JEFFREY, FRANCIS,
the greatest of British critics, as he is styled by his biographer,
Lord Cockburn, and eminent also as an orator and judge, was born in 7
Charles Street, George Square, Edinburgh, on 23d October 1773. He was
the elder of two sons of George Jeffrey, a depute-clerk in the court
of session, by his wife, Henrietta, daughter of John Louden, a farmer
near Lanark, who had been educated for the church. Besides his
brother, John, a merchant at Boston in America, his parents had also
three daughters. In October 1781, he was sent to the High school of
his native city, where he continued for six years. At this period he
is described as “a little, clever, anxious boy, always near the top of
his class, and who never lost a place without shedding tears.”
In the
beginning of the winter of 1787, when in his fourteenth year, he was
sent to the university of Glasgow. His biographer thinks that Glasgow
was preferred, with a view to the Oxford exhibitions or bursaries on
the Snell foundation, which that university possesses, none of the
other Scotch colleges having such rich academic prizes; but if his
father had any such intention, it was soon abandoned. He remained at
Glasgow for two sessions, going home during the intervening summers.
Though remarkable for his quickness of apprehension, “he was,” says
Lord Cockburn, “not only a diligent, but a very systematic student;
and, in particular, he got very early into the invaluable habit of
accompanying all his pursuits by collateral composition; never for the
sake of display, but solely for his own culture. And it is now
interesting to observe how very soon he fell into that line of
criticism which afterwards was the business of his life. Nearly the
whole of his early original prose writings are of a critical
character; and this inclination towards analysis and appreciation was
son strong, that almost every one of his compositions closes by a
criticism on himself.” At this time he is said to have been subject to
what he deemed superstitious fears, to cure himself of which he used
to walk alone at midnight round the High church or Cathedral
burying-ground.
On leaving
Glasgow, in May 1789, he returned to Edinburgh, where he remained till
September 1791, when he went to Oxford. Before this period his father
appears to have removed his residence to the Lawnmarket of his native
city. In the Edinburgh college, he attended a course of Scotch law, in
the session of 1789-90, and of civil law in that of 1790-91. Towards
the end of September of the latter year he went to Oxford, and entered
Queen’s college; but did not remain there longer than the following
July. During his residence there he failed to obtain, what was his
great ambition, a pure English accent. He succeeded, indeed, in
abandoning his vernacular Scotch, without acquiring an English voice
in its place.
During the
winter session of 1792-3 he again attended the Scots law lectures of
Professor Hume, and those on the civil law, and on history. On the 11th
December 1792 he became a member of the Speculative Society, the most
famous of the literary associations, or debating clubs, connected with
the university of Edinburgh. Among its members during the period that
he attended its meetings were Walter Scott, with whom he first became
acquainted there; Henry Brougham; Francis Horner; David Boyle,
afterwards lord-justice-general; Lord Henry Petty, afterwards marquis
of Lansdowne; John Archibald Murray and James Moncrieff, both
afterwards lords of session; and others who, in after-life,
distinguished themselves in literature, philosophy, science, law, or
politics. In this society he read five papers; on Nobility; on the
effects derived to Europe from the discovery of America; on the
authenticity of Ossian’s Poems; on Metrical Harmony; and on the
character of commercial nations. In the discussions of the Society,
his speeches were almost as much marked by brilliancy of imagination,
and felicity of expression, as even the more mature orations of his
middle age. In the quick detection of fallacy, and readiness of
debate, he had scarcely a competitor, whilst in conversational
qualities he even excelled, more than in the formal delivery of
well-arranged arguments or set harangues. At one period he seems to
have been ambitious of poetical renown, and in his college days wrote
a great deal of rhyme, besides a completed poem on ‘Dreaming,’ in
blank verse, about 1,800 lines long; composed between May 4 and June
25, 1791. He also wrote two plays, one a tragedy. His closing remarks
on all his youthful writings, prose as well as poetry, are seldom
complimentary to himself; but it was thus, by the application of the
severest rules of criticism to his own compositions, and to all the
works which he read, that he was trained for his after post of editor
of the most critical literary journal in Europe. None of his poetical
attempts, which from the opinion passed upon them by his biographer,
do not seem to have risen above mediocrity, were ever published.
