The Sun.
London, England, 1850-06-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE.
BIOGRAPHY OF LORD JEFFREY.

An admirable biography ot this illustrious critic
has recently appeared as the sixteenth number of the
new and popular periodical now in course of publica-
tion by the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh. Until
the necessary research shall have been made among
the papers of the deceased, and materials have been
thereby acquired for the composition of some' more
voluminous and elaborate memoir of his career in the
legal profession and in literature, this brilliant and
felicitous epitome of the life of Francis Jeffrey must
inevitably maintain a wide and genuine popularity.
Its style is healthy, and, when occasion requires, elo-
quent. Its selection of facts has about it an air
strikingly judicious. Its arrangement of those
facts is remarkable for lucidity and for its
constituting altogether a symmetrical outline
of a personal history, uneventful but conspicuous.
Beyond all thin, the judgment pronounced by the hi•
ographer upon those manifold subjects which are
brought anew under discussion in the course of the
narrative, evinces a manly and eclectic appreciation
of matters diametrically opposed to each other in their
demands upon cur sympathy and admiration. The
scope of the whole narrative, though brief in actual
extent, is bold and ample, embracing as it does not
merely an account of the personal vicissitudes expe-
rienced by Francis Jeffrey, together with episodical
descriptions of some amongst his more remarkable
contemporaries, and opinions upon the range and
ripeness of his own intellect, but includes, moreover,
a novel and enthralling history of the establishment,
the rise and progress of that extraordi-
nary quarterly publication in the editing of
which Lord Jeffrey obtained his very splendid
and permanent reputation. The particulars which
have been accumulated 'upon this head by the writer
are altogether so new—never having been previously,
we believe, given to the public in any form whatever
—that that circumstance alone could not fail to secure
to the performance a large amount of public observa-
tion. Those who turn to the perusal of this sixteenth
number of Chambers's Papers fur the People, con-
sisting of merely thirty-two gages, and costing only
three half-pennies, will be surprised at the rich and
valuable fund of information condensed together
within the compass by the adroit and virile hand of
the biographer. In reference to the actual memoirs
of Lord Jeffrey, as here given, we find little cause for
observation, seeing that we ourselves, immediately
upon the demise of that distinguished Scotchman,- de-
lineated the principal features
.of an existence whose
whole range had been honourable to the intel-
lectual repute of the children of Caledonia. In allu-
sion' however, to that portion of the masterly narra-
tive before us, which we have already specified as
possessing in itself a peculiar attraction, we mean the
portion relating to the rise and development of the
Edinburgh Review, we may be permitted to make
some few illustrative remarks, accompanied, for the
benefit of our rea,ters with certain suggestive quota-
tions. On the Ist of Icvember, IBG2, No. I. of the
Edinburgh Review appeared. Its publisher was the
"Scotch Mmeenas," Archibald Constable. Its first
suggestor or originator was Sydney Smith. Its first
editor was Francis Jeffrey. Its contributors were
(besides the two remarkable writers just mentioned)
Thomas Brown, Francis Horner, Henry Brougham,
John Thomson, Thomson, and Allen. The
youth of all these men of genius and ambition, it will
be remembered, provoked from old Richard Cumber-
land, the playwright, en attack upon them as " the
young gentlemen of the Edinburgh Review." The
present biographer of the editor of that famous pub-
lication enables us to contrast in a single sentence the
relative precocity of the powers and the scholarship
of the whole corps of those reviewers. He say s,l
"In 1802 Sydney Smith was in his 34th year,
Jeffrey was 29, Dr. Thomas Brown 24, Horner 24,
Brougham 23, Allen 32, Dr. John Thomson 38, and
Thomas Thomson 32 :" and of these remarkable
men there are now alone surviving Mr. Thomas
Thomson and, the youngest of the eight, Lord
Brougham. From the account given by Sydney
Smith of the first notion of the new quarterly perio-
dical we learn that the motto originally proposed by
him for the Review—
" '.linui neusam .nzeditamur avenrs
meaning, "'We culivate literature upon a little oat-
meal," was rejected for that more serious motto from
Publius Syrus which has since then adorned every
subsequent number of the blue-and-buff periodical—
" Judex damnatar cum nocens absolviturr
signifying literally " The judge is condemned when
the guilty is absolved." But we must turn from our
own. epitome of an epitome to the pages under consi-
deration, from, which we make the following brilliant
excerpt relating to the foundation of the Edinburgh:—
"W e are happy at being able to produce a stilt more
interesting and detailed statement ot the circumstances
attending the commencement cf the Review—a docu-
ment hitherto unpublished, and written by Lord Jeffrey,
at the request ot Mr. Robert Chambere, in November

