Born, in Edinburgh, 23 Oct. 1773. At Edinburgh High School, Oct. 1781 to 1787, at Glasgow Univ., 1787–89. Studied Law in Edinburgh, 1789–91. Matric. Queen’s Coll., Oxford, 17 Oct. 1791. Left Oxford, 5 July, 1792. Studied Law in Edinburgh, 1792–93. Called to Scotch Bar, 16 Dec. 1794. Visit to London, 1798. Married Catherine Wilson, 1 Nov. 1801; settled in Edinburgh. Contrib. to “Monthly Rev.,” 1802. Started “Edinburgh Review,” with Sydney Smith and others; first number appeared, 10 Oct. 1802; he edited it till June 1829; contrib. to it, Oct. 1802 to Jan. 1848. Joined Volunteer regiment, 1803. One of founders of “Friday Club,” 1803. Visit to London, 1804. Wife died, 8 Aug. 1805. Visit to London, 1806. Duel with Moore (followed by reconciliation), Chalk Farm, 11 Aug. 1806. Legal practice in Scotland increasing. Fell in love with Charlotte Wilkes, 1810; followed her to America, 1813; married her in New York, Nov. 1813. Tour with her in America. Returned to England, Feb. 1814. Settled at Craigcrook, near Edinburgh, 1815. Visit to Continent same year. Joined Bannatyne Club, 1826. Dean of Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh, 2 July 1829; Lord Advocate, 1830. M.P. for Forfarshire Burghs, 1830; unseated owing to irregularity in election. M.P. for Malton, April and June 1831. Ill-health, in London, 1831. M.P. for Edinburgh, Dec. 1832 to 1834. Judge of Court of Sessions, as Lord Jeffrey, June 1834. Ill-health, 1841. Died, in Edinburgh, 26 Jan. 1850. Buried in Dean Cemetery. Works: “A Summary View of the rights and claims of the Roman Catholics of Ireland” (anon.), 1808; “A Short Vindication of the late Major A. Campbell” (anon.), 1810; “Contributions to the Edinburgh Review” (4 vols.), 1844. He edited: J. Playfair’s Works, 1822; Byron’s Poems, 1845. Life: (with selected Correspondence) by Lord Cockburn, 1852

Personal

  His manner is not at first pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast, which almost irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and superficial talents. Yet there is not any man, whose real character is so much the reverse; he has indeed a very sportive and playful fancy, but it is accompanied with very extensive and varied information, with a readiness of apprehension almost intuitive, with judicious and calm discernment, with a profound and penetrating understanding. Indeed, both in point of candour and of vigour in the reasoning powers, I have never personally known a finer intellect than Jeffrey’s, unless I were to except Allen’s.

  The chaise being in readiness, we set off for Chalk Farm…. On reaching the ground we found Jeffrey and his party already arrived…. And then it was that, for the first time, my excellent friend Jeffrey and I met face to face. He was standing with the bag, which contained the pistols, in his hand, while Horner was looking anxiously around. It was agreed that the spot where we found them, which was screened on one side by large trees, would be as good for our purpose as any we could select; and Horner, after expressing some anxiety respecting some men whom he had seen suspiciously hovering about, but who now appeared to have departed, retired with Hume behind the trees, for the purpose of loading the pistols, leaving Jeffrey and myself together…. They then retired to a little distance; the pistols were on both sides raised; and we waited but the signal to fire, when some police officers, whose approach none of us had noticed, and who were within a second of being too late, rushed out from a hedge behind Jeffrey; and one of them, striking at Jeffrey’s pistol with his staff, knocked it to some distance into the field, while another running over to me, took possession also of mine. We were then replaced in our respective carriages, and conveyed, crestfallen, to Bow Street.

  It is a face which any man would pass without observation 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 short, and very active-looking man, with an appearance of extraordinary vivacity in all his motions and gestures. His face is one which cannot be understood at a single look—perhaps it requires, as it certainly invites, a long and anxious scrutiny 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 firm, 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…. A sharp, but at the same time, very deep-toned and impressive voice—a very bad pronunciation, but accompanied 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.

