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Jeffrey.

Francis, Lord Jeffrey, 1773-1850, made for himself a world-wide celebrity as a leading writer for the Edinburgh Review, of which also, for more than the fourth of a century, he was the fearless and unequalled editor.

Jeffrey was a native of Edinburgh. He studied at the University of Glasgow and at Oxford, and practised law in Edinburgh, but with little success. While a young man in Edinburgh, he became intimate with Horner, Brougham, and Sydney Smith, and the result of this intimacy was the establishment of the celebrated Review. After the publication of the first three numbers, the editorship was transferred from Smith to Jeffrey, who retained it from 1803 to 1829.

In 1830, Jeffrey was appointed Lord Advocate. From 1831 to 1834 he sat in Parliament. In 1834 he succeeded Lord Craigie in the Court of Sessions, thereby acquiring the honorary title of Lord Jeffrey. After retiring from the post of editor, he contributed only four or five more articles to the Review.

Jeffrey's contributions number in all two hundred A selection, seventy-nine in number, has been published, in 4 vols., 8vo; the remaining articles still lie scattered throughout the numbers of the Review.

Jeffrey occupies undoubtedly the most prominent position among modern English reviewers. This prominence is due, however, fully as much to his success in editorship as to his own merits as a critic. Under his management the Edinburgh Review became a great literary and political power in the realm. Men of every rank and profession read and admired, dreaded or hated, its slashing tone and, its recklessness of fear or favor. Much, very much, of the political progress of England during the present century is due to the stimulus applied unsparingly to the body politic by the writers for this Review.

As to Lord Jeffrey's own writings, opinions are somewhat divided. There can be no question concerning the vigor and elegance of his style, the purity of his motives, and the general soundness of his principles of criticism. In matters of poetry, however, he made such grave blunders-failing, for instance, to appreciate the rising genius of poets like Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Moore, and others that it may be doubted whether he was not defective in true imagination and sympathy. On this point, the opinion of one who is himself a poet should be heard. "Our very ideas of what is poetry," says Scott, "differ so widely that we rarely talk upon the subject. 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."

Brougham.

Henry, Lord Brougham, 1778-1868, was one of the great lights of the nineteenth century. He was an advocate, a jurist, a statesman, a political reformer, and a man of let

ters, and in each of these walks of mental activity stood among the foremost.

Brougham was a native of Edinburgh, and was educated there in its High-School and its University. Among his teachers in Edinburgh were men of great note, — Dr. Adam, Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and Black. He was of an old English family, but he intimates in his Autobiography that whatever genius he had came from his mother, who was a niece of Robertson the historian.

Brougham gave early indications of genius, and his first efforts were in the direction of science. He wrote, at the age of seventeen, a paper on the Refraction and Reflection of Light, which was printed in the Transactions of the Royal Society. Though he became a lawyer and a statesman, and rose to the highest professional eminence, the original bias and the essentially scientific character of his mind came out in nearly all his writings.

As a lawyer, Brougham soon rose to distinction in London; and being employed as counsel for the defence of Queen Caroline, he had an occasion for the display of his talents such as has rarely happened. He was for many years a member of the House of Commons, where he had no superior in debate, and no equal except perhaps Canning. He was at length elevated to the Peerage and made Lord Chancellor. One of his most celebrated speeches was that delivered in the House of Lords on the passage of the Reform Bill. As Chancellor, he displayed amazing activity, and on retiring from the office he left not a single case in arrear of judgment, -a fact without precedent in the history of that court. His last years were spent in rural retirement, at Cannes, in France.

Lord Brougham was through life an earnest advocate of popular education, cheap publications, and of political and social reform. He was one of the founders of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and its first chairman. He wrote for it a treatise on The Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science. He took an active part also in the Social Science Association.

men.

Of all his labors, however, none probably produced a more immediate and widespread influence than those connected with the Edinburgh Review. This celebrated journal was begun in 1802 by Brougham, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Horner, all young In the first 20 numbers, Horner contributed 14 articles, Smith 23, Jeffrey 75, Broughanı 80. Brougham continued for twenty-five years to be a regular contributor to its pages. This Review exerted a powerful influence wherever the English language was spoken, and on almost every topic of public interest; and Brougham, Smith, and Jeffrey were for many years the great triumvirs who wielded, without dispute, the mighty sceptre.

