of going to sleep; and it was not his mother's wondering welcome he was thinking of, or the questions they would ask him, but a pleasant vision of his own room, with the fire burning in the grate, and the white fragrant sheets opened up and inviting him to rest. He felt half asleep when he crossed the threshold of the Rectory, and walked into the drawing-room to his mother, who gave a shriek of mingled delight and alarm at so unlooked-for an apparition. "John, you are ill; something has happened," Mrs. Mitford cried out, in an agony of apprehension. "I am only sleepy, mother," he said. That was all he could say. He sat down and smiled at her, and told her how tired he was. 66 Nothing particular has happened, except in my own mind," he added, when he came to himself a little," and not much even there. I am awfully tired. Don't ask me anything, and don't be unhappy. There is nothing to be unhappy about. You shall know it all tomorrow. But please, mother dear, let me go to bed." “And so you shall, my dear,” said Mrs. Mitford; but, oh, my own boy, what is the matter? What can I say to your papa? What is it? Oh, John, I know there is something wrong." "Only that I shall go to sleep here," he said, "and snore- which you never could endure. There is nothing wrong, mamma. I have come home to be put to bed." "Then you are ill," she said. "You have caught one of those dreadful fevers. I see it now. Your eyes are so heavy you can scarcely look at me. You have been in some of the cottages, or in the back streets where there is always fever; but Jervis shall run for the doctor, and the fire must be lighted in your room.' "The fire by all means, but not the doctor," said John. "I have no fever, mother; but I have walked twenty miles to-day, and I am very tired. That is all. I am not hiding anything: let me go up 66 back like a piece of bad money. But, 66 "Yes, my dear, go to bed that will be the best thing," she said, looking scared and miserable. And it went to John's heart to see the painful looks she gave him, though it was with a mixture of indignation and amusement that he perceived the new turn her thoughts had taken. He could not but laugh as he put his arm round her to say good-night. "It is not that either," he said; "you need not mistrust me. Staying in Camelford will not answer, mother. I must find some other way. And I have had a long walk. I am better now that my head is under my mother's wing. Good-night." "I will bring you your hot drink, my dear," said Mrs. Mitford. She followed him in her great wonder to the foot of the stairs, and watched him go up wearily with his candle, and then she returned and made the hot drink, and carried it up-stairs with her own hands. Was it all over? was he hers again?- her boy, with nobody else to share him? "If he only escapes without a heartbreak, I shall be the happiest mother in the world," she said to herself, as she went down stairs again, wiping tears of joy out of her eyes. Without a heartbreak! while John laid his head on the familiar pillow and felt as if he had "You are sure that is all? A fire in died. He had no heart any longer to Mr. John's room directly, Jervis-di- break. He must have something to do, rectly, mind; and some boiling water to and no doubt he would get up next day make him a bot drink he has caught a and go and do something, if it was only bad cold. Oh, my dear, you are sure that working in the garden; but as for the heart, is all? And, John, you have really, that which gives all the zest and all the really come home-to stay? You don't bitterness to life, that was dead. His life mean to stay?" was over and ended, and it seemed to him "I don't know what I mean," he said. as if he could never come alive again. "I have left Camelford. I have come stairs." From The Gentleman's Magazine. FRANCIS JEFFREY. shovel hat of an English bishop. But even these ambitious spirits were neither of them men of high birth or fortune, nor of influential connections; and were therefore, quite as much as Jeffrey, dependent upon themselves, upon their own wit and courage, for the attainment of any honours that might be in store for them. In these qualities, however, neither Henry Brougham nor Sydney Smith were particularly deficient; and when Sydney Smith proposed, in the hardy spirit which more or less animated all of them that they should set up a Review, even Horner, the sagacious Horner, the gentlest of the group, did not deprecate what they must all, nevertheless, have felt to be a rash, and perhaps ruinous, experiment. The proposal was adopted by accla mation. The author of the suggestion was at once installed as editor, and commissioned to look out for a publisher. up his quarters in these garrets in Buccleugh Place, abandoned the hope of earning even these two hundred guineas at the bar, and was now, in a