Mr. Jeffrey
was admitted a member of the faculty of advocates, on the 16th
December 1794. In Scotland at that period, political differences were
carried to extreme. Reformers and Whigs were marked men in society,
and their opinions presented an obstacle to progress in life in all
professions, but especially that of the bar, which was not easily
overcome. Notwithstanding this, and that his father was a high Tory of
the old intolerant school, Mr. Jeffrey attached himself to the liberal
party, and his adoption of the persecuted creed, under the
circumstances of the time, evinced strength of mind, self-reliance,
and great independence of spirit. At the commencement of his
professional career, and for some years after, his success as an
advocate was not very promising. His political opinions and an
unpleasing manner were against him. “People,” says Lord Cockburn, “did
not like his English, nor his style of smart sarcastic disputation,
nor his loquacity, nor what they supposed to be an air of affectation.
These peculiarities gradually faded, and people got accustomed to
them; but they operated against him throughout several of his early
years.” At this period he employed his leisure in translating old
Greek poetry, and copying the stye of all our different poets. He
seems to have had an intention of publishing a classical translation,
but soon abandoned it. On a visit to London in September 1798, he had
some thoughts of settling there, and endeavouring to support himself
by literature, but he met with little encouragement. He, also, had an
idea of trying his fortune in India. On his return to Edinburgh, he,
for a short time, studied medicine, as well as chemistry, of both of
which he had a general acquaintance, which was afterwards very useful
to him in his professional career. He was a member of a sort of
scientific or philosophical society, formed of the rising young men
then in Edinburgh, called ‘’The Academy of Physicks,’ an account of
which is given in Welsh’s Life of Brown.
During part
of the winter session of 1800-1 he attended the second course of
lectures delivered by Dugald Stewart on Political Economy, of which he
left five small volumes of notes. The year 1802 was rendered
remarkable by the appearance of the Edinburgh Review, which originated
with Jeffrey, Brougham, Horner, Brown, Sidney Smith, an English
clergyman, then residing in Edinburgh, as tutor to Lord Webb Seymour,
brother of the duke of Somerset, and a few others their associates.
The merit of having first suggested the work is due to Mr. Smith, who
conducted it during the first year of its existence. The first number
appeared on the 10th October 1802; and from its liberal
tone, its independent spirit, and the great and unexpected talent
displayed in its pages, it created an unexampled sensation throughout
the kingdom. Jeffrey contributed five articles, one of which, upon
Mourier on the influence of the French Revolution, began the number.
On Mr. Smith’s return to England in 1803, Mr. Jeffrey became the
editor, and during more than a quarter of a century that he conducted
it, he acquired a literary reputation unique of its kind, besides
exercising an extraordinary influence on contemporaneous literature,
and on public opinion, that was productive of results never dreamed of
at the beginning of the century. He came, in fact, to be acknowledged
as the great master of criticism of his time, and the arbiter of the
destinies of all the young authors of the day. To the pages of the
Review he was always a large contributor, and among the articles
furnished by him are profound and original disquisitions on many of
the most difficult subjects, including metaphysics, poetry, politics,
biography, morals, travels, political economy, physical science, and
history. His writings are remarkable for their variety, acute
analysis, and sparkling style. Under his auspices the Edinburgh Review
was the principal means of a revolution which, in a few years,
extended to every department of intellect. To counteract its great
influence, both in literature and politics, the Quarterly Review was,
in 1809, organised by Sir Walter Scott, who, though a keen Tory, had
occasionally contributed to the pages of the Review, excusing himself
by saying that he did so from his personal liking for its editor, with
whom he continued friends till his death.
In the 16th
number of the Review a criticism appeared by Jeffrey, on the
‘Epistles, Odes, and other Poems’ of Thomas Moore, containing a severe
condemnation of these productions, on the ground of their immorality.
This Moore chose to view in a personal light, and on Jeffrey visiting
London, soon after, in the summer of 1806, he sent him a challenge.
