C09 



JEFFREY, FRANCIS. 



JEFFREY, FRANCIS. 



610 



Robert Burns ! " Jeffrey never saw Burns again ; but he used to 

 dwell with pleasure on the incident. 



In the winter of 1787, Jeffrey (his mother being then just dead) was 

 sent to the University of Glasgow; his father for some reason or other 

 preferring that university to the University of Edinburgh. Here he 

 attended the Greek classes under Young, the logic class under Jurdiue 

 (then recently appointed, but already with something of that reputa- 

 tion as a teacher which he afterwards maintained and increased), and 

 the moral philosophy class, then taught by a Professor Arthur, the 

 successor of the philosopher Reid. That he did not also attend the 

 law class, then taught by the able and speculative Millar, is accounted 

 for by the fact that his father, who was a strict and rather gloomy 

 man, was a bigoted Tory, and likely to regard the teaching of a Whig 

 like Millar with suspicion. Jeffrey's class-fellows at Glasgow remem- 

 bered him afterwards as being there one of the cleverest of the 

 younger students, somewhat " petulant " in his manners, and conspicu- 

 ous for a little black moustache which he persisted in wearing on his 

 upper lip in spite of remonstrance and ridicule. It was in the 

 debating societies of the college however that he first broke on his 

 companions of that day in the full display of his superiority. He 

 was even then a fluent and rapid speaker, a ready and ingenious writer, 

 and a merciless critic of the essays and opinions of others. It was at 

 this time also that he commenced the habit of serious and versatile 

 reading, and of note-taking and essay-writing for the purposes of 

 private culture. This habit he kept up assiduously after his renjoval 

 from Glasgow back to Edinburgh in the year 1789. In his little room 

 in his father's house in the La'wnmarket, he read and wrote conti- 

 nually, filling quires of manuscript with notes and abstracts from books 

 and miscellaneous dissertations of his own. His biographer Lord 

 Cockburn gives a list of 31 different manuscript essays on literary and 

 metaphysical topics, all written by him between November 1789 and 

 March 1790. About the same time he attended the Scotch law and the 

 civil law classes in the University of Edinburgh. In 1791 he went to 

 Queen's College, Oxford, intending to complete his studies there. 

 Whilw at Oxford he was very solitary and melancholy ; he disliked the 

 place ; and after nine months was overjoyed to leave it. " Except 

 praying and drinking," he wrote to a friend during his stay at Oxford, 

 " I see nothing that it is possible to acquire in this i>lace." On his 

 return to Edinburgh in July 1792, his friends found that his stay at 

 Oxford had altered him in at least one thing : he now no longer 

 spoke in his former natural Scotch accent, but in a sharp, and, as 

 some thought it, an affected English style of pronunciation. " Jeffrey," 

 Lord Holland used afterwards to say, " had lost his broad Scotch at 

 Oxford, but he had gained only the narrow English." Very noon 

 however his friends, who knew his real intellectual force and the genial 

 goodneas of his heart, became reconciled to his new style of speech ; 

 and Lord Cockburn certifies that to hia latest years, Jeffrey had never 

 really forgotten his native Doric, but could talk broad Scotch, and 

 mimic even the provincial dialects of his countrymen when he chose. 

 He had a strong relish, too, for Scottish anecdotes and humours. For 

 a while after his return from Oxford, it seemed uncertain whether he 

 might not be called upon by his father to give up the law and become 

 a merchant ; but the legal profession was at hvt definitely resolved on. 

 In 1792-93 he again attended the law classes of Edinburgh University 

 under Professors Hume and Wyld, as also the class of history under 

 Alexander Tytler. Strange to say, he did not attend Dugald Stewart 

 Stewart's Whiggism being an objection in hia father's eves. On 

 the 12th of December 1792, he became a member of the famous 

 Speculative Society, then at the height of its fame; and here be first 

 formed the acquaintance of Scott and many other young men of the 

 Edinburgh set, who afterwards rose to distinction as lawyers, literary 

 men, and statesmen. For several years Jeffrey was one of the orna- 

 ments of this society, reading essays in his turn, and figuring with 

 peculiar eclat in almost every debate. Indeed, it used afterwards to 

 be said of Jeffrey, as well as of Horuer and Brougham, that never in 

 their most glorious days did they speak better than they did when 

 young members of the Speculative. Already in these debates, Jeffrey, 

 despite the Toryism of his father, was a Whig of the keenest and most 

 pronounced order. Meanwhile he continued his habits of various, 

 though desultory reading, and of incessant composition in private on 

 all sorts of subjects. He had even a dream at this time that he was 

 bom to be a poet; and he wrote, his biographer tells us, a great quan- 

 tity of verse. Of thia verse, Lord Cockburn says, from inspection, 

 that though " viewed as mere literary practice it is rather respectable," 

 it could never have been accepted sa poetry. He adds that in one 

 constitutional quality of the poet, Jeffrey was certainly highly endowed 

 the love of external nature and the delight in beautiful scenery. 

 On the 16th of December 1794, Jeffrey was called to the Scottish Bar. 

 It was the time when Scotland was politically stagnant under the 

 so-called Dundas reign ; when the whole country was managed by cor- 

 ruption and patronage ; when such a thing as the free expression of 

 political opinion by meetings or through the press was unknown ; when 

 three-fourths of the entire million and a half who then constituted the 

 population of Scotland were Tories, at the absolute bidding of Dundas; 

 and when such few leading Whigs as there were in Scotland were 

 chi-fly to be found in Edinburgh, where they were watched and laid 

 under a kind of social ban. Of these Whigs the most zealous were 

 lawyers, bold enough to avow their principles even at the expense of 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. Ill, 



the hostility of tbe Bench, and the loss of all hope of preferment. 

