzical, which no 
 charms of his fine ringing voice (metallic tenor of sweet 
 tone), and of his vivacious rapid looks, and pretty little 
 attitudes and gestures, could not altogether reconcile 
 you to, but in which he persisted through good report 
 and bad. Old Braxey (Macqueen, Lord Braxfield), a 
 sad old cynic, on whom Jeffrey used to set one laugh- 
 ing often enough, was commonly reported to have said, 
 on hearing Jeffrey again after that Oxford sojourn, 
 'The laddie has clean tint his Scotch, and found nae 
 English!' which was an exaggerative reading of the 
 fact, his words and syllables being elaborately Eng- 
 lish (or English and more, e. g., 'heppy,' 'my lud,' 
 etc., etc.), while the tune he sang them to was all his 
 
 own." 
 
 "His voice," says Carlyle, "clear, harmonious, and 
 sonorous, had something of metallic in it, something 
 almost plangent ; never rose into alt, into any dissonance 
 or shrillness, nor carried much the character of humor, 
 though a fine feeling of the ludicrous always dwelt in 
 him, as you would notice best when he got into Scotch 
 dialect, and gave you, with admirable truth of mimicry, 
 old Edinburgh incidents and experiences of his. * * * 
 
101 
 
 His laugh was small and by no means Homeric; he 
 never laughed loud (could not do it I should think), 
 and indeed often sniggered slightly than laughed in 
 any way." 
 
 Lord Cockburn is almost interesting in his descrip- 
 tion of the voice: 
 
 "His voice was distinct and silvery; so clear and 
 precise that when in good order, it was heard above 
 a world of discordant sounds. The utterance was 
 excessively rapid; but without spluttering, slurring, 
 or confusion; and regulated into deliberate emphasis, 
 whenever this was proper. The velocity of the cur- 
 rent was not more remarkable than its purity and 
 richness. His command of language was unlimited." 
 
 Charles Pebody, in the Gentleman's Magazine, 
 June, 1870, writes : 
 
 "He never took up his pen till the candles were lit. 
 * * * He did most of his work in those fatal hours 
 of inspiration from ten at night till two or three o'clock 
 in the morning. * * * His manuscript was inex- 
 pressibly vile ; for he wrote with great haste, * * * 
 generally used a wretched pen, * * * and altered, 
 erased, and interlined without the slightest thought 
 of the printer or his correspondent. * * * The 
 explanation is, of course, the usual one with men of 
 Jeffrey's temperament and genius. He had a horror 
 and hatred of the work of the desk. * * * His 
 favorite hours of reading were in the morning and in 
 bed, unless he had to deal with a subject of peculiar 
 dignity, and in that case he read it up * * =•" at 
 
102 
 
 night ; for he had a notion that hints and suggestions, 
 facts and thoughts, illustrations and authorities, picked 
 up promiscuously over-night, assorted themselves in 
 sleep round their proper centres, and thus reappeared 
 in the morning in logical order." 
 
 Samuel Carter Hall, that diffuse, conceited and 
 prosy hanger-on upon the outskirts of literature, 
 seems to have forgotten his usual good-nature — which 
 alone renders him endurable — in his observations about 
 Jeffrey, but he admits that he did not know him very 
 well. "The far-famed editor of the Edinburgh Re- 
 view," Mr. Hall remarks, "had a few friends — firm 
 and staunch and loving friends, and very many foes. 
 Some of them he wilfully and wantonly made so ; others 
 he did not understand, and therefore misrepresented; 
 others he rightly and conscientiously condemned, and 
 soured into bitter and irrational hostility." He fur- 
 ther says: "No doubt he was a bitter, caustic and 
 often unjust critic ; and during his long career of power 
 there were not many cases wherein he exhibited gen- 
 erosity and consideration, or that far-seeing intelligence 
 which can anticipate and augur good as well as bad 
 in the authors tried at his tribunal." Jeffrey must at 
 some time have treated Mr. Hall as the humbug he 
 really was ; the assertion that he had "a few friends" 
 is absurdly inane and groundless; but then Hall was 
 a fat-headed person, whose attempts to identify him- 
 self with the great men whom he happened to meet in 
 a long life of pottering about literature and art have 
 
103 
 
 not sufficed to preserve his name in the memory of 
 posterity. 
 
 IX. 
 
 All — or nearly all — those who have left their testi- 
 mony concerning him have dwelt upon his gentle and 
 kindly nature. It is true that Lockhart, who naturally 
 could not lose an opportunity of exalting Scott, quotes 
 from a letter this quite ill-natured comparison : "J^^rey 
 for the most part entertained us, when books were 
 under discussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, 
 absurdities, or plagiarisms. Scott took up the matter 
 where he left it, recalled some compensating beauty or 
 excellence for which no credit had been allowed, and 
 by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine stanza, set the 
 poor victim on his legs again." The obvious implica- 
 tion is, that a poet — 'for it is plain that they were talk- 
 ing of poetry — may blunder, steal and be as absurd 
 as he likes, but no one may speak of it if he has hap- 
 pened to write "one fine stanza." 
 