spirit of sheer deIN the autumn of the year 1801 a group spair, thinking and talking of studying of young men, hardly, for the most part, Oriental literature, and seeking his fortune out of their cricketing days, happened to in India. The hopes of the rest of the meet together one evening in the chambers group were at least a trifle higher than this. of a Scotch barrister, on the eighth or ninth They still cherished the illusions of oneflat of a house in Buccleugh Place, Edin-and-twenty: one of them talking of the burgh, to talk of poetry, metaphysics, and horsehair and ermine of the Lord Chancelpolitics, over their Bobea. They were all lor, and another of the lawn sleeves and men of rare endowments, men of wit, of eloquence, of high spirit, and of ambition equal at least to their accomplishments. Except, however, in their own estimation of themselves, they were none of them particularly distinguished, unless, perhaps, it may be, as the heroes of those oyster-supper parties which then formed one of the pleasantest traits in the social life of the Athens of the North, where men met to eat and drink, to argue and joke, and to indulge now and then in one of the rarest privileges of friendship, by sitting still as stupid listeners. They had hardly a hundred pounds in hard cash between them, and I doubt whether they possessed sufficient credit to raise that sum on their joint note of hand. "I see no prospect," said the owner of the rooms, speaking with the frankness of friendship, "but that of dying the death of other great geniuses - by hunger." And he was one of the seniors of the party, a thin, spare man, of thirty, with keen and sharply-cut features, dark bushy hair, and sparkling black eyes, in physique not much bigger than an Aztec, but with an intellect of almost preternatural acuteness, a fluent tongue, well practised in the art of conversation, as the art of conversation was then understood in the metaphysical circles of Edinburgh, and possessing, as he thought, a turn for epic poetry. This was Francis Jeffrey; and he was just now at the very lowest ebb of fortune. He had swept the hall of the Court of Session in the wig and gown of one of the noblesse de la robe for seven years, without picking up sufficient fees to stock his office with law books. He You take up the first volume of the Edinhad tried his hand on authorship, at poetry, burgh Review, run your eye over its titleat law, and criticism, and had come to the page and its modest preface, and at once conclusion that, with great powers of indus- reproduce in your mind's eye, by a sort of try, he possessed no special qualification enchantment, that scene in Buccleugh Place. for anything. He had even failed in an There is Jeffrey's plainly-furnished study, attempt to establish himself as a newspaper fitted up complete for 71. 10s. There are grub in London, under the auspices of the his books and papers scattered about on his Scotch editor of the Morning Chronicle; desk, two or three old briefs, returned and, with no prospect but that of picking MSS., and a copy of the Monthly Review, up two hundred guineas a-year as a law re- containing his first published contribution, porter at the Scotch Bar, he had married a on Whiter's "Etymologicon Magnum; girl without a shilling in the world, taken and there, round his hearth, are three or This - as I need hardly, perhaps, addwas the origin of the Edinburgh Review, a publication which, though now superseded in most of its functions by the newspaper press, has in its day exercised a more powerful influence on English politics and English literature, and numbered in the ranks of its contributors more brilliant and distinguished writers than all its contemporaries put together. It is an old story, I know; but it is a story that can never pall in the telling, for it represents one of those incidents in the history of literature over which the imagination loves to linger, and to scan in all its detail. 66 four of the most active and powerful intel- self in the Historical and Critical Clubs by lects in the three kingdoms-Brougham, his fluency and acuteness; and when an as yet, perhaps, only half conscious of his essay of Principal Haldane's once fell into gigantic energies, but panting to do some- his hands for analysis, he dissected it with thing to distinguish himself; Sydney Smith, a precocious keenness and severity that with his jovial, beaming countenance, and startled his professor. The critical powers his restless gray eye sparkling with wit, the which were thus early brought into play only man in the group, as he used to boast, were developed by the most intense and with any plausible pretensions to good looks: systematic course of mental exercise that a and Horner, the knight of the shaggy eye- man of genius ever put himself through. brows, with the Ten