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an Orange faction, or we must expect, in spite of all our warnings and remonstrances, to see her seek her own deliverance by the fatal and bloody career to which we have already alluded-and from which we hold it to be the height of guilt and of folly to hesitate about withholding her, by the sacrifice of that miserable faction.”—Vol. iv., pp. 140, 141, 145, 146.

The field before us is so wide that we should exceed all pardonable bounds were we to attempt to exhaust it. The author's character as a metaphysical writer, if it stood only on his celebrated Essay on Beauty, would entitle him to rank in the highest class of mental inquirers. It is needless for us to criticise a performance so universally known and appreciated, wherever the philosophy of mind is cultivated. We are also compelled to pass, without the notice it deserves, another class of these Essays, which perhaps form the most entertaining part of the collection, we mean those general accounts or abstracts of works of lighter literature, in which his office and object was not so much either to praise or to condemn, as to cull the beauties, and distil them for his readers. Such are the articles on Mrs Hutchinson's Memoirs, Lady M. W. Montague, Madame du Duffand, Pepys, Cumberland, and the Novelists. The light, easy, gossiping style in which they are treated, make the reader acquainted with the author, without his attention being distracted by the Reviewer's individual speculations. After the formal introduction is over, he lets the author tell his own story, but never at such length as to be tedious, and interposes whenever the spirit of the interview begins to flag. But, although much might be said of these things, and of others, our limits compel us to desist. "Mira illis dulcedo, mira suavitas, mira hilaritas," and truly may we add, “cujus gratiam cumulat sanctitas scribentis."* For though we have endeavoured, with what accuracy we could, to form a calm estimate of the work, we cannot disguise how difficult we find it to assume the critic when there stands before us one whom Scotland has so much reason to honour. It has been his enviable lot, if not to attain all the prizes of ambition for which men strive, at least to unite in himself those qualities which, in many, would have secured them all. A place in the front rank of literature in a most literary age-the highest honour of his profession spontaneously conferred by the members of a bar strong in talent and learning eloquence among the first of our orators, and wisdom among the wisest, and universal reverence on that judicial

* Plin. Ep. 3. 1.

seat, which has derived increased celebrity from his demeanour-a youth of enterprise-a manhood of brilliant success-and "honour, love, obedience, troops of friends," encircling his later years-mark him out for veneration to every son of that country, whose name he has exalted throughout Europe. We need not speak here of those graces of mind and of character, that have thrown fascination over his society, and made his friendship a privilege. Our rod of office drops from our hand; we remember the warning-we trust not too rashly disregarded—

"Nec tu divinam Æneida tenta,

Sed longe sequere, et vestigia semper adora!"

ART. IX.-The Late Lord Jeffrey.

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. Though those at a distance may only have reverberated the too accustomed and soon forgotten sound of a great man's death, no one that did not witness it can appreciate the sadness that spread over our metropolis on the event of that mournful evening. The sounds of festivity were subdued; a gloom settled on the countenances of those who knew him least; and the melancholy awe of a great calamity chilled even the stranger within our gates. Of the burst of sorrow that overwhelmed his friends, we need not speak. But even his antagonists, in his long and hardly fought career, the few whom the arm of death had spared so long, were overcome by the intensity of deep and absorbing grief. So loved, so honoured, so lamented, passed from this mortal scene a man whose name for many a year was the mark for all the rancour of party animosity, the bitter revilings of literary enmity, and the outpourings of personal spleen.

In the first number of this Journal, several years ago, we made the literary works and character of Jeffrey the subject of a somewhat elaborate criticism. Although at that time we were to a certain extent restrained in speaking of his personal merits and fame, by considerations which, sadly for us, have now ceased, we do not feel that this is a time or occasion fit for resuming in detail the analysis we then attempted. Still less can we undertake anything like a narrative of his long, arduous, and eminently useful career, to tell which truly would be to write the political and literary history of our country for the last half century. That task we have no doubt will be fulfilled by fitting hands;

VOL. XIII. NO. XXV.

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but time and distance are necessary before such a portrait can be drawn with success. We simply propose to ourselves as a labour not less of love than of duty, to recall a few of the honoured lineaments of our greatest citizen, and to lay on the altar of his memory our tribute of homage to his genius and his virtues, and of grief for his irreparable loss.