The parties met at Chalk Farm on the 11th August of that
year, when Horner acted as Jeffrey’s second, but the interference of
the police prevented the duel from taking place. They were bound over
to keep the peace in this country, and contemplated proceeding to
Hamburg, to settle the matter hostilely there. But happily this was
prevented by Jeffrey declaring that he had meant his imputations to be
literary and not personal, on which Moore withdrew his challenge, and
they were ever after good friends. In 1819, when Moore was in some
temporary pecuniary difficulties, Jeffrey wrote to Mr. Samuel Rogers,
offering, in the most delicate way, to assist him with what money he
had, and in 1825, Moore spent some time on a visit to him at
Craigcrook. The affair of the duel is referred to in Byron’s ‘English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers,’ with a sneer at “Little’s leadless
pistol,” which, however, had the bullet in it, although that in
Jeffrey’s had dropped out, on being seized by the police. In the 22d
number, published in January 1808, appeared the celebrated criticism
of Lord Byron’s ‘Hours of Idleness,’ which drove his lordship to
retaliate by the publication, in March 1809, of his famous satire,
‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’ That criticism is supposed to
have been written by Lord Brougham, although Byron, believing Jeffrey
to have been the author, assailed him with all the bitterness of his
wrath. Byron had the nobleness, afterwards, to do justice to Jeffrey,
both as a man and a critic, saying in a well-known passage in Don
Juan, (canto 10, stanza 16):
“I do not know you, and may never know
Your face – but you have acted, on the whole,
Most nobly, and I own it from my soul.”
His professional
employment kept pace with his literary celebrity, and at this time his
practice was steadily increasing at the bar.
Mr. Jeffrey
had married, on 1st November 1801, Catherine, one of the
daughters of the Rev. Dr. Wilson, professor of church history at St.
Andrews, a second cousin of his own. He had a son, born in September
1802, who only lived a few weeks. Mrs. Jeffrey died on 8th
August, 1805. In 1810 he became acquainted with a young American lady,
then on a visit to Edinburgh, who afterwards became his second wife,
Miss Charlotte Wilkes, daughter of Charles Wilkes, Esq., banker in New
York, and grand-niece of the famous demagogue, John Wilkes. In August
1813 he sailed for New York, and his marriage with that lady took
place in the following November. He continued in America till the 22d
January 1814, visiting a few of the principal cities of the union. War
then subsisted betwixt this country and the States, and in two curious
interviews which he had, one with Mr. Munroe the secretary, and the
other with Mr. Maddison, the president, he ably defended the right
claimed by Britain to search American vessels for the recovery of
British subjects. To the former gentleman he had gone to obtain a
cartel for his return to Britain, and the same day (18th
November, 1813) he had the honour of dining with the president.
In the
spring of 1815, he first went to reside, for the autumn months, at the
villa of Craigcrook, on the eastern slope of Corstorphine hill, about
three miles from Edinburgh, which henceforth became his country seat,
his town house being for a long time in George Street, and afterwards
in Moray Place of that city. In the autumn of the same year (1815) he
visited the continent for the first time, and spent nearly a fortnight
in Paris. On the introduction of juries for the trial of facts in
civil causes into Scotland, on 22d January 1816, his practice
increased to an enormous amount. Lord Cockburn says: “He instantly
took up one side of almost every trial in what was then called the
Jury Court, as if it had been a sort of right, and held this position
as long as he was at the bar;” Cockburn, himself, being frequently the
opposing counsel. In 1816, he wrote the article ‘Beauty’ for the
Encyclopedia Britannica. “Of all the treatises,” says his biographer,
“that have been published on the theory of taste, it is the most
complete in its philosophy, and the most delightful in its writing;
and it is as sound as the subject admits of.”
In November
1820, Mr. Jeffrey was elected lord rector of the university of
Glasgow. This officer is chosen annually by the professors and the
matriculated students. For may years the latter had left the election
pretty much in the hands of the professors; but they now actively
interfered, and their first choice fell upon Jeffrey. He was
re-elected in the following year, and on retiring in November, 1822,
he founded a prize, being a gold medal, to be given, by the votes of
his class-fellows, to the most distinguished student in the Greek
class. In all the political meetings of the period held at Edinburgh
he took an active part, speaking at every one of them. At a public
dinner given to Joseph Hume on 18th November 1825, he made
a speech on the combination laws, showing the dangers and follies of
unions and strikes by workmen, which was published as a pamphlet, and
in two or three days above 8,000 copies were sold. The last public
meeting that he ever attended, besides those connected with his
elections, was the great meeting in the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, on
14th March, 1829, to petition parliament in favour of the
removal of the Roman Catholic disabilities, which was effected the
same year. On this occasion the two most impressive speeches were made
by Jeffrey and Dr. Chalmers.