  I dined with Walter Scott, and was delighted with the unaffected simplicity of his family. 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 you praise to Jeffrey, he directly chuckles out some error you did not perceive. Whatever you praise to Scott, he joins heartily with yourself, and directs your attention to some additional beauty. Scott throws a light on life by the beaming geniality of his soul, and so dazzles you that you have no time or perception for anything but its beauties: while Jeffrey seems to revel in holding up his hand before the light in order that he may spy out its deformities. 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 the expression of his face, been the chief enjoyment of Jeffrey.

  My dear Jeffrey—We are much obliged by your letter, but should be still more so were it legible. 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.

  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, not to speak, but to be silent…. He is never absurd, nor has he any favorite points 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 which 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 relays of topics. New causes are called; he holds a brief in his hand for every possible question. This is a fault. Mr. Jeffrey is not obtrusive, 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 young 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 impression your observations make on him as what weight to assign to his.

  I never was more surprised than when, having heard at Bellamy’s that he was on his legs, I ran down and became witness, ocular and auricular, of the style and methods in which he had thought fit to present himself to the House. I have not frequented the Jury Court of late years, it is true—but I certainly should hardly have recognised any thing whatever of my old acquaintance. First of all, he looked smaller and grayer than I could have anticipated—then his surtout and black stock did in no wise set him—then his attitude was at once jaunty and awkward, spruce and feckless. Instead of the quick, voluble, fiery declaimer of other days or scenes, I heard a cold thin voice doling out little, quaint, metaphysical sentences, with the air of a provincial lecturer on logic and belles lettres. The House was confounded—they listened for half an hour with great attention, waiting always for the real burst that should reveal the redoubtable Jeffrey—but it came not—he took out his orange, sucked it coolly and composedly—smelt to a bottle of something—and sucked again—and back to his freezing jargon with the same nonchalance. At last he took to proving to an assembly of six hundred gentlemen, of whom I take it at least five hundred were squires, that property is really a thing deserving of protection. “This will never do,” passed around in a whisper. Old Maule tipped the wink to a few good Whigs of the old school, and they adjourned up stairs—the Tories began to converse de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis—the Radicals were either snoring or grinning—and the great gun of the north ceased firing amidst such a hubbub of inattention, that even I was not aware of the fact for several minutes.

  In person, Mr. Jeffrey is below the middle size, and slenderly made. There is something of a thoughtful expression in his countenance. His face is small and compact, rather, if anything, inclining to the angular form. His eyelashes are prominent. His forehead is remarkably low, considering the intellectual character of the man. His complexion is dark, and his hair black.

  Is almost a lecturer in society; so much so, that there was no room for any one to put in a word.

  Poor dear Jeffrey! I bought a Times at the station yesterday morning, and was so stunned by the announcement, that I felt it in that wounded part of me, almost directly; and the bad symptoms (modified) returned within a few hours. I had a letter from him in extraordinary good spirits within this week or two—he was better, he said, than he had been for a long time—and I sent him proof-sheets of the number only last Wednesday. I say nothing of his wonderful abilities and great career, but he was a most affectionate and devoted friend to me; and though no man could wish to live and die more happily, so old in years and yet so young in faculties and sympathies, I am very, very deeply grieved for his loss.

  Jeffrey is gone. Dear fellow! I loved him as much as it is easy to love a man who belongs to an older generation. And how good, and kind, and generous he was to me! His goodness, too, was the more precious because his perspicacity was so great. He saw through and through you. He marked every fault of taste, every weakness, every ridicule; and yet he loved you as if he had been the dullest fellow in England. He had a much better heart than Sydney Smith. I do not mean that Sydney was in that respect below par. In ability I should say that Jeffrey was higher, but Sydney rarer. I would rather have been Jeffrey; but there will be several Jeffreys, before there is a Sydney. After all, dear Jeffrey’s death is hardly matter for mourning. God grant that I may die so! Full of years; full of honors; faculties bright, and affections warm, to the last; lamented by the public, and by many valuable private friends.

