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In the crisis of the French Revolution, British society was paralysed with conservative alarms, and all tendency to liberal opinions, or even to an advocacy of the most simple and needful reforms, was met with a ruthless intolerance. In Scotland, there was not a public meeting for five-and-twenty years. In that night of unreflecting Toryism, a small band of men, chiefly connected with the law in Edinburgh, stood out in a profession of Whiggism, to the forfeiture of all chance of government patronage, and even of much of the confidence and esteem of society. Three or four young barristers were particularly prominent, all men of uncommon talents. The chief was Francis Jeffrey, who died in 1850, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, after having passed through a most brilliant career as a practising lawyer and judge, and one still more brilliant, as the conductor, for twenty-seven years, of the celebrated Edinburgh Review. Another was Henry Cockburn, who has now become the biographer of his great associate. It was verily a remarkable knot of men in many respects, but we think in none more than a heroic probity towards their principles, which were, after all, of no extravagant character, as was testified by their being permitted to triumph harmlessly in 1831-2. These men anticipated by forty years changes which were ultimately patronised by the great majority of the nation. They all throve professionally, but purely by the force of their talents and high character. As there was not any precisely equivalent group of men at any other bar in the United Kingdom, we think Scotland is entitled to take some credit to herself for her Jeffreys, her Cranstons, her Murrays, and her Cockburns: at least, she will not soon forget their names.

Lord Jeffrey—his judicial designation in advanced life—was of respectable, but not exalted parentage. After a careful education at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Oxford, he entered at the bar in 1793, when not yet much more than twenty years of age. His father, being himself a Tory, desired the young lawyer to be so too, seeing that it would be favourable to his prospects; but he could not yield in this point to paternal counsel. The consequence was, that this able man practised for ten years without gaining more than L. 100 per annum. All this time, he cultivated his mind diligently, and was silently training himself for that literary career which he subsequently entered upon. His talents were at that time known only to a few intimates: there were peculiarities about him, which prevented him from being generally appreciated up to his deserts. His figure, to begin with, was almost ludicrously small. Then, in his anxiety to get rid of the Scottish accent, he had contracted an elocution intended to be English, but which struck every one as most affected and offensive. His manners were marked by levity, and his conversation to many seemed flippant. His literary musings also acted unfavourably on the solicitors, the leading patrons of young counsellors. Reduced by dearth of business almost to despair, he had at one time serious thoughts of flinging himself upon the London press for a subsistence. The first smile of fortune beamed upon him in 1802, when the Edinburgh Review was started—a work of which he quickly assumed the management. That it brought him income and literary renown, we gather from Lord Cockburn's pages; but we do not readily find it explained how. While more declaredly a literary man than ever, he now advanced rapidly at the bar, and quickly became a man of wealth and professional dignity. We suspect that, after all that is said of the effect of literary pursuits on business prospects, the one success was a consequence in great measure of the other.

The value of this work rests, in our opinion, on the illustration which it presents of the possibility of a man of sound though unpopular opinions passing through life, not merely without suffering greatly from the wrath of society, but in the enjoyment of some of its highest honours. After reading this book, one could almost suppose it to be a delusion that the world judges hardly of any man's speculative opinions, while his life remains pure, and his heart manifestly is alive to all the social charities. The heroic consistency of Jeffrey is the more remarkable, when it now appears that he was a gentle and rather timid man, keenly alive to the sympathies of friends and neighbours—indeed, of womanish character altogether. As is well known, his time arrived at last, when, on the coming of the Whigs into power in 1830, he was raised to the dignified situation of Lord Advocate for Scotland, and was called upon to take the lead, officially, in making those political changes which he had all along advocated. It is curious, however, and somewhat startling, to learn how little gratification he professed to feel in what appeared so great a triumph. While his rivals looked with envy on his exaltation, and mobs deemed it little enough that he should be entirely at their beck in requital for the support they gave him, Mr Jeffrey was sighing for the quiet of private life, groaning at his banishment from a happy country-home, and not a little disturbed by the troubled aspect of public affairs. Mr Macaulay has somewhere remarked on the general mistake as to the 'sweets of office.' We are assured by Lord Cockburn, that Jeffrey would have avoided the advocateship if he could. He accepted it only from a feeling of duty to his party. He writes to a female relation of the 'good reason I have for being sincerely sick and sorry at an elevation for which so many people are envying, and thinking me the luckiest and most elevated of mortals for having attained.' And this subject is still further illustrated by an account he gives of the conduct of honest Lord Althorpe during the short interval in May 1832, when the Whigs were out. 'Lord Althorpe,' he says, 'has gone through all this with his characteristic cheerfulness and courage. The day after the resignation, he spent in a great sale-garden, choosing and buying flowers, and came home with five great packages in his carriage, devoting the evening to studying where they should be planted in his garden at Althorpe, and writing directions and drawing plans for their arrangement. And when they came to summon him to a council on the Duke's giving in, he was found in a closet with a groom, busy oiling the locks of his fowlingpieces, and lamenting the decay into which they had fallen during his ministry.'

