Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 | Page 9

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