  Francis Jeffrey died on the afternoon of Saturday the 26th January 1850. Four days before, he occupied his accustomed place on the Bench, as vigorous, clear, and discursive under the weight of seventy-seven years, as in the most brilliant period of his manhood. Time had not pressed more heavily on the elasticity of his step, than on his cheerful and playful spirit; and he trod the streets of our city, which his name has contributed to make famous, on that last fatal day, with a strength which seemed to promise a still prolonged evening to his bright, though declining sun. But the triumph of an insidious disease, with which he had wrestled at intervals for more than twenty years, was at last at hand. On the morning of the 26th, it was rumoured that he was sinking under an attack of bronchitis. In the evening, it was told that he was dead…. He has gone down to his grave laden with all under which a man would wish to die—honour, love, obedience—troops of friends—every thing which should accompany the old age of such a man—the gratitude of a nation in whose service his life was spent, and the unfeigned tears of all who were ever privileged to come within the reach of his influence.

  Notwithstanding one questionable habit, the judicial duties have rarely been better performed than they were by him. His ability need not be mentioned—nor the sensitiveness of his candour—nor his general aptitude for the law. Surpassed, perhaps, by one or two in some of the more mystical depths of the law of real property, his general legal learning was more than sufficient to enable him, after ordinary argument, to form sound views, and to defend them, even on these subjects. The industry that had turned the vivacity of his youth to account, and had marked all his progress, followed him to the bench. His opinions were always given fully, and with great liveliness, and great felicity of illustration. His patience, for so quick a person, was nearly incredible. He literally never tired of argument…. This was partly the result of a benevolent anxiety to make parties certain that they had at least been fully heard; but it also proceeded from his own pleasure in the game…. The questionable thing in his judicial manner consisted in an adherence to the same tendency that had sometimes impaired his force at the bar—speaking too often and too long. He had no idea of sitting, like an oracle, silent, and looking wise; and then, having got it all in, announcing the result in as many calm words as were necessary, and in no more. Delighted with the play, instead of waiting passively till the truth should emerge, he put himself, from the very first, into the position of an inquirer, whose duty it was to extract it by active processes. His error lay in not perceiving that it would be much better extracted for him by counsel than it generally can be by a judge. But disbelieving this, or disregarding it, his way was to carry on a running margin of questions, and suppositions, and comments, through the whole length of the argument.

  How susceptible he was to the beauty of nature—to the clouds, the sky, the birds, the flowers; how loving to children; how warm and generous in his friendships; how affectionate to women; how every thing that a man should be!

  No artist could paint Jeffrey. His expression was so variable, that in different moods he seemed a different man. At the Bar, in Parliament, on the Bench, or in the romantic scenery of his own Craig-Crook, there was a different man—and yet there were not half-a-dozen Jeffreys, but one! To hear him talk, in that sharp shrill voice, whose lowest whisper floated through the air, and was heard by all, was indeed a pleasure and delight. Above all, he had the gentlest courtesy towards women, irrespective of their age. And, to crown all, he was fond, really and truly, of children. (I never knew a bad man who was. I am, and the inference is inevitable!) It was at home, that Jeffrey was ever seen to full advantage.

  Jeffrey, whom flattery, success, and himself cannot spoil, or taint that sweet, generous nature—keen, instant, unsparing, all true as a rapier; the most painstaking and honest-working of all clever men.

  A delicate, attractive, dainty little figure, as he merely walked about, much more if he were speaking: uncommonly bright, black eyes, instinct with vivacity, intelligence and kindly fire; roundish brow, delicate oval face, full, rapid expression; figure light, nimble, pretty, though so small, perhaps hardly five feet four 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 expressions of his face, and knew, even if behind him, that his brow was then puckered, and his eyes looking archly, half-contemptuously out, in conformity to some conclusive little cut his tongue was giving. His voice, 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 humour, 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…. His accent was indeed singular, but it was by 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 modulation, part of it pungent, quasi-latrant, other parts of it cooing, bantery, lovingly quizzical; which no charm of his fine ringing voice (metallic tenor, of sweet tone), and of his vivacious rapid looks and pretty little attitudes and gestures, could altogether reconcile you to; but in which he persisted through good report and bad…. 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 expressions in the other lineaments of face, resembled one’s notion of Voltaire; and in the voice too, there was a fine, half-plangent, kind of a metallic ringing tone, which used to remind me of what I fancied Voltaire’s voice might have been: “voix sombre et majestueuse,” Duvernet calls it.

  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 inexpressibly vile; for he wrote with great haste,… generally used a wretched pen,… and altered, erased, and interlined without the slightest thought either 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 favourite hours of reading were in the morning and in bed, unless he had to deal with a subject of peculiar difficulty, and in that case he read it up … at 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.