A complete edition of Brougham's works was published under his own supervision, in 1857, in 10 vols., 8vo. Vol. 1. Lives of Philosophers of the Time of George III.; Vol. 2. Lives of Men of Letters, of the same time; Vols. 3, 4, 5. Sketches of Eminent Statesmen, of the same time; Vol. 6. Natural Theology: Vol. 7. Rhetorical and Literary Dissertations and Addresses; Vol. 8. Historical and Political Dissertations; Vols. 9, 10. Speeches on Social and Political Subjects. Since his death, his autobiography, written when he was almost ninety, has made its appearance; Life and Times of Lord Brougham, written by himself, 3 vols.

FRANCIS HORNER, 1778-1817, is known as one of the originators of the Edinburgh Review. He died comparatively young, and did not live to achieve that greatness to which he seemed destined. In talents and promise he was the acknowledged compeer of Brougham and Jeffrey.

Horner was a native of Edinburgh; he was educated at the High-School and the University of that city; and was elected to Parliament, where he distinguished himself by his knowledge of political economy and finance. His excessive labors as a member of the Bullion Committee broke down his health, and led ultimately to his death.

As a man of letters, Horner is chiefly known by reason of his connection with the Edinburgh Review, he being one of its originators and early contributors. As a statesman, he was, during his lifetime, the most conspicuous member of the then rising Whig party, and as much loved for his moral qualities as he was respected for his intellectual. Nothing but his early death prevented him from rising to the highest political eminence.

"He died at the age of thirty-eight; possessed of greater public influence than any other private man, and admired, trusted, beloved, and deplored by all except the heartless or the base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member."- Lord Cockburn.

Wilson.

John Wilson, 1785-1854, better known as Christopher North, did for Blackwood's Magazine what Brougham, Jeffrey, and Smith did for the Edinburgh Review. He was equally, though somewhat later, and in a different way, a potentate in the world of opinion.

Wilson was the son of a wealthy manufacturer of Paisley. His studies were finished at the University of Glasgow and at Oxford, where he earned great reputation both as an athlete and a scholar. Left by the death of his father in possession of a handsome fortune, he purchased a fine estate in Cumberland, and enjoyed for many years the society of the so-called lake poets.

In 1812, Wilson published his poem, The Isle of Palms, and, in 1816, The City of the Plague. In 1815, having lost much of his property by the mismanagement of a rela tive, he returned to Scotland, settled in Edinburgh, and began the practice of the law. It is not probable, however, that he would in any case have gained glory at the bar. What decided his career, however, was the starting of Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. The publisher recognized immediately the talents of Wilson and of Lockhart, and they became the life of the magazine. After Lockhart's removal to London to take charge of the Quarterly Review, Wilson became the sole editor in fact, although Blackwood always exercised a decided and direct control as publisher and nominal editor.

In 1820 Wilson was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of

Edinburgh. His competitor was Sir William Hamilton, then, however, but little known. Wilson succeeded in sustaining both his editorship and his professorship with great distinction. Although neither original nor profound as a thinker, he was eminently successful in stimulating and interesting his pupils.

Aside from his contributions to the Magazine, he published Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, The Trial of Margaret Lyndsay, and The Foresters. The principal collections of his magazine pieces are to be found in The Critical and Miscellaneous Articles of Christopher North, The Recreations of Christopher North, and the Noctes Ambrosianæ.

It can scarcely be doubted that Wilson possessed poetic talents, but whether he was really a poet remains undecided. In the press of his duties as professor and constant contributor, his aim was too much distracted to permit him to ripen into a decided poet. His genius shone brightest when writing those genial, hap-hazard, yet eminently suggestive sketches, criticisms, and fragments that filled page after page of Blackwood, and kept the reader laughing or frowning, but always awake. There was a spontaneity, a freshness, about North's utterances, a freedom from conventionality, that surprised and delighted.

