Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 | Page 8

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