  He was represented as the quintessence of meanness and malevolence, when in truth he was not only a most high-minded and honorable man, but united to manly independence and firmness the sensibilities of a woman. A true and considerate friend, he sympathized with the struggles of unknown and friendless authors, to many of whom he was in private a liberal benefactor.

  I often peeped through the green curtain which hung before his contracted judicial stall, and watched the wondrous little man unravelling, in his quick, impatient way, the tangle of Scotch Law. His restless person was in a state of perpetual movement; his eyes turning here, there, and everywhere; his features in constant play; his forehead rippling in quick successive wrinkles, as if striving to throw off his close-fitting judicial 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, thrusting them out, and shaking them, as if he would rid himself of the incumbrance of his official robe of scarlet, which covered his shoulders, and hung in loose folds from his neck to his wrists.

  Jeffrey was a Benthamite on the surface, and underneath an Epicurean, with a good-humoured contempt for enthusiasm and high aspirations. Between him and a man so “dreadfully in earnest” as Carlyle, there could be little effective communion.

  In 1806 Tom Moore, the charming poet, got into a great rage with Francis Jeffrey (since Lord Advocate of Scotland), who had written an article for the Edinburgh Review attacking Moore’s poems with some severity, and wrote the latter a letter, calling him a liar and demanding a meeting. Jeffrey accepted, of course. On the day of the “encounter,” on which it had been arranged to have the Bow Street officers rush upon the combatants just as they were about to fire (which was carried out with precision), and while the seconds were loading their pistols with paper pellets instead of bullets, the two principals approached each other, and Jeffrey exclaimed, “What a very beautiful morning this is, ain’t it?” Moore replied calmly, with a smile, “It is, indeed, a very beautiful morning—much too beautiful for such purposes as we have met for.” They were then permitted to chat together until the minions of the law put in their appearance. Moore and Jeffrey became great friends afterward, but the former alienated himself from his second for thirty years for “giving the thing away.”

  Jeffrey was a man of extraordinary sprightliness and untiring zeal. He had keen literary interests, and, within a very limited range, much acuteness of critical insight. He saw very clearly what was assailable in the existing state of things, although his political ideas were rather those of the versatile lawyer than of a statesman, and were, as those of the lawyer are apt to be, confined in their range…. We are bound to admit his deftness and his versatility; no one could deny his political sincerity; it would be rash even to belittle his literary gifts. But to him the wider range of imagination was a closed region. As a lawyer he made no claim to professional erudition. Even as a forensic orator he never attempted to appeal to the feelings, or to rise to the highest flights. But he poured forth arguments with a rapidity and a versatility that at once astonished, amused, and flattered his hearers, and made him eminently successful in appealing to the not very high standards of the juryman’s intelligence…. His estimates of men and books were quick, confident, and lucidly expressed, but singularly narrow in range.

General

  Our very ideas of what is poetry, differ so widely, that we rarely talk upon these subjects. There is something in his mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to doubt whether, notwithstanding the vivacity of his imagination, he really has any feeling of poetical genius, or whether he has worn it all off by perpetually sharpening his wit on the grindstone of criticism.

  You little know me, if you imagine that any thoughts of fear or favour would make me abstain from speaking publicly of Jeffrey as I think, and as he deserves. I despise his commendation, and I defy his malice.

  Taste in him is exalted into Imagination.—Ingenuity brightens into genius. He hath also Wisdom. But nemo omnibus horis sapit; and he made an unfortunate stumble over the Lyrical Ballads. He has had the magnanimity, however, I am told, to repent that great mistake, which to his fame was a misfortune—and, knowing the error of his ways, has returned to the broad path of Nature and Truth. How nobly has he written of Crabbe and Campbell, and Scott and Byron! Incomprehensible contradiction—the worst critic of the age is also the best—but the weeds of his mind are dead—the flowers are immortal. He is no orator, they say, in St. Stephen’s; but that mouth, even on the silent paper, gives them the lie; and I have heard him a hundred times the most eloquent of speakers. His is a brilliant name in the literature of Scotland.

  The maximus minimus.

  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.