In some respects, the book will create surprise, particularly as to the private life and character of the great Aristarch. While the Edinburgh Review was in progress under the care of Mr Jeffrey, it was a most unrelenting tribunal for literary culprits, as well as a determined assertor of its own political maxims. The common idea regarding its chief conductor represented him as a man of extraordinary sharpness, alternating between epigrammatic flippancy and democratic rigour. Gentle and refined feeling would certainly never have been attributed to him. It will now be found that he was at all times of his life a man of genial spirit towards the entire circle of his fellow-creatures—that his leading tastes were for poetry and the beautiful in external nature, particularly fine scenery—that he revelled in the home affections, and was continually saying the softest and kindest things to all about him—a lamb, in short, while thought a lion. The local circle in which he lived was somewhat limited and exclusive, partly, perhaps, in consequence of having been early shut in upon itself by its dissent from the mass of society on most public questions; but in this circle Jeffrey was adored by men, women, and children alike, on account of his extreme kindliness of disposition. He was almost, to a ridiculous degree, dependent on the love of his friends; and the terms in which he addresses some of them, particularly ladies, sound odd in this commonsense world. Thus, the wife of one of his friends is, 'My sweet, gentle, and long-suffering Sophia.' He pours out his very heart to his correspondents, and with an effect which would reconcile to him the most irascible author he ever scarified. Thus, to his daughter, who had just left him with her husband:—'I happened to go up stairs, and passing into our room, saw the door open of that little one where you used to sleep, and the very bed waiting there for you, so silent and desolate, that all the love, and the miss of you, which fell so sadly on my heart the first night of your desertion, came back upon it so heavily and darkly, that I was obliged to shut myself in, and cry over the recollection, as if all the interval had been annihilated, and that loss and sorrow were still fresh and unsubdued before me; and though the fit went off before long, I feel still that I must vent my heart by telling you of it, and therefore sit down now to write all this to you, and get rid of my feelings, that would otherwise be more likely to haunt my vigils of the night.' Thus, on the death of a sister in his early days:—'A very heavy blow upon us all, and much more so on me than I had believed possible. The habit of seeing her almost every day, and of living together intimately since our infancy, had wound so many threads of affection round my heart, that when they were burst at once, the shock was almost overwhelming. Then, the unequalled gentleness of her disposition, the unaffected worth of her affections, and miraculous simplicity of character and manners, which made her always appear as pure and innocent as an infant, took so firm, though gentle a hold on the heart of every one who approached her, that even those who have been comparatively strangers to her worth, have been greatly affected by her loss.... During the whole of her illness, she looked beautiful; and when I gazed upon her the moment after she had breathed her last, as she lay still, still, and calm, with her bright eyes half closed, and her red lips half open, I thought I had never seen a countenance so lovely. A statuary might have taken her for a model. Poor, dear love! I kissed her cold lips, and pressed her cold, wan, lifeless hand, and would willingly at that moment have put off my own life too, and followed her. When I came here, the sun was rising, and the birds were singing gaily, as I sobbed along the empty streets.'