Commandments all He analyzed and criticised every book he written in the lines of his face as legibly as read; every lecture he attended at Glasgow, they were on the tables of stone. It was a Edinburgh, and Oxford; the professors, and tempestuous night, and one can still hear their theories and styles; his own poems, the echo of the laugh over Smith's predic-essays, and translations; and to crown all, tion that they were brewing a far stronger be generally finished up by criticising, in storm in Jeffrey's garret. "What terms the sharpest terms, his own criticisms. are we to offer the publisher?" "What Most of these MSS. have been preserved; motto shall we adopt ?" "What is to be and, knowing what a hornet's nest Jeffrey the size of the Review?" were some of the brought about his ears as the editor of the first questions that had to be turned over; | Edinburgh Review, it is curious to look and they were all disposed of in an off-hand through them and see how he anticipated his manner. Smith, of course, suggested that censures, upon the Lake Poets, for instance, they should take as their motto, "Tenui by his criticism upon his own work. "I Musam meditamur avenâ"- We cultivate do not like this piece," he says of one of his literature on a little oatmeal! But this, as essays on Poetry; but of which of my prothey all acknowledged, was too near the ductions can I not say the same? Here, truth to be admitted; and Brougham took however, it is said with peculiar energy. up a copy of Publius Syrus" that happend The style is glaringly unequal; affectedly to lie on the table, turned over the leaves, plain in the beginning, oratorical in the end. of which none of them had read a syllable, The design is not one, and I am afraid the and hit upon the sentence that still adorns sentiments are not consistent." "This barthe covers of the old buff and blue-"Ju- barous version of the elegant Racine," he dez damnatur cum nocens absolvitur!" Of says of another piece," I feel myself bound course it was easier to find a motto than a to stigmatize with its genuine character, publisher. They offered the whole of the that as often as the proofs of my stupidity, first year's numbers to Constable as a pres- displayed on the foregoing pages, shall morent if he would take all the risks of printing tify my pride, I may be comforted by the and publishing. Considering the spirit of instance of candour set forth on this." He the writers, and the state of the law at that compiles an epitome of Lucretius, reads it, time, these risks were not the trifles they are and pronounces it a very disgraceful pernow. But the Prince of Publishers closed formance." "The poetical beauties of the with the offer, and the Reviewers set to original are entirely lost." He sketched out work with their pens. a speech on the Slave Trade on the model Except Jeffrey, none of these Edinburgh of Demosthenes. "On the model of DeReviewers had, I believe, written a line be-mosthenes!" he says, with a sneer, at the yond their college exercises; and all that close of his work. Admirably executed! Jeffrey had published had been one or two I wonder which of the characteristics of that trifling bits of criticism in the Monthly Re-orator I had it in my mind to imitate while view. But Jeffrey set to work with his task I covered these pages! There can hardly like a practised athlete. It was just the be anything more unlike the style, though sort of work that his previous training and at times it is evident I have been jumping course of reading had qualified him to at that too; and the solicitude with which I shine in. He had been a critic from his have avoided special narrative and indicradle. He possessed a fluent and vigor-vidual illustration is still more inconsistent ous pen, an intellect teeming with argu- with the instant peculiarity of that model. ments and illustrations upon almost every Now I knew all this when I avowed my inpossible topic of literary and metaphysical tention of imitation. What was it, then, discussion, and the most intensely critical that I designed to imitate? That perspicuspirit that perhaps ever animated a man of ity and simplicity of arrangement, that letters. Even when a mere boy at Glasgow direct and unremitting tendency to the sinUniversity, Jeffrey had distinguished him-gle object of the discourse, that naked and | sive and varied information, with a readiness of apprehension almost intuitive, with judicious and calm discernment, with a profound and penetrating understanding." undisguised sincerity of sentiment, that perpetual recurrence to acknowledged and important positions, which are, certainly, the most intrinsic and infallible marks of the orations of Demosthenes. No intermission Yet, of all the Edinburgh Reviewers, no of argument, no digressive embellishment, one in the first instance seems