  I wrote the first article in the first Number of the Review, in October, 1802, and sent my last contribution to it in October 1840! It is a long period to have persevered in well—or in ill doing! But I was by no means equally alert in the service during all the intermediate time. I was sole Editor, from 1803 till late in 1829; and during that period was no doubt a large and regular contributor. In that last year, however, I received the great honour of being elected, by my brethren of the Bar, to the office of Dean of the Faculty of Advocates:—When it immediately occurred to me that it was not quite fitting that the official head of a great Law Corporation should continue to be the conductor of what might be fairly enough represented as, in many respects, a Party Journal: and I consequently withdrew at once and altogether from the management…. I wrote nothing for it, accordingly, for a considerable time subsequent to 1829: and during the whole fourteen years that have since elapsed, have sent in all but four papers to that work—none of them on political subjects. I ceased in reality to be a contributor, in 1829.

  A prominent defect of Jeffrey’s literary criticism arose from his lack of earnestness,—that earnestness which comes, not merely from the assent of the understanding to a proposition, but from the deep convictions of a man’s whole nature. He is consequently ingenious and plausible, rather than profound,—a man of expedients, rather than of ideas and principles. In too many of his articles, he appears like an advocate, careless of the truth, or skeptical as to its existence or possibility of being reached, and only desirous to make out as good a case for his own assumed position as will puzzle or unsettle the understandings of his hearers. His logical capacity is shown in acute special pleading, in sophistical glosses, more than in fair argument.

  Take him all in all, where, we ask, is the critic of the present century who is to be placed in the scale against Francis Jeffrey? His peculiar fitness for his task resulted mainly from the exquisiteness of his taste, his fearless honesty, and the integrity of his judgment. His few mistakes arose chiefly from certain partial defects in faculty. These, however, were important enough to prevent him, if not from taking his place as the first of contemporary critics, from at least entering those highest walks of British criticism in which a very few of the master minds of the past were qualified to expatiate, and but few exclusively.

  The great coryphæus of English critics.

  Jeffrey, who took the lead in this great revolution in literature, was a very remarkable man, but more so from the light, airy turn of his mind, and the felicity of illustration which he possessed, than from either originality of thought or nervous force of expression. His information was far from extensive: he shared in the deficiency of his country at that period in classical knowledge; he was ignorant of Italian and German; and his acquaintance with French literature was chiefly confined to the gossiping memoirs of the day, and, with that of his own country, to the writings of the Scotch metaphysicians or the old English dramatists. But these subjects he knew thoroughly; within these limits he was thoroughly master. He was fitted by nature to be a great critic. A passionate admirer of poetry, alive to all the beauties and influences of nature, with a feeling mind and a sensitive heart, he possessed at the same time the calm judgment which enabled him to form an impartial opinion on the works submitted to his examination, and the correct taste which, in general, discovered genius and detected imperfections in them.

  You must not criticize papers like these, rapidly written in the hurry of life, as you would the painful words of an elaborate sage, slowly and with anxious awfulness instructing mankind. Some things, a few things, are for eternity; some, and a good many, are for time. We do not expect the everlastingness of the Pyramids from the vibratory grandeur of a Tyburnian mansion…. He invented the trade of editorship: before him an editor was a bookseller’s drudge, he is now a distinguished functionary. If Jeffrey was not a great critic, he had what very great critics have wanted,—the art of writing what most people would think good criticism. He might not know his subject, but he knew his readers: people like to read ideas which they can imagine to have been their own. “Why does Scarlett always persuade the jury?” asked a rustic gentleman. “Because there are twelve Scarletts in the Jury-box,” replied an envious advocate. What Scarlett was in law, Jeffrey was in criticism: he could become that which his readers could not avoid being. He was neither a pathetic writer nor a profound writer; but he was a quick-eyed, bustling, black-haired, sagacious, agreeable 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.

  There was a pertness about his general manner of writing. Amazingly clever, adroit, subtle—he always gave you the impression of smallness.

  By nature, education, and habits of thought, was a special pleader. He used words and ideas for an immediate purpose; his object, when most in earnest, is to gain a point; his liberality and depth of feeling were in reverse proportion to his cleverness and information. His great moral defect was want of modesty. He does not appear to have known, by experience, the feeling of self-distrust, but thought himself quite competent to dictate to the world, not only on legal, but on literary and social topics. This reliance upon his own reason gives force and point to those disquisitions the scope of which come within his legitimate range, but makes him offensive, with all his agreeability of style, the moment he transcends his proper sphere. He manifests, in an extraordinary degree, the Scotch idiosyncrasy which refers everything exclusively to the understanding. He was essentially literal…. The order of his mind is within the sphere of the familiar; only in aptness, in constant exercise and skill, was it above the average.