The sensibility of Jeffrey to all fine expression that comes to us through the medium of literature was intense, most so in his latter days, when his whole character seems to have undergone a mellowing process. While pining under his greatness as Lord Advocate, and an authority in parliament (1833), he says: 'If it were not for my love of beautiful nature and poetry, my heart would have died within me long ago. I never felt before what immeasurable benefactors these same poets are to their kind, and how large a measure, both of actual happiness and prevention of misery, they have imparted to the race. I would willingly give up half my fortune, and some little fragments of health and bodily enjoyment that yet remain to me, rather than that Shakspeare should not have lived before me.' Who that had only read his lively, acute articles in the formal Review, could have believed him to be so deeply sympathetic with an unfortunate poet, as he shews in the following fine passage in one of his letters (1837)? 'In the last week, I have read all Burns's Life and Works—not without many tears, for the life especially. What touches me most, is the pitiable poverty in which that gifted being (and his noble-minded father) passed his early days—the painful frugality to which their innocence was doomed, and the thought how small a share of the useless luxuries in which we (such comparatively poor creatures) indulge, would have sufficed to shed joy and cheerfulness in their dwellings, and perhaps to have saved that glorious spirit from the trials and temptations under which he fell so prematurely. Oh! my dear Empson, there must be something terribly wrong in the present arrangements of the universe, when those things can happen, and be thought natural. I could lie down in the dirt, and cry and grovel there, I think, for a century, to save such a soul as Burns from the suffering, and the contamination, and the degradation, which these same arrangements imposed upon him; and I fancy that, if I could but have known him, in my present state of wealth and influence, I might have saved, and reclaimed, and preserved him, even to the present day. He would not have been so old as my brother-judge, Lord Glenlee, or Lord Lynedoch, or a dozen others that one meets daily in society. And what a creature, not only in genius, but in nobleness of character, potentially at least, if right models had been put gently before him!'

The narrative of Lord Cockburn occupies only one volume, the other being filled with a selection from Lord Jeffrey's letters. It is a brief chronicle of the subject; many will feel it to be unsatisfactorily slight. The author seems to have been afraid of becoming tedious. It is, however, a manly and faithful narration, with the rare merit of going little, if at all, beyond bounds in its appreciation of the hero or his associates, or the importance of the circumstances in which he moved. The sketches of some of Jeffrey's contemporaries, as John Clerk, Sir Harry Moncreiff, and Henry Erskine, are vigorous pieces of painting, which will suggest to many a desire that the author should favour the public with a wider view of the men and things of Scotland in the age just past. With a natural partiality as a friend and as a biographer, he seems to us to set too high an estimate on Jeffrey when he ranks him as one of a quartett, including Dugald Stewart, Sir Walter Scott, and Dr Chalmers, 'each of whom in literature, philosophy, or policy, caused great changes,' and 'left upon his age the impression of the mind that produced them.' Few of his countrymen would claim this rank for either Jeffrey or Stewart. Jeffrey, no doubt, raised a department of our literature from a low to a high level; he was a Great Voice in his day. But he produced nothing which can permanently affect us; he gave no great turn to the sentiments or opinions of mankind. His only original effort of any mark, is his exposition of the association theory of beauty, which rests on a simple mistake of what is pleasing for what is beautiful, and is already nothing. We suspect that no man with his degree of timidity will ever be very great, either as a philosopher or as a man of deeds. He was a brilliant writer—the most brilliant, and, with one exception, the most versatile in his age; but to this we would limit his panegyric, apart from the glory of his long and consistent career as a politician, which we think can scarcely be overestimated.

So many of the most remarkable passages of the work have been already hackneyed through the medium of the newspapers, that we feel somewhat at a loss to present any which may have a chance of being new to our readers. So early as his twentieth year, we find Mr Jeffrey thus sensibly expressing himself on an important subject:—

'There is nothing in the world I detest so much as companions and acquaintances, as they are called. Where intimacy has gone so far as to banish reserve, to disclose character, and to communicate the reality of serious opinions, the connection may be the source of much pleasure—it may ripen into friendship, or subside into esteem. But to know half a hundred fellows just so far as to speak, and walk, and lounge with them; to be acquainted with a multitude of people, for all of whom together you do not care one farthing; in whose company you speak without any meaning, and laugh without any enjoyment; whom you leave without any regret, and rejoin without any satisfaction; from whom you learn nothing, and in whom you love nothing—to have such a set for your society, is worse than to live in absolute solitude; and is a thousand times more pernicious to the faculties of social enjoyment, by circulating in its channels a stream so insipid.'