1846. It is as follows:—' I cannot say exactly where
the proket of the Edinburgh Review was first talked of
among the projectors. But the first serious consulta-
tions about it—and which led to our application to a
publisher—were held in a small goose, where I then
lived, in Three/ouch Place (I forget the number). They
were atteutled by S. Smith, F. Horner, Dr. Thomas
Brown, Lord Murray, and some of them also by Lord
Webb Seymour, Dr. John Thomson, and Thomas
Thomson. The first three numbers were given to the
publisher—he taking the risk, and defraying the charges.
There was then no individual editor, but as many of us
as could be got to attend used to meet in a dingy rcom
of Willison's printing-office in Craig's Close, where the
proofs of our own articles were road over and remarked
utoo, awl attempts made also to sit in judgment on the
few manuscripts which were then of ired by strangers.
But we had seldom patience to go through with this; and
it was sound found necessary to have a responsible editor,
and the office was Pressed upon me. tbout the same
time Constable was told that he must allow ten guineas
'a
-sheet to the contributors, to which he at once assented;
and not long after the minimum was raised to sixteen
guineas, at which it remained during my reign. Two-
thirds of the articles were paid much higher—averaging,
I should think, from twenty to twenty-five guineas a
sheet on the whole number. I had, I might say, an un-
limited discretion in this respect, and must do the pub-
lishers the justice to say that they never made the
slightest objection.: Indeed, as We all knew that they
had (for a long time at least) a very great profit, they
probably felt they were at our mercy.
"'Smith was by far the most timid of the conre3eracy,
and believed that, unless our incognito was strictly
maintained, we could not go on a day; and this was his
object for making us hold our dark divans at Williscn's
office, to which he insisted on our repairing singly, and
by back approaches or different lanes! Bs also had so
strong an impression of Brougham's indiscretion and
rashness, that he would not let him be a member of our
association, though wished for by all the rest. He was
admitted, however, after the third number, and did more
work for us than anybody. Brown took ffence at some
alterations.Smith.had made in a trifling article of his in
the second number, and left us thus early; publishing at
the same time in a magezne the fact of his secession—a
step which we all deeply regretted, and thought scarcely
justified by the provocation. Nothing of the kind oc-
curred ever after.'"
Later on the writer to whom we are indebted for this
interesting transcript from a previously unpublished
manuscript by Lord Jeffrey affords us some notion of
the munificence of Mr. Constable, as a publisher, by
the subjoined mention of the emoluments received by
Francis Jeffrey as editor of the Edinburgh Review,
during a period of a quarter of a century :
" Constable," he 383 s, " remunerated the editor of the
Edinburgh Review on a scale of what must then have ap-
peared princely liberality. • From 1803 to 1809 a sum of
200 guineas was given for editing oach number. The ac-
count-books are missing for three years after 1809, but
from 1813 on to 1826 Mr. Jeffrey is credited for edit-
ing' 700/. a-number, so that his salary appears to have
been more than trebled:"
Speaking of the amount of the circulation of the
Edinburgh, the biographer of its editor here ob-
serves :

" The first number of the Edinburgh Review appeared
on the Ist of November, 1802. The greater part had
been written, and even printed, some months previous,
but it was suggested by Constable that the publication
should be deferred until the commencement of the win-
ter season. The number of copies printed was 750.
The demand, however, exceeded this limited supply:
750 more were thrown off, and successive editions still

ore numerous were called for. In 1808 the quarterly
circulation of the Review bed risen to about 9,000; and
it is believed to have reached its maximum about 1813,
when 12,000 or 13,000 copies were printed. Before the
poems of Byron and the novels of Scott had taken the
public, as it were, by storm, this success was unpre-
cedtnted."
And, remarking upon the splendid harvest which
sprouted up season after season, to be reaped down by
that one famous generation of critics, it is thus
specified :
" There was the poetry cf Crabte, of Campbell,
Worse_ Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth—types of
different sebovls; there was the gorgeous chivalry of
Scott, with his long filo of novels end romances, like an
endless procession of the representatives of all ages, con-
ditions, and countries; there was the Oriental splendour
and grace of Byron, alternating with his fierce energy and
gloomy philosophy—the still mere erring and extrava-
gant genius of Shelley—and tho youthful bloom of
Keates; there were the Liles of Maria Edgeworth, of
Miss Auitin, Galt, Wilson, and other not unworthy as-
sociates; the histories of Millar°, and the historical pic-
tures of Alacaulay; innumerable biographies rbf great
contemporaries who had gone before—the Sheridans,
Currane, Whberforces, and abets; innumerable books
of travels, that threw open the world to our curious
gaze; the gossipping treasures of Strawberry -hill end
other family repositories, that revived the wits, end
poets, and beauties of a past age; the diaries of Evelyn
and Pepys; the inimitable leiters of Cowper drawn from
their same d privacy; the policy and intrigues of courts
laid fare; the whole world of literature end the living
world of Europe tit47ed to their inmost depths. What
.rich materiale in the wars and politics of the times—in
the rise and fall c f Napoleon—in the overthrow of kings
and dynasties—in the perturbations even of the mighty
heart
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railways,W he t d sacnode
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such vast and interesting fields had the
_Edinburgh Be-
view,.
under tk9 guidance of its.