After all, however, there is ground for believing that North was greater than his works. The historian or the critic encounters, from time to time, a hero or an author who occupies an exalted position, and yet who has left no record or monument which, considered in itself alone, would justify such exaltation. The explanation is to be looked for in the impression which the presence and character of the man himself made upon his friends, and which they have communicated to the nation at large. Horner is an instance, and Wilson is another. They are men of capabilities, of potentialities rather than of realities. There is a something about their name and bearing which suggests that they may do, or might have done, far beyond what they ever have done. Thus it is that we must explain the phenomena of North's record in Scotch literature. The popular heart has always associated him with Burns and Scott, as one of a great literary trio. To the Scotch mind, the massive form, shaggy brows, rollicking manner, shrewd bonhomie, independent speech of the great Kit North, are typical of national character. He is a man whom his countrymen thoroughly understand, and with whom they can sympathize.

JAMES WILSON, 1795-1856, brother of "Christopher North" (Prof. John Wilson), was born at Paisley, Scotland. He began the study of the law, but soon relinquished it, and taking to himself a wife, and a pretty little cottage near Edinburgh, gave himself up to the life of a naturalist.

Wilson's contributions on natural history have all the grace and beauty of those of the American ornithologists, Wilson and Audubon, and of other great naturalists who have studied Nature with the imagination of a poet and the fondness of a lover. He published Illustrations of Zoology, being representations of new, rare, or otherwise remarkable subjects of the animal kingdom, drawn and colored after nature, with descriptive letter-press; with James Duncan, Entomologia Edinensis, a description and history of the insects found in the neighborhood of Edinburgh; A Treatise on Insects; The Natural History of Quadrupeds and Whales; The Natural History of Fishes; The Natural History of Birds; The Rod and the Gun, two treatises on Angling and Shooting; A Voyage round the Coasts of Scotland and the Isles. Mr. Wilson contributed also most of the articles on natural history in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

HENRIETTA WILSON, 1862, a niece of Prof. John Wilson, wrote Little Things, and the Chronicles of a Garden, its Pets and its Pleasures.

De Quincey.

Thomas De Quincey, 1785-1859, is familiarly known as the English Opium Eater. Although in the main he made shipwreck of his wonderful powers, he yet achieved much that was great and noble. He is by common consent one of the greatest masters of English prose.

Career. De Quincey was born near Manchester, the son of a rich merchant. He spent his earliest years in rustic solitude, and afterwards, according to his own expression, "his infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, instead of horrid pugilistic brothers." At twelve he was sent to a public grammar-school. His proficiency there in classical studies approached the marvellous. At the age of seventeen, he ran away from school, took a tour on foot through Wales, and went thence to London, resolving to escape if possible the knowledge and control of his guardians. He led for several months a life of wild adventure in London, being often in abject poverty. The following year he entered Oxford, where he remained five years, and where, unfortunately, he contracted the habit of eating opium, which exerted such a baleful influence on his subsequent career.

After leaving the University, when about the age of twenty-four, he became intimate with Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, and took up his abode among them at Grasmere, in the beautiful Lake region made famous by the residence of these great writers. He remained in that place about twenty years, devoting his time to literary pursuits, and publishing his writings through the magazines, Blackwood, Tait, and others.

After indulging in the excessive use of opium for many years, he at last, by a desperate and long-continued effort, succeeded in overcoming the habit, though he never recovered entirely from the terrible effects. This was in 1820, when he was thirty-five years of age. In the following year he made a great sensation by the publication of The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, giving an account of his previous life and of his experience under the influence of the dreadful drug.

After leaving Grasmere, he went to Glasgow and thence to Edinburgh, in which latter city he spent the last years of his life. He lived to the age of seventy-four. De Quincey was a man of extraordinary powers, and had they been under proper regulation, he might have achieved works which would have placed him among the great men of all time. As it is, his works are all of the nature of fragments, great and splendid, beyond the reach of any man of his time to equal, yet, after all, frag ments. He projected a great work, De Emendatione Humani Intellectus (On the Im

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