At the peace of Amiens, Jeffrey wrote thus to his friend Morehead, 7th October 1801: 'It is the only public event in my recollection that has given me any lively sensation of pleasure, and I have rejoiced at it as heartily as it is possible for a private man, and one whose own condition is not immediately affected by it, to do. How many parents and children, and sisters and brothers, would that news make happy? How many pairs of bright eyes would weep over that gazette, and wet its brown pages with tears of gratitude and rapture? How many weary wretches will it deliver from camps and hospitals, and restore once more to the comforts of a peaceful and industrious life? What are victories to rejoice at, compared with an event like this? Your bonfires and illuminations are dimmed with blood and with tears, and battle is in itself a great evil, and a subject of general grief and lamentation. The victors are only the least unfortunate, and suffering and death have, in general, brought us no nearer to tranquillity and happiness.' It may be well thus to bring the value of a peace before the public mind. Let those who only know of war from history, reflect how great must be the evils of a state the cessation of which gives such a feeling of relief.

Here is a curious passage about the society of Liverpool in 1813, and his love of his native country. We must receive the statement respecting the Quakers with something more than doubt, at least as to the extent to which it is true:—'I have been dining out every day for this last week with Unitarians, and Whigs, and Americans, and brokers, and bankers, and small fanciers of pictures and paints, and the Quaker aristocracy, and the fashionable vulgar, of the place. But I do not like Liverpool much better, and could not live here with any comfort. Indeed, I believe I could not live anywhere out of Scotland. All my recollections are Scottish, and consequently all my imaginations; and though I thank God that I have as few fixed opinions as any man of my standing, yet all the elements out of which they are made have a certain national cast also. In short, I will not live anywhere else if I can help it; nor die either; and all old Esky's[3] eloquence would have been thrown away in an attempt to persuade me that banishment furth the kingdom might be patiently endured. I take more to Roscoe, however: he is thoroughly good-hearted, and has a sincere, though foolish concern for the country. I have also found out a Highland woman with much of the mountain accent, and sometimes get a little girl to talk to. But with all these resources, and the aid of the Botanical Garden, the time passes rather heavily; and I am in some danger of dying of ennui, with the apparent symptoms of extreme vivacity. Did you ever hear that most of the Quakers die of stupidity—actually and literally? I was assured of the fact the other day by a very intelligent physician, who practised twenty years among them, and informs me that few of the richer sort live to be fifty, but die of a sort of atrophy, their cold blood just stagnating by degrees among their flabby fat. They eat too much, he says; take little exercise; and, above all, have no nervous excitement. The affection is known in this part of the country by the name of the Quaker's disease, and more than one-half of them go out so. I think this curious, though not worth coming to Liverpool to hear, or writing from Liverpool, &c.'

He was at this time about to sail for America, in order to marry a lady of that country. In a letter to Morehead, he recalls his old-fashioned country residence of Hatton, in West Lothian, and Mr Morehead's family now resident there. Tuckey was a nickname for one of Mr Morehead's daughters; Margaret was another. Till the last, he had pet names for all his own descendants and relatives, having no doubt felt how much they contribute to the promotion of family affection. 'I am almost ashamed of the degree of sorrow I feel at leaving all the early and long-prized objects of my affection; and though I am persuaded I do right in the step which I am taking, I cannot help wishing that it had not been quite so wide and laborious a one. You cannot think how beautiful Hatton appears at this moment in my imagination, nor with what strong emotion I fancy I hear Tuckey telling a story on my knee, and see Margaret poring upon her French before me. It is in your family that my taste for domestic society and domestic enjoyments has been nurtured and preserved. Such a child as Tuckey I shall never see again in this world. Heaven bless her, and she will be a blessing both to her mother and to you.' After touching upon a volume of poems which Mr Morehead had published—'If I were you, however, I would live more with Tuckey, and be satisfied with my gardening and pruning—with my preaching—a good deal of walking and comfortable talking. What more has life? and how full of vexation are all ambitious fancies and perplexing pursuits! Well, God bless you! Perhaps I shall not have an opportunity to inculcate my innocent epicurism upon you for a long time again. It will do you no harm.'