  Jeffrey’s labors as 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.

  In his criticisms of Wordsworth we see vividly at once his own character and his failure to appreciate a character very different from his own. He was an affectionate man, intensely attached to his friends, and uncontrollably fond of their society; and the passages that he admires in Wordsworth are chiefly passages of tenderness. He loved natural scenery, too, in a way, and does justice to Wordsworth’s more striking word-pictures; but he was too much attracted to “the busy haunts of men” to follow the raptures of a genuine nature-worshipper, and he found Wordsworth’s minute descriptions intolerably tedious. But what he chiefly failed to understand, and what chiefly offended him, were the meditations natural to a recluse, and the glorification of children and of country personages to a degree altogether out of keeping with their conventional place in the social scale. He was constantly accusing Wordsworth of clothing the commonest commonplaces with unintelligible verbiage, and of debasing tenderness with vulgarity. A similar narrowness, the same tendency to lay down the law without a suspicion that other people were differently constituted from himself, appears in his essay on “Beauty.” Himself defective in the feeling for colour, he denies that colour possesses any intrinsic beauty, and is utterly sceptical regarding the statements of artists and connoisseurs, suspecting them of pedantry and jargon. His style is forcible and copious, without any pretence to finished or elegant structure. His diction is perhaps too overflowing; his powers of amplification and illustration sometimes ran away with him; “his memory,” says Lockhart, “appeared to range the dictionary from A to Z, and he had not the self-denial to spare his readers the redundance which delighted himself.” His collected works give but a feeble idea of the cleverness of his ridicule; he refused to republish the most striking specimens of his satirical skill.

  Jeffrey had neither the exuberance of wit nor the lightness of expression which characterised Sidney Smith. But he was on the whole a greater writer, just as he was undoubtedly a greater critic and a better editor. His criticisms are strict; they are occasionally unfair, but are always able; and, though many of his conclusions have been reversed by the judgment of posterity, his opinions are still uniformly quoted with deference, and usually accepted as authoritative.

  Had an adequate share of his attention been concentrated on some special branch of literature, had his fluency been held in check by a more thorough acquaintance with the subjects which engaged his interest, his regard for immediate impressiveness not been exaggerated by the influence of his professional duties, his artistic sense, which was keen and true so far as it went, not been mutilated and deteriorated by untoward circumstances, he would undoubtedly have earned for himself a high place among the writers of his epoch. As it is, his reputation is now unsubstantial and shadowy, and he is remembered chiefly from his accidental and not always gratifying and desirable relation to others who have gained an independent fame.

  The peculiar value of Jeffrey is not, as that of Coleridge, of Hazlitt, or of Lamb, in his very subtle, very profound, or very original views of his subjects. He is neither a critical Columbus nor a critical Socrates: he neither opens up undiscovered countries, nor provokes and stimulates to the discovery of them. His strength lies in the combination of a fairly wide range of sympathy with an extraordinary shrewdness and good sense in applying that sympathy. Tested for range alone, or for subtlety alone, he will frequently be found wanting; but he almost invariably catches up those who have thus outstripped him when the subject of the trial is shifted to soundness of estimate, intelligent connection of view, and absence of eccentricity. And it must be again and again repeated that Jeffrey is by no means justly chargeable with the Dryasdust failings so often attributed to academic criticism. They said that on the actual Bench he worried counsel a little too much, but that his decisions were on the whole invariably sound. Not quite so much perhaps can be said for his other exercise of the judicial function. But however much he may sometimes seem to carp and complain, however much we may sometimes wish for a little more equity and a little less law, it is astonishing how weighty Jeffrey’s critical judgments are after three quarters of a century which has seen so many seeming heavy things grow light. There may be much that he does not see: there may be some things which he is physically unable to see; but what he does see, he sees with a clearness, and co-ordinates in its bearings on other things seen with a precision which are hardly to be matched among the fluctuating and diverse race of critics.

