The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-29 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1850.

A brilliant intellect has become extinguished in the
demise of one of the most celebrated men, who, by
their writings, have, in our days, adorned the annals
of English Literature. Although the illustrious
critic, whose sudden dissolution was briefly announced
in our impression of yeeterday evening, had attained
the ripe age of seventy -seven years before the day of
his departure, it is impossible to receive the intelligence
of his decease without experiencing some feelings of
regret, or without giving utterance to some words of
subdued and unaffected lamentation. No age, how-
ever abounding with men of distinguished genius, can
witness unmovel the disappearance of a mind so com-
prehensive in capacity, so agile in versatility, so
subtle in sensibility. Especially have we reason
to mourn ever the death cf a man thus
gifted, when we remember that but one solitary
representative is left of that glorious group (five in
number) in the midst of which the departed essayist
shone bright beside the brightest. A single member
of that renowned circle alone remains to uq, the un-
dimmed splendour of whose abilities still continue,
to afford the fittest attestation of the character of his
remarkable contemporaries. Sustained, however, as
that eminent genius cannot fail to be, in the midst of
all his severed recollections, by a consciousness of the
full appreciation of his great powers by the more
discriminating observers of this generation ; consoled,
in the midst of all his breaking bonds of friend-
ship, as he must inevitably be, by the abmb-
ing interest • of his profound and scientific re-
searches into the abstruser branches of natural
philosophy (researches sufficiently important to
elicit the eulogiums of the astronomer ARAGO)—
he cannot fail at times to lament over the departure
of those days of his auspicious and memorable youth,
when his dearest emotion?, his most ardent sympa-
thies, his loftiest aspirations, were shared in, and re-
sponded to, by the kireired emotions, sympathies, and
aspirations of his four noble competitors for celebrity.
He must sometimes at least sigh for the return of that
golden morning of his career when his thoughts
communed with theirs in the city rendered classic by
their presence. Particularly at this moment, when
death must have revived a thousand of his most
cherished associations, he will remember, doubtless,
with sorrow the successive disappearance of those
congenial and contemporary intellects the astute
perceptions and varied accomplishments of JAMES
MACKINTOSH ; the depth and lucidity of intelligence
acquired by the indefatigable FRANCIS lionNEE ; the
Hudibrestic and sarcastic jocoseness of that true dis-
ciple of PANTAGRUEL, SYDNEY SMITH ; and " last,
but not least " among them all, the grace, the wit,
the eloquence, the fervour, the acumen, the erudition,
and the philosophy which characterised the genius of
the mcst recently deceased—FßANClS JEFFREY.
Elsewhere, in this evening's impression of our
journal, will be found a brief but agreeable sketch
of the life of this distinguished ornament of the
legal and literary professions —a sketch which
will serve as the outline or ground-work
for a future and more detailed biography. From
that rapid retrospect of the principal incidents in his
career it will be seen that no inconsiderable amount
of labour was accomplished by him between the dates
constituting the alpha and omega of his existence,
between the morning of his birth, in 1773, on the
233 of October, and the evening of his death in 1850,
on the 26th of January. As soon after the time
when his eyes first opened to the light (in that por-
tion of the Old Town of Edinburgh called the Lawn
Market) as the perceptive and reflective faculties
began to manifest themselves, his education com-
menced at the High School, and, as the record of
his scholastic progress sufficiently indicates, pro-
ceeded from that period with extraordinary
rapidity. Insomuch so that having remained a
student at Glasgow University during four years,
beginning with 1787 and terminating with 1791, in
the latter year he entered Queen's College, Oxford,
and in 1794 was formally called to the bar of Scot-
land. Although subsequently to the assumption of
that position he maintained for forty years his cha-
racter as an advocate, and during the latter portion of
that interval acquired a large and increasing renown
through his successes in forensic oratory, the real
field of his abilities was elsewhere, his true and most
memorable achievements were altogether of a different
description. Those achievements were wrought by
the pen, not by the voice : that field was not dis-
coverable in the law courts, but in literature. It is with
the opening of his literary enterprises indeed that the
history of FRANCIS JEFFREY actually commencee.
Until-then the riches of his critical aptitude had been
frittered away in desultory conversations, the scope
of his fluent and rhetorical genius had only evidenced
itself in discussions carried on at the " Select
Society," or the " Speculative Society,"' or similar
debating associations. With the dawn of 1802,
however, dawned also the intellect of JEFFREY ; for
in that year appeared the first number of the re-
nowned periodical with which his abilities as a
critic have become for ever associated, we mean ne-
cesarily the foremost among all serial publications
—the Edinburgh Review. Although the four
opening numbers cf that great quarterly
were superintended by the reputed originator of the
speculation, the witty and earnest "PETER PLYAL
LEY," FRANCIS JEFFREY must always be regarded as ,
44-first editor, llis labours in that capacity beginning

* Financial Reform : a Letter to the Citizens of
Glasgow, by John Macgregor, M.P. London; James
Ridgway, riccadirly.