Soon after,
he was unanimously chosen dean of the faculty of advocates, an office
then vacant, by the elevation of Lord Moncrieff to the bench. On his
election, he relinquished the editorship of the Edinburgh Review,
feeling, as he himself has recorded, “that it was not quite fitting
that the official head of a great law corporation should continue to
be the conductor of what might fairly enough be represented as, in
many respects, a party journal.” The Review was then intrusted to Mr.
Macvey Napier. The 98th number, published in June 1829, was
the last Mr. Jeffrey edited, and excepting three or four papers which
he wrote long afterwards, the one on the Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe,
published in October of the same year, was the last he ever furnished
as a regular contributor. In all, his contributions to that periodical
amounted to 200. These were collected and published in 1843, in four
volumes, 8vo. His last article in the Review, was an able and
elaborate paper on the claims of Watt and Cavendish to the discovery
of the composition of water, published in January 1848. In this
article he assigned the palm to Watt.
The four
volumes which he published of his contributions to the Edinburgh
Review do not contain all that he wrote for that periodical. Some of
the most original of his writings are not included in them; and in his
preface he gives the following reason for omitting many of what had
been considered his best articles. “I have honestly endeavoured,” he
says, “to select from the great mass, – not those articles
which I might think most likely still to attract notice by boldness of
view, severity of remark, or vivacity of expression, – but those, much
rather, which, by enforcing what appeared to me just principles and
useful opinions, I really thought had a tendency to make men happier
and better.” Indeed, he constantly upheld a high moral tone in the
pages of the Review, his aim being, as he says himself, “to combine
ethical precepts with literary criticism,” and he ever earnestly
sought “to impress his readers with a sense both of the close
connexion between sound intellectual attainments and the higher
elements of duty and enjoyment, and of the just and ultimate
subordination of the former to the latter.” It was this high aim, and
the independence, fearlessness and originality of its tone that gave
the writers in the Review the power to effect that improvement in
periodical literature, and to exercise that beneficent influence on
the progress of opinion, and the intellectual development of the age,
which marked its career, and were among its greatest triumphs. Jeffrey
has been blamed for the severity of his criticisms on some of our
greatest poets, and particularly those of the Lake school, and it must
be confessed that the world had, in many instances, reversed the
judgments so authoritatively pronounced by him. In the short notices
he has introduced into the acknowledged edition of his Essays, he has
thus recorded his feelings towards Southey and Wordsworth, the two
principal poets of that school. Of the former he says: “I have in my
time said petulant and provoking things of Mr. Southey, and such as I
would not say now. But I am not conscious that I was ever unfair to
his poetry; and if I have noted what I thought its faults in too
arrogant and derisive a spirit, I think I have never failed to give
hearty and cordial praise to its beauties, and generally dwelt much
more largely on the latter than on the former.” Of Wordsworth he
speaks even more touchingly: “I have,” he says, “spoken in many places
rather too bitterly and confidently of the faults of Mr. Wordsworth’s
poetry; and forgetting that even on my own view of them they were but
faults of taste or venial self-partiality, I have sometimes visited
them, I fear, with an asperity which should be reserved for objects of
moral reprobation. If I were now to deal with the whole question of
his poetical merits, though my judgment might not be substantially
different, I hope I should repress the greater part of these
vivacité of expression; and, indeed, so strong has been my feeling
in this way, that, considering how much I have always loved many of
the attributes of his genius, and how entirely I respect his
character, it did at first occur to me whether it was quite fitting
that, in my old age and his, I should include in this publication any
of those critiques which may have formerly given pain or offence to
him or his admirers. But when I reflected that the mischief, if there
really was any, was long ago done, and that I still retain in
substance the opinions which I should now like to have seen more
gently expressed, I felt that to omit all notice of them on the
present occasion, might be held to imply a retractation,” &c. To
Byron’s poetry he did ample justice, although he strongly animadverted
on what he conceived to be the immoral tendency of his writings; and
on his part, the noble poet has, besides the lines already quoted, in
various passages of his Diary, expressed his high opinion of his
conduct and character.