 One trait he possessed which many will accept as 
 competent evidence of his sweetness of disposition, 
 despite his occasional worrying of poor poets — his 
 fondness for animals. Lord Cockburn says: "The 
 only friend, besides his wife, daughter, and servants, 
 that he took with him (to London) was one he often 
 mentions, Toor Poll,' a gray and very wise parrot. 
 He was attached to all that sort of domestic compan- 
 ions, and submitted to much taunts on account of the 
 soft travelling-basket for the little dog, 'Witch,' and 
 
104 
 
 the large cage for this bird. The hearth rug and the 
 sofa were seldom free of his dumb pets." 
 
 He failed perceptibly about ten years before his 
 death- In one of his charming letters to Miss Berry, 
 given in her "Journal," he writes (1842): "Though 
 the trachea is at this moment my most urgent malady, 
 the most obstinate and formidable is in another quarter, 
 and one with which you are unfortunately but too well 
 acquainted. You and I should be in a very tolerable 
 condition if it were not for that frigidus circum prcBCor- 
 dia sanguis, though I confess I should scarcely have 
 expected that our hearts should be the first things that 
 failed about Us, and (privately) take it rather amiss."* 
 
 Although his health declined, he did not become 
 morose or discouraged, but he maintained his interest 
 in books and his fondness for his family while continu- 
 ing his judicial labors almost without intermission. 
 Stephen refers to "his kindly old age, when he could 
 hardly have spoken sharply of a L,ake poet." He was 
 especially fond of Dickens, and his letters of apprecia- 
 tion are enthusiastic ; he wept over Little Nell and Paul 
 Dombey; and the son-in-law of Thackeray, while say- 
 ing with what seems to be unnecessary contemptuous- 
 ness that "the emotion is a little senile," admits that 
 at least it was genuine. He revised the proof sheets of 
 the first two volumes of Macaulay's History, priding 
 himself greatly upon his accuracy in the matter of 
 punctuation. Hugh Miller, in his Bssays (1862) re- 
 
 *Miss Berry's Journal (1865), iii. 475- 
 
105 
 
 fers to his remarkable energy when he was approach- 
 ing the end. "All accounts agree," says Miller, "in 
 representing him as in private life one of the kindest 
 and gentlest of mortals, ever surrounded by the aroma 
 of a delicate sense of honor and a transparent truthful- 
 ness, equable in temper, in conversation full of a play- 
 ful ease, and, with even his ordinary talk, ever glitter- 
 ing in an unpremeditated wit 'that loved to play, not 
 wound.' Never was there a man more thoroughly 
 beloved by his friends. Though his term of life 
 exceeded the allotted three score and ten years, his 
 fine intellect * * * ^as to the last untouched by 
 decay. Only four days previous to that of his death 
 he sat upon the bench ; only a few months ago he fin- 
 nished an article for his old Review distinguished 
 by all the nice discernment and acumen of his most 
 vigorous days. It is further gratifying to know, that 
 though infected in youth and middle age by the wide- 
 spread infidelity of the first French revolution, he was 
 for at least the last few years of his life of a different 
 spirit. He read much and often in his Bible; and he 
 is said to have studied especially, and with much solici- 
 tude, the writings of St. Paul." 
 
 His death occurred at Craigcrook, on Jan- 
 uary 26, 1850. Empson, who married Jeffrey's only 
 daughter, Chaflotte, in 1838, and who succeeded 
 Napier as editor of the Edinburgh in 1847, wrote 
 on the 28th to Samuel Rogers: "A three 
 days' illness, apparently slight in its causes and symp- 
 toms, deprived us, at six o'clock, on Saturday evening. 
 
106 
 
 of our dear friend. Millar was not alarmed, nor Christi- 
 son, until four and twenty hours before his death. He 
 suffered no pain, but from the sense of increasing weak- 
 ness. Wine and brandy (he took nothing else) had 
 no effect on his pulse or system. What there was of 
 illness was a feverish cold, accompanied by a slight 
 bronchial cough." It was simply a case of the wear- 
 ing out of the heart. On the 31st he was buried in the 
 Dean Cemetery near Edinburgh. 
 