In the short and rapid delineation which we mean to attempt, we do not feel very confident of succeeding; not so much because the proximity of our recent bereavement is in danger of absorbing our attention, and of bewildering our judgment, but because none of the ephemeral notices of him that have yet appeared seem to us to come at all up to the character or distinctive qualities of one of the most remarkable men of our time. It may be that his intellectual, like his physical features, were of that mobile and versatile cast-so finely blended and so rapid in their changes, as to baffle any attempt to pourtray them-or that he presented in union so many qualities rarely found combined, that the prominence of one may to ordinary observers have eclipsed or obscured others. But so it is, that great as his reputation was-more widely diffused over the world than it has often been the fortune of a literary name to be, it has not hitherto called forth any account of his character or his career displaying a discriminating appreciation of either.

The truth is, that although Jeffrey was principally known to the world as the monarch of a critical throne which he himself established, his labours in that literary field were comparatively but a small proportion of his achievements or indication of his powers. The mental energy and vivid grasp of conception which he threw into that task were employed on it more as a pastime than a business: and had it not been that his lot was cast in the happier, we believe, but comparatively unambitious walks of the Scottish bar, he would, we doubt not, have asserted for himself that foremost place in affairs which he gained with so much ease and success in the ranks of criticism.

His early career presented no very striking or salient incidents. He was the second son of George Jeffrey, DeputeClerk of Session, and was born in 1772. He thus died in his seventy-seventh year. He received his education at the High School of Edinburgh, from which he went to Glasgow College, and thence to Queen's College, Oxford, and returned to Edinburgh in 1792. He passed at the Scottish Bar in 1794, and about the same time he took the hardly less important step of joining the Speculative Society-a well-known debating club connected with the College of Edinburgh, which was then, and continued for many years afterwards, as it does still, to flourish in great vigour.

He came to the Bar in the hottest days of old Scottish Exclusivism-at a time when the ancient leaven of Scottish Jacobitism had been fanned into a red-hot flame by the blasts of the French Revolution. It is not wonderful, therefore, that the young barrister, starting without patronage or connexions, and without the most remote drop of Dundas blood in his veins, should have found the first years of his legal life arduous and thorny. But against all disadvantages-aristocratic frowns, and political discouragement, his native vigour of intellect, and brilliancy of thought and language, early began to make their way. He soon became renowned as a debater in the Speculative-and the reputation he gained there, among the junior advocates and writers, spread quickly to the floor of the Outer House. We have heard that even in his second year at the Bar he was employed in many criminal cases of importance, and was already looked upon as a rising man. It was many years, however, before the stream of civil business began to flow towards him. It was in the Speculative Society, and among the associates he met there, that he found the theatre and comrades of his glory, and laid the foundations of his future fame.

Scott was a member of the Society when Jeffrey entered it, and acted as its Secretary, as far as we recollect, for two years. In this manner commenced the friendship of these two distinguished men, which, though disturbed during their lives by the jarrings of literary differences, was never seriously interrupted while the great novelist lived. But shortly afterwards he formed acquaintances with whom his political and literary tastes had more in common. In 1797, Henry Brougham, Francis Horner, Lord Lansdowne, John Peter Grant, and others, joined the Society; and long after Jeffrey and most of his companions had passed at the bar, they would repair weekly to this counterfeit Forum, and discuss, with eloquence and earnestness, which, perhaps, they never afterwards surpassed, the deepest questions of philosophy and Government.

It has often been said, in unfriendly quarters, that Jeffrey failed in Parliament. What may be called failure in Parliament, under the circumstances in which he entered or left it, were difficult to say. The habits and instincts of a parliamentary orator are not things to be acquired intuitively; and that Jeffrey, entering Parliament, as he did, when on the verge of sixty, did not at once assume the place of a practised debater, is only saying, that a result followed which was inevitable. This, however, is quite certain, that in that early gymnasium he more than held his own against Brougham and Horner: not so powerful, perhaps, as the first, nor so profound as the second; but sharp in sarcasm, dauntless in speculation, inexhaustible in

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