In December,
1830, the Whig party came into power, and Mr. Jeffrey was appointed
lord advocate. In January following he was returned to parliament for
the Forfar district of burghs, by the vote of the Dundee delegate, but
this burgh having been previously disfranchised, he was unseated, on
petition, on the 17th March. On the 4th of that
month he made his first speech in parliament, in favour of the English
Reform Bill. This speech was published immediately afterwards, at the
special request of government, and made a strong sensation at the
time, though dealing only with the general question. On the 6th
of April, he was elected for Earl Fitzwilliam’s pocket burgh of
Malton, in Yorkshire, but within a fortnight after, parliament was
dissolved. At the general election, May 3, 1831, he stood as a
candidate for the city of Edinburgh, in opposition to Mr. R. A. Dundas
of Arniston, afterwards Right Hon. R. C. Nisbet Hamilton. The choice
was then in the hands of the town council, and in spite of the most
strenuous exertions in his favour, on the part of the principal
liberal inhabitants and public bodies, Mr. Jeffrey was defeated by
three votes, 17 having voted for Dundas and 14 for Jeffrey. The result
led to a serious riot in the city, when the military were called out,
and order was with difficulty restored. Towards the beginning of June
he was again chosen for Malton. On the 1st July he brought
in the Scotch Reform Bill, throwing open the franchise to the
ten-pound electors, which, after going through all the requisite
stages, in both houses, was passed by the Lords on 12th
July 1832, and soon after received the royal assent.
Parliament
having been dissolved in December 1832, he was, with the Hon. Mr.
Abercromby, afterwards Lord Dunfermline, elected for his native city,
by a large majority over the tory candidate; both gentlemen being
returned free of expense. For a seat in parliament previously, it cost
him between December 1830 and May 1832, Lord Cockburn informs us,
about £10,000. On 12th March 1833, he moved the Scotch
Burgh Reform Bill, which ultimately passed. Notwithstanding his great
eloquence, his style of oratory was not quite suited for the House of
Commons, being too subtle and refined, and not personal or practical
enough, for that assembly. During his residence in London, he was much
engaged in appeal cases before the House of Lords, and went a good
deal into society.
In May 1834,
he was nominated a lord of session, succeeding Lord Craigie on the
bench, when he took his seat as Lord Jeffrey. Before leaving London,
he received a farewell banquet from the Scotch members, as an
acknowledgment of his official conduct. As a judge, he discharged his
duties with attention, uprightness, and ability.
In 1840, he
wrote the appropriate and elegant inscription for the monument to Sir
Walter Scott in Prince’s Street, Edinburgh, being requested by the
committee to furnish it. On 5th July 1841, he fainted in
court, and in August he went to his son-in-law’s at Haileybury, in
Hertfordshire, where he was attacked severely by bronchitis, and did
not resume his duties in the court of session till May 1842. He took a
strong interest in the disputes in the Established church which led to
the disruption in May 1843, and wen he saw the great number of
ministers, and the large body of its members, who then seceded and
formed the Free church of Scotland, he declared that he was “proud of
his country – in no other country could the same have been done.”
Lord Jeffrey
died at his town residence in Moray Place, Edinburgh, on the evening
of Saturday, January 26th, 1850, in his 77th
year. He had appeared on the bench in his usual health on the Tuesday
preceding, and though confined to the house for a few days by an
attack of cold, no apprehension had been entertained of the fatal
nature of the complaint. The symptoms were those of bronchitis, with
which he had been frequently troubled for several years, but on this
occasion it was accompanied with fever. He was buried in the Dean
cemetery, Edinburgh, in a spot which had been selected by himself.
By his
second wife he had an only child, a daughter, married to the Rev. Mr.
Empson, professor of civil law at the East India college of Haileybury,
near Hertford, who succeeded Macvey Napier, as editor of the Edinburgh
Review. His lordship’s widow survived her husband only to the
following May, dying on the 18th of that month, at her
son-in-law’s, Haileybury.
A portrait
of this eminent critic and judge, from a painting by Mr. Colvin Smith,
is subjoined:
[portrait of Francis Jeffrey]
Soon
after his death a subscription was entered into for a marble statue of
him, by Steell, which has been erected in the Outer House of the Court
of Session. A marble bust of him also stands in the Historical room of
the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. His Life, by Lord Cockburn, with a
selection from his Correspondence, was published at Edinburgh, in
1852, in 2 vols. 8vo.