It will be a new fact to most of the admirers of Jeffrey, that he had in early life devoted himself to the writing of poetry. Of what he wrote between 1791 and 1796, the greater part has disappeared from his repositories. 'But,' says his biographer, 'enough survives to attest his industry, and to enable us to appreciate his powers. There are some loose leaves and fragments of small poems, mostly on the usual subjects of love and scenery, and in the form of odes, sonnets, elegies, &c.; all serious, none personal or satirical. And besides these slight things, there is a completed poem on Dreaming, in blank verse, about 1800 lines long. The first page is dated Edinburgh, May 4, 1791, the last Edinburgh, 25th June 1791; from which I presume that we are to hold it to have been all written in these fifty-three days—a fact which accounts for the absence of high poetry, though there be a number of poetical conceptions and flowing sentences. Then there is a translation into blank verse of the third book of the Argonauticon of Apollonius Rhodius. The other books are lost, but he translated the whole poem, extending to about 6000 lines.... And I may mention here, though it happens to be in prose, that of two plays, one, a tragedy, survives. It has no title, but is complete in all its other parts.... He was fond of parodying the Odes of Horace, with applications to modern incidents and people, and did it very successfully. The Otium Divos was long remembered. Notwithstanding this perseverance, and a decided poetical ambition, he was never without misgivings as to his success. I have been informed, that he once went so far as to leave a poem with a bookseller, to be published, and fled to the country; and that, finding some obstacle had occurred, he returned, recovered the manuscript, rejoicing that he had been saved, and never renewed so perilous an experiment.

'There may be some who would like to see these compositions, or specimens of them, both on their own account, and that the friends of the many poets his criticism has offended might have an opportunity of retaliation, and of shewing, by the critic's own productions, how little, in their opinion, he was worthy to sit in judgment on others. But I cannot indulge them. Since Jeffrey, though fond of playing with verses privately, never delivered himself up to the public as the author of any, I cannot think that it would be right in any one else to exhibit him in this capacity. I may acknowledge, however, that, so far as I can judge, the publication of such of his poetical attempts as remain, though it might shew his industry and ambition, would not give him the poetical wreath, and of course would not raise his reputation. Not that there are not tons of worse verse published, and bought, and even read, every year, but that their publication would not elevate Jeffrey. His poetry is less poetical than his prose. Viewed as mere literary practice, it is rather respectable. It evinces a general acquaintance, and a strong sympathy, with moral emotion, great command of language, correct taste, and a copious possession of the poetical commonplaces, both of words and of sentiment. But all this may be without good poetry.'

Having given little of Lord Cockburn in our extracts, we shall conclude with a passage of his narration which stands out distinctly, and has a historical value. It refers to Edinburgh in the second decade of the present century, but takes in a few names of deceased celebrities:—'The society of Edinburgh was not that of a provincial town, and cannot be judged of by any such standard. It was metropolitan. Trade or manufactures have, fortunately, never marked this city for their own; but it is honoured by the presence of a college famous throughout the world, and from which the world has been supplied with many of the distinguished men who have shone in it. It is the seat of the supreme courts of justice, and of the annual convocation of the Church, formerly no small matter; and of almost all the government offices and influence. At the period I am referring to, this combination of quiet with aristocracy made it the resort, to a far greater extent than it is now, of the families of the gentry, who used to leave their country residences and enjoy the gaiety and the fashion which their presence tended to promote. Many of the curious characters and habits of the receding age—the last purely Scotch age that Scotland was destined to see—still lingered among us. Several were then to be met with who had seen the Pretender, with his court and his wild followers, in the Palace of Holyrood. Almost the whole official state, as settled at the Union, survived; and all graced the capital, unconscious of the economical scythe which has since mowed it down. All our nobility had not then fled. A few had sense not to feel degraded by being happy at home. The Old Town was not quite deserted. Many of our principal people still dignified its picturesque recesses and historical mansions, and were dignified by them. The closing of the continent sent many excellent English families and youths among us, for education and for pleasure. The war brightened us with uniforms, and strangers, and shows.

