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.