 Walter Bagehot's article in the National Review 
 of October, 1855, on "The First Edinburgh Review- 
 ers," presents a pleasant, kindly, and discriminating 
 opinion in regard to Jeffrey. Referring to his literary 
 work, he says: "Any one who should expect to find 
 a pure perfection in these miscellaneous productions 
 should remember their bulk. If all his reviews were 
 reprinted they would be very many. And all the while 
 he was a busy lawyer, was editor of the Review, did the 
 business, corrected the proof sheets; and more than 
 all — what one would have thought a very strong man's 
 work — actually managed Henry Brougham. You 
 must not criticise papers like these, rapidly written 
 in the hurry of life, as you would the painful words 
 of an elaborate sage, slowly and with anxious careful- 
 ness instructing mankind. * * * He was neither 
 a pathetic writer nor a profound writer; but he was 
 a quick-eyed, bustling, black-haired, sagacious, agree- 
 able man of the world. He had his day, and was 
 entitled to his day; but a gentle oblivion must now 
 cover his already subsiding reputation." Does not the 
 
107 
 
 same "gentle oblivion" cover the reputation of all writ- 
 ers who are not great creators ? 
 
 Sir L,eslie Stephen, in the National Dictionary of 
 Biography, presents a fair and scholarly estimate of 
 the career and the character of Jeffrey, and writing 
 a generation after the Bagehot review, seems to give 
 to the critic and lawyer a rank somewhat higher than 
 Bagehot is inclined to bestow. "If he had been less 
 afraid of making blunders," Stephen remarks, "and 
 trusted his natural instincts, he would have left a more 
 permanent reputation, and achieved a less negative 
 result." 
 
 Dr. Winchester is not too partial to Jeffrey, but 
 he closes his discussion of the merits of the reviewer 
 with some words of commendation. "In briefest sum- 
 mary, then," he says, "we may admit that to Jeffrey, 
 rather than to any other man, may be given the credit 
 of raising the critical essay to the rank of a recognized 
 literary form; that his writing is always brilliant and 
 plausible, that his critical verdicts are always clear, and 
 if upon matters within the range of his appreciation, 
 sensible and just. On the other hand, it must also be 
 admitted that his range of appreciation is limited; that 
 his impressions are often worth more than the dogmas 
 he invents to justify them; and that a considerable part 
 of his fame was due to the immense and novel popu- 
 larity of the Review, which raised him for a time to 
 literary dictatorship almost like that of Dryden or 
 Johnson." 
 
108 
 
 It has been charged against him that he was with- 
 out enthusiasm in his politics, despondent, pessimistic; 
 prone to alarm for his country and for the interests of 
 the landed proprietors ; that he was indififerent to the 
 development of new forces ; that he belonged to a class 
 of men who "detest enthusiasm wherever it may be 
 found" and are antagonistic to "every great impulse 
 of the kind that leads men to self-sacrifice and to won- 
 der, or to a new world of ideal creation." These be 
 brave words, full of sound and of the frothy order 
 which captivates so many shallow minds. Jeffrey was 
 a Whig, and it is amusing to learn from one source 
 that his radical views hampered his early life as a law- 
 yer and from another that he was so ultra-conserva- 
 tive as to entertain some regard and respect for the 
 rights of property. It is conceded that he was an 
 advocate of reform in the criminal laws, the game 
 laws, the anti-Catholic laws, the abuses of Chancery, 
 and the evils of colonial slavery. Yet because he was 
 unwilling to throw up his cap wildly in acclaiming 
 every scheme devised by unscrupulous agitators for 
 the universal betterment of mankind — and incidentally 
 for their own personal advancement and aggrandise- 
 ment — ^he is called "pessimistic," and "aristocratic." 
 His clear vision foresaw the coming of a time when the 
 majority of men, possessing the maximum of all the 
 meaner qualities of man, would awake to a sense of 
 their power and under the guise of a pretended zeal for 
 the improvement of the race and its conditions, would 
 seek to appropriate for the benefit of the lazy, vicious 
 
109 
 
 and unthrifty, the rewards of integrity, intelligence, 
 and industry. If he was opposed to "the doctrine of 
 equality and every form of socialism," it was not be- 
 cause he was aristocratic, in the ordinary meaning of 
 the term, but because not deceived by false prophets 
 and because he knew that the errors and faults of hu- 
 manity cannot be eradicated by empty talk about the 
 brotherhood of man and his indefinite perfectibility. 
 He had no fondness for that equality which is secured 
 by pulling down instead of by uplifting. 
 
 On the whole, it may be said of him that he was 
 an accomplished man; whose resources were always 
 fully at his command; possessing no great inventive 
 force, but a charm of speech and manner which en- 
 abled him to exercise over those whom he met, what 
 is popularly known as personal magnetism; too fas- 
 tidious, perhaps, in many of his tastes, but endowed 
 with a capacity of literary judgment usually just if not 
 always infallible. He distrusted his own ability to give 
 to the world a book that would survive him; his critical 
 faculties had been cultivated at the expense of the cre- 
 ative faculty. A reviewer of the work of others, he 
 would have reviewed his own with like fearlessness 
 and discrimination. He did not choose to subject him- 
 self to the later sneer of Disraeli and furnish another 
 example of a critic who failed in literature. So we 
 must seek his monument in the faded pages of the 
 Bdinburgh Review. 
 
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