to have no ostentatious collocation of parts, no arti- thought less of the prospects of the Review ficial introduction, no rhetorical transition than the critic by whose genius it was, in is to be found in the pages of this accom- the course of a few years, to be developed plished and animated orator. He falls from into the most brilliant and powerful repreargument to argument with the most direct sentative of the Fourth Estate. His only and unaffected simplicity; and at every anxiety was to drag through the first year, transition from argument to exhortation, in order to relieve themselves of the bond and from exhortation to reproach, he holds they had entered into with Constable. He the one object of his discourse fully in his harps upon this point in his letters all own eyes, and in those of his auditors. through the year. "I have completely This I say by way of self-defence, that I abandoned the idea of taking a permanent may not be thought to have mistaken the share in the publication," he says, writing character of this writer, whom my imitation in June, 1802; and shall probably deevinces me to have understood so ill. In sert after fulfilling my engagements, which one respect it is similar to my model it is only extend to a certain contribution for sincere, and has not declined any part of the first four numbers. I suspect that the the argument that occurred. Towards the work itself will not have a much longer end it is most defective: the turgid break-life. I believe we shall come out in Octoing in upon one unawares. I never read ten ber, and have no sort of doubt of making pages on the question in my life. I pre-a respectable appearance, though we may tend, therefore, that this is original." This not, perhaps, either obtain popularity, or is the very style of the editor of the Edin- deserve it." burgh Review, an anticipation of the tone that marked some of the most exasperating of his criticisms. Of course the object of all these exercises, of all this self-analysis, was to acquire accuracy of thought, and ease and readiness of expression. And they served their purpose with remarkable success. The quickness of Jeffrey's perception, the rapidity of his thought, the fluency and flexibility of his tongue and his pen, were the marvel of his friends. They were like those of an improvisatore. He seemed to invent arguments, and to pour out views, and to arrive at conclusions instinctively." These, of course, were the very qualities that were needed for the work, and especially in the case of men circumstanced as the original band of Edinburgh Reviewers were, with nothing but the scraps of their time to devote to criticism; and Horner, the sagacious Horner, at once saw that if any of them were destined to derive honour from the Review, Jeffrey was The genius of that little man," he said, with characteristic generosity, mained almost unknown to all but his most intimate acquaintances. His manner is not, at first, pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast which almost irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and superficial talents. Yet there is not any man whose the man. "re He real character is so much the reverse. 66 How the original band of Edinburgh Reviewers, strengthened with two or three recruits Murray, Thompson, Seymour, and Playfair, for instance met together during the first year in a dingy room off Willison's printing office, in Craig's Close, with Sydney Smith in the chair, to read the proofs of their own articles, compare notes, and allot books, to criticise each other all round, and to sit in judgment on the few MSS. that were then offered by outsiders, I need not say; nor how Smith insisted, probably with a twinkle in his eye and an expression of well-feigned horror, that they should all repair to this dark divan, like a band of conspirators, singly and by back lanes, in order to throw off suspicion, and to preserve that incognito without which, as he professed to believe, it was impossi ble for them to go on a single day. These gatherings have been commemorated by a more graphic pen than mine; and a note, in passing, is enough to reproduce the whole scene. The first number of the Edinburgh Review made its appearance on the 10th of October, 1802. I note this date, with the particularity of the almanack, because it marks, and marks in white chalk, the commencement of one of the most prolific and brilliant periods in the history of English literature. Compared with the poets, historians, and wits of our own time, those of Queen Anne are simply creatures of gauze and prelude to his great work, in the course of spangles. But, with two or three excep- his morning strolls on the banks of the tions, none of the writers who flourished Derwent. Byron had made his first dash during the middle of the eighteenth cen- into