  Jeffrey, the “arch-critic,” as he was sometimes called, was universally looked upon as the soul of the “Edinburgh Review.” His work was marked by great ability, and, we think, by a spirit of justice, or at least a desire for justice. That he made violent and bitter attacks upon authors who did not deserve his censure cannot be denied, but it is equally incontestable that he was saying what he thought was right…. The fault that we have nowadays to find with Jeffrey is that of his extreme minuteness, the anxiety not to miss any detail, which seems to us to make him often miss the effect of the whole, and to find faults instead of beauties by his persistent habit of looking down, rather than up.

  In conversation and in criticism his influence was always on the side of a pure morality. He had a keen and vivacious rather than an original or profound mind.

  That amazing person, Lord Jeffrey, in one of his too numerous contributions to the Edinburgh Review, wrote of the poverty of Swift’s style. Lord Jeffrey was, we hope, a professional critic, not an amateur.

  In spite of its undeniable verboseness, Jeffrey’s style was considered brilliant and sprightly. How such a verdict could be passed on a style whose average sentence is fifty words, with only 6 per cent. of very short sentences to vary the monotony, is hard for a modern reader to see. The secret lies in the comparative absence of periodicity. Jeffrey’s huge sentences are mere groups of clauses. Many clauses are oppositional; these are often set off by dashes. Jeffrey went as far in the direction of aggregating loose clauses as Macaulay went in the direction of segregating them. Otherwise, in the case of these two men, one style is almost as modern as the other. Jeffrey’s length of paragraph is not far from Macaulay’s. As a structural unit Jeffrey’s lacks emphasis, from neglect of the short period: Macaulay’s lacks gradation of emphasis, from his neglect of the moderately long period. Jeffrey makes clauses out of periods; Macaulay makes periods out of clauses. Jeffrey’s usual paragraph order is loose. His subject is often delayed, however, by verbose introductions. He has no sense of the importance of the first sentence and the last. His coherence is good but not graceful. There is occasional abuse of coördinate conjunctions.

  Though his works no longer delight the general public, Lord Jeffrey will always occupy a respectable position in English letters as the founder, to all intents and purposes, of reviewing. His intellect was nimble rather than penetrating, and his knowledge miscellaneous rather than profound; while his sensibility at times was too strong for his sense. Indeed, his characteristic admission to Macvey Napier that he had read Macaulay’s essay on Bacon “not only with delight but with emotion, with throbbings of the heart and tears in the eye,” seems to afford a hint at once of the measure of his attainments in philosophy and of his extreme susceptibility to any form of excitation. Yet his brisk and dapper habit of mind was no bad qualification for the literary work of his life; and perhaps the best proof of his success is the long existence which his convention has enjoyed. Every sentence of Macaulay attests his statement that he had read and re-read Jeffrey’s old articles till he knew them by heart; and for close upon a hundred years critic after critic, consciously or unconsciously, has copied his methods, has imitated his tone and bearing, has aped his omniscience, and has endeavoured to assume his awful air of authority.

  Was a critic of no mean ability, as many an acute and impartial appreciation of contemporary literature under his hand exists to prove.

  Jeffrey was before all things a literary critic, and, within the limits of his discernment, one of the acutest and liveliest of his time. His point of view was that of refined but positive common-sense, qualified by a rooted distrust of innovation. To the simple and obvious poetry of Rogers, Campbell, Crabbe, he brought a keen if somewhat excessive appreciation; mawkish sentiment and pseudo-mediævalism he exposed with signal effect. We cannot now wholly disapprove of the stricture upon “Marmion” which angered Scott, nor share his effusive penitence for those upon Byron’s “Hours of Idleness.” But he was, unfortunately, as proof against the true Romantics as against the false, and comprehended the mysticism of imaginative poetry in the same anathema with the crude supernaturalism of the school of horrors. The manifesto against the “Lake school” with which he opened the review is one of the most striking examples in literature of the fatuous efforts of a clever man to interpret a larger world than his own. The naked simplicity of Wordsworth, the tumultuous energy of Coleridge, the irregular metres of Southey were equally offensive to him, and he classed them together, as if innovators formed one brotherhood.

  Those two hundred papers which he wrote in the Edinburgh Review are of the widest range—charmingly and piquantly written. Yet they do not hold place among great and popular essays; not with Macaulay, or Mackintosh, or Carlyle, or even Hazlitt.