'Over all this, there was diffused the influence of a greater number of persons attached to literature and science, some as their calling, and some for pleasure, than could be found, in proportion to the population, in any other city in the empire. Within a few years, including the period I am speaking of, the College contained Principal Robertson, Joseph Black, his successor Hope, the second Munro, James Gregory, John Robison, John Playfair, and Dugald Stewart; none of them confined monastically to their books, but all—except Robison, who was in bad health—partaking of the enjoyments of the world. Episcopacy gave us the Rev. Archibald Alison; and in Blair, Henry, John Home, Sir Harry Moncreiff, and others, Presbytery made an excellent contribution, the more to be admired that it came from a church which eschews rank, and boasts of poverty. The law, to which Edinburgh has always been so largely indebted, sent its copious supplies; who, instead of disturbing good company by professional matter—an offence with which the lawyers of every place are charged—were remarkably free of this vulgarity; and being trained to take difference of opinion easily, and to conduct discussions with forbearance, were, without undue obtrusion, the most cheerful people that were to be met with. Lords Monboddo, Hailes, Glenlee, Meadowbank, and Woodhouselee, all literary judges, and Robert Blair, Henry Erskine, and Henry Mackenzie, senior, were at the earlier end of this file; Scott and Jeffrey at the later—but including a variety of valuable persons between these extremities. Sir William Forbes, Sir James Hall, and Mr Clerk of Eldin, represented a class of country gentlemen cultivating learning on its account. And there were several, who, like the founder of the Huttonian theory, selected this city for their residence solely from the consideration in which science and letters were here held, and the facilities, or rather the temptations, presented for their prosecution. Philosophy had become indigenous in the place, and all classes, even in their gayest hours, were proud of the presence of its cultivators. Thus learning was improved by society, and society by learning. And unless when party-spirit interfered—which, at one time, however, it did frequently and bitterly—perfect harmony, and, indeed, lively cordiality, prevailed.

'And all this was still a Scotch scene. The whole country had not begun to be absorbed in the ocean of London. There were still little great places—places with attractions quite sufficient to retain men of talent or learning in their comfortable and respectable provincial positions, and which were dignified by the tastes and institutions which learning and talent naturally rear. The operation of the commercial principle which tempts all superiority to try its fortune in the greatest accessible market, is perhaps irresistible; but anything is surely to be lamented which annihilates local intellect, and degrades the provincial spheres which intellect and its consequences can alone adorn. According to the modern rate of travelling, the capitals of Scotland and of England were then about 2400 miles asunder. Edinburgh was still more distant in its style and habits. It had then its own independent tastes, and ideas, and pursuits. Enough of the generation that was retiring survived to cast an antiquarian air over the city, and the generation that was advancing was still a Scotch production. Its character may be estimated by the names I have mentioned, and by the fact, that the genius of Scott and of Jeffrey had made it the seat at once of the most popular poetry and the most brilliant criticism that then existed. This city has advantages, including its being the capital of Scotland, its old reputation, and its external beauties, which have enabled it, in a certain degree, to resist the centralising tendency, and have hitherto always supplied it with a succession of eminent men. But now that London is at our door, how precarious is our hold of them, and how many have we lost!'

We would just add one remark which occurs to us after reviewing the career of this eminent patriot and writer, and it may be of service to young men now entering upon the various paths of ambition. It is the fortune of many to be led by whim, prejudice, and other reasons, into certain tracks of opinion, which, as they do not lead to the public good, so neither do they conduce to any ultimate benefit for those treading them. How striking the contrast between the retrospect of a literary man, who has spent, perhaps, brilliant abilities in supporting every bad cause and every condemned error of his time, and necessarily found all barren at last, and the reflections of one like Francis Jeffrey, who, having embraced just views at first, continued temperately to advocate them until he saw them adopted as necessary for the good of his country, and had the glory of being almost universally thanked for his share in bringing about their triumph! Let young literary men particularly take this duly to heart, for it may save them from many a bitter pang in their latter days.

[3] 'Lord Eskgrove, a judge, who consoled a friend he was obliged to banish, by assuring him that there really were places in the world, such as England, for example, where a man, though out of Scotland, might live with some little comfort.'