poetry, under the influence of his tury were fit to mend the pens of Pope, passion for his cousin; but he was still “a of Addison, and of Swift. You may run wild mountain colt" at Harrow. Shelley them all off on your fingers-Gray, Thom- and Tom Moore were still in the nursery; son, Young, Collins, Fielding, Richardson, and Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, DisGoldsmith, Johnson, Gibbon, Hume, and raeli, and Bulwer Lytton, hardly as yet out Cowper; and of these how many outlived of their cradles. All the highest intellithe third quarter of the century? And of gence of the country, all its culture, all its those who did, how many outlived it only thought, all its wit, were to be found in the as drivellers and shows? These men had House of Commons; and perhaps at no between them given a fresh turn to the period, except the present, has the House thought and style of our literature; but they of Commons possessed a brighter constelbad none of them acquired that ascendancy lation of statesmen, orators, and wits than in matters of taste and style which Pope it did then. Outside the House of Comand Addison and Swift exercised in their mons there was not a single political writer day, and which has since been exercised of the slightest mark. The Times as yet by Scott, and Wordsworth, and Byron. was hardly known, except as a sheet of They founded no schools. They left no gossip and advertisements. The Morning successors. Their appearance was like the Post was principally distinguished by its false dawn of an Indian summer. It was jeux d'esprit upon the foibles of the day. followed by intense darkness. A period The Chronicle was rising into note by its of utter lifelessness supervened upon a pe- Parliamentary reports. But free and inderiod of silvered mediocrities. At the close pendent criticism on the political topics of of the century the first man of letters the day was not yet thought of. And these north of the Tweed was a sort of philo were the only newspapers of the slightest sophical fribble-Henry Mackenzie, the political or literary influence within the four author of the Man of Feeling." His seas. The provincial press was voiceless. companion in poetry was Joanna Baillie. The reviews were tame and spiritless, to a Crabbe and Bowles were the English coun- degree which is now almost beyond concepterparts of these brilliant northern lights. tion. The Gentleman still preserved some Here and there, of course, a few men of sparks of the spirit that distinguished it in original genius were rising to the surface; the days of Johnson and Cave. Its rivals, but, in 1802, the authors of " Marmion," however, did not possess even this. They of "Christabel," of "The Excursion," of were the organs of the booksellers, and they "Roderick Random," of The Pleasures puffed and sneered at rival publications all of Memory,” and “The Pleasures of Hope,' ,"round as they were ordered. In the midst were known only by the first trifles of their of this expanse of sand and scrub, the Edgenius. Scott had published his "Min-inburgh Review shot up, like one of those strelsy," Wordsworth his first volume of majestic palms which give a touch of preBallads," Coleridge his Ancient Marin- ternatural beauty to the deserts of South er," Southey his Thalaba." But that America. Its effect was magical; and its was all. Scott had not yet written a line publication is the first distinct sign of the of his "Lay" in the form in which we revival of the literary and political life of now have it, although, at the request of the nation- the first streak of light in the Lady Dalkeith, he had been turning over dawn of a long and brilliant day. in his mind a few verses of "a border Take up this number of the Edinburgh ballad in the comic style," to preserve a Review, and your first feeling is a sensation ghost story which she had heard over the of surprise that anyone should have done Fale log. Coleridge was translating" Wal- anything but go to sleep over it. The lenstein," and writing squibs for the Morn- articles which form the staple of the number ag Post. Southey was still puzzling out are very long, and, to tell the truth, not the mysteries ofCoke upon Littleton," particularly marked by any of those vivacias a preparation for the bar. Lamb was ties of style that afterwards distinguished trying his hand at his first farce, in a gar- the Edinburgh Review. A criticism on ret in Chancery Lane. Wordsworth, after " Mounier," from the pen of Jeffrey, stands years of hesitation, had just made up his first; that covers seventeen pages. Horner mind to make a poet's work the profession takes up twenty-eight pages with an analyof his life, taken his cottage at Grasmere, sis of Thornton's work on Paper Credit." thrown off a few sonnets, and planned the Brougham discusses the "Crisis of the 66 |