 The party however was increasing ; and year after year young lawyers 

 of talent were attaching themselves to it. Among these young Whig 

 lawyers, beating their heels idly in the Parliament House with no 

 chance of briefs, and amusing themselves-by social meetings at each 

 other's lodgings and by essays and debates in the Speculative, Jeffrey 

 was confessedly one of the chief, if not the chief. His prospects of 

 practice were so small that for a time he had ample leisure for reading 

 and literature. He began to contribute to the ' Monthly Review ' and 

 other periodicals ; and for a time contemplated the pursuit of literature 

 professionally. In 1800-1 he attended Dugald Stewart's lectures on 

 political economy. At last, in November 1801, his talents as a pleader 

 had procured him an income verging upon 100^. a year; and on this, 

 with what other resources he had, he ventured to marry his second 

 cousin, Catherine Wilson, of St. Andrews. The young couple took up 

 their residence in a modestly furnished third story of the house 

 No. 18, Buccleugh-place ; and it was here, at a convivial meeting of 

 Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Horner, and Brougham, that the ' Edinburgh 

 Review' was projected. Smith was the originator of the idea, but 

 the others immediately concurred, and Constable, a rising bookseller, 

 became the publisher. The first number of the new journal saw the 

 light on the 10th of October 1802 ; that number and two more were 

 edited by Smith ; but, on Smith's return to London, the entire manage- 

 ment devolved on Jeffrey. 



The great fact in Jeffrey's life, and .that which makes his name 

 memorable in the literary history of Britain, is that, for a period of 

 twenty-six years (1803-1829) he was the editor of, and one of the prin- 

 cipal contributors to, the ' Edinburgh Review.' With the history of 

 that journal, his career is identified, and it became what it was under, 

 his hands. To use Jeffrey's own phrase, it stood on two legs the one 

 leg being the criticism of current literature ; the other being Whig 

 politics. Both as a literary critic and as a politician, Jeffrey was the 

 soul of the ' Review.' To enumerate his articles in both capacities; to 

 estimate the vast influence exerted by the 'Review,' during his manage- 

 ment, on the contemporary literature and contemporary politics of 

 Britain ; to revive the numerous controversies both literary and 

 political, in which the 'Review' was engaged; or to reconsider the 

 right and the wrong of its literary judgments, in particular, on tha 

 distinguished poets of the period, sucli as Scott, Byron, Southey, 

 Coleridge, Wordsworth, &c., is here uunecessary. All this belongs to 

 the well-known literary history of the first quarter of the present 

 century. Suffice it to say that Jeffrey's honesty in the expression of 

 his opinions was never doubted ; aud that, where he was wroug, it was 

 because his judgments, though honestly given, were limited by the 

 essential nature of his own intellect. As a literary critic, ho proceeded 

 on what has been called " the beauty and blemish " principle of 

 reviewing; that is, it was his regular habit first to state in clear, 

 sharp, opinionative language what he considered tbe " beauties " of a 

 poem or other work, and then, as a necessary drawback, to append a 

 list of the ' blemishes.'' And, although, in following this method, he 

 undoubtedly remained constitutionally insensible to the higher poetry 

 of Wordsworth and his kindred consociates, he unquestionably exer- 

 cised a healthy influence ou the many by his chastisements. Where 

 he praised, he praised heartily ; and it is to his credit that, if his 

 negative judgments have not been always ratified, hia favourable 

 decisions generally have. In politics there is now less question as to 

 the value of his influence in promoting what was on the whole good 

 and useful. He was uniformly on the side of progress and improve- 

 ment; and, though he never was a Democrat, nor what would now ha 

 termed a Radical, but only a moderate Whig, his fighting, in his earlier 

 days, was uniformly uphill. It is significant of the adaptation of his 

 writings, both literary and political, to the purposes of rapid immediate 

 effect, that, when a selection of his essays from the ' Edinburgh Re- 

 view ' was published in four volumes in 1843, the work did not take 

 such rank in our permanent literature as has been accorded to the 

 similar collections of the essays of Macaulay, Sidney Smith, Carlyle, 

 and others. 



To return to Jeffrey's life, apart from the 'Review:' his professional 

 practice rabidly increased, as hia powers as a lawyer found oppor- 

 tunities of displaying themselves. In some respects ho was without a 

 rival at the Scottish bar combiuing good knowledge of law with 

 siugubir perspicuity and ingenuity, and a rapid, fluent, and brilliant 

 style of eloquence. As a speaker he was so rapid that once, at Glasgow, 

 the defendant in a libel case, where he was conducting the prosecution, 

 after listening to his torrent of words, declared that, by calculation 

 with his watch, " that man had actually spoken the English language 

 twice over in three hours." Jeffrey's triumphs as a pleader, both in 

 criminal and civil cases, were numerous ; but nowhere was he more 

 successful, or more in his element, than at the bar of the General 

 Assembly of the Scottish Church, at its annual meetings in May, when 

 he was usually retained in important ecclesiastical cases. With his 

 gradual increase of practice his wealth increased correspondingly, till 

 at last he was in the receipt of a handsome annual income. But his 

 wife did not live to share the full flush either of his fame or his 

 fortune; she died in 1805: and it was while he was on a visit to 

 London in 1806, to distract his mind from this calamity, that the 

 famous 'leadless' duel between Jeffrey aud Mooro took place at Chalk 

 Farm occasioned by Jeffrey's notice of Moore's early poetry, aud 



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