At the peace of Amiens, Jeffrey wrote thus to his friend Morehead, 7th October 1801: 'It is the only public event in my recollection that has given me any lively sensation of pleasure, and I have rejoiced at it as heartily as it is possible for a private man, and one whose own condition is not immediately affected by it, to do. How many parents and children, and sisters and brothers, would that news make happy? How many pairs of bright eyes would weep over that gazette, and wet its brown pages with tears of gratitude and rapture? How many weary wretches will it deliver from camps and hospitals, and restore once more to the comforts of a peaceful and industrious life? What are victories to rejoice at, compared with an event like this? Your bonfires and illuminations are dimmed with blood and with tears, and battle is in itself a great evil, and a subject of general grief and lamentation. The victors are only the least unfortunate, and suffering and death have, in general, brought us no nearer to tranquillity and happiness.' It may be well thus to bring the value of a peace before the public mind. Let those who only know of war from history, reflect how great must be the evils of a state the cessation of which gives such a feeling of relief.
Here is a curious passage about the society of Liverpool in 1813, and his love of his native country. We must receive the statement respecting the Quakers with something more than doubt, at least as to the extent to which it is true:—'I have been dining out every day for this last week with Unitarians, and Whigs, and Americans, and brokers, and bankers, and small fanciers of pictures and paints, and the Quaker aristocracy, and the fashionable vulgar, of the place. But I do not like Liverpool much better, and could not live here with any comfort. Indeed, I believe I could not live anywhere out of Scotland. All my recollections are Scottish, and consequently all my imaginations; and though I thank God that I have as few fixed opinions as any man of my standing, yet all the elements out of which they are made have a certain national cast also. In short, I will not live anywhere else if I can help it; nor die either; and all old Esky's[3] eloquence would have been thrown away in an attempt to persuade me that banishment furth the kingdom might be patiently endured. I take more to Roscoe, however: he is thoroughly good-hearted, and has a sincere, though foolish concern for the country. I have also found out a Highland woman with much of the mountain accent, and sometimes get a little girl to talk to. But with all these resources, and the aid of the Botanical Garden, the time passes rather heavily; and I am in some danger of dying of ennui, with the apparent symptoms of extreme vivacity. Did you ever hear that most of the Quakers die of stupidity—actually and literally? I was assured of the fact the other day by a very intelligent physician, who practised twenty years among them, and informs me that few of the richer sort live to be fifty, but die of a sort of atrophy, their cold blood just stagnating by degrees among their flabby fat. They eat too much, he says; take little exercise; and, above all, have no nervous excitement. The affection is known in this part of the country by the name of the Quaker's disease, and more than one-half of them go out so. I think this curious, though not worth coming to Liverpool to hear, or writing from Liverpool, &c.'
He was at this time about to sail for America, in order to marry a lady of that country. In a letter to Morehead, he recalls his old-fashioned country residence of Hatton, in West Lothian, and Mr Morehead's family now resident there. Tuckey was a nickname for one of Mr Morehead's daughters; Margaret was another. Till the last, he had pet names for all his own descendants and relatives, having no doubt felt how much they contribute to the promotion of family affection. 'I am almost ashamed of the degree of sorrow I feel at leaving all the early and long-prized objects of my affection; and though I am persuaded I do right in the step which I am taking, I cannot help wishing that it had not been quite so wide and laborious a one. You cannot think how beautiful Hatton appears at this moment in my imagination, nor with what strong emotion I fancy I hear Tuckey telling a story on my knee, and see Margaret poring upon her French before me. It is in your family that my taste for domestic society and domestic enjoyments has been nurtured and preserved. Such a child as Tuckey I shall never see again in this world. Heaven bless her, and she will be a blessing both to her mother and to you.' After touching upon a volume of poems which Mr Morehead had published—'If I were you, however, I would live more with Tuckey, and be satisfied with my gardening and pruning—with my preaching—a good deal of walking and comfortable talking. What more has life? and how full of vexation are all ambitious fancies and perplexing pursuits! Well, God bless you! Perhaps I shall not have an opportunity to inculcate my innocent epicurism upon you for a long time again. It will do you no harm.'
It will be a new fact to most of the admirers of Jeffrey, that he had in early life devoted himself to the writing of poetry. Of what he wrote between 1791 and 1796, the greater part has disappeared from his repositories. 'But,' says his biographer, 'enough survives to attest his industry, and to enable us to appreciate his powers. There are some loose leaves and fragments of small poems, mostly on the usual subjects of love and scenery, and in the form of odes, sonnets, elegies, &c.; all serious, none personal or satirical. And besides these slight things, there is a completed poem on Dreaming, in blank verse, about 1800 lines long. The first page is dated Edinburgh, May 4, 1791, the last Edinburgh, 25th June 1791; from which I presume that we are to hold it to have been all written in these fifty-three days—a fact which accounts for the absence of high poetry, though there be a number of poetical conceptions and flowing sentences. Then there is a translation into blank verse of the third book of the Argonauticon of Apollonius Rhodius. The other books are lost, but he translated the whole poem, extending to about 6000 lines.... And I may mention here, though it happens to be in prose, that of two plays, one, a tragedy, survives. It has no title, but is complete in all its other parts.... He was fond of parodying the Odes of Horace, with applications to modern incidents and people, and did it very successfully. The Otium Divos was long remembered. Notwithstanding this perseverance, and a decided poetical ambition, he was never without misgivings as to his success. I have been informed, that he once went so far as to leave a poem with a bookseller, to be published, and fled to the country; and that, finding some obstacle had occurred, he returned, recovered the manuscript, rejoicing that he had been saved, and never renewed so perilous an experiment.
'There may be some who would like to see these compositions, or specimens of them, both on their own account, and that the friends of the many poets his criticism has offended might have an opportunity of retaliation, and of shewing, by the critic's own productions, how little, in their opinion, he was worthy to sit in judgment on others. But I cannot indulge them. Since Jeffrey, though fond of playing with verses privately, never delivered himself up to the public as the author of any, I cannot think that it would be right in any one else to exhibit him in this capacity. I may acknowledge, however, that, so far as I can judge, the publication of such of his poetical attempts as remain, though it might shew his industry and ambition, would not give him the poetical wreath, and of course would not raise his reputation. Not that there are not tons of worse verse published, and bought, and even read, every year, but that their publication would not elevate Jeffrey. His poetry is less poetical than his prose. Viewed as mere literary practice, it is rather respectable. It evinces a general acquaintance, and a strong sympathy, with moral emotion, great command of language, correct taste, and a copious possession of the poetical commonplaces, both of words and of sentiment. But all this may be without good poetry.'
Having given little of Lord Cockburn in our extracts, we shall conclude with a passage of his narration which stands out distinctly, and has a historical value. It refers to Edinburgh in the second decade of the present century, but takes in a few names of deceased celebrities:—'The society of Edinburgh was not that of a provincial town, and cannot be judged of by any such standard. It was metropolitan. Trade or manufactures have, fortunately, never marked this city for their own; but it is honoured by the presence of a college famous throughout the world, and from which the world has been supplied with many of the distinguished men who have shone in it. It is the seat of the supreme courts of justice, and of the annual convocation of the Church, formerly no small matter; and of almost all the government offices and influence. At the period I am referring to, this combination of quiet with aristocracy made it the resort, to a far greater extent than it is now, of the families of the gentry, who used to leave their country residences and enjoy the gaiety and the fashion which their presence tended to promote. Many of the curious characters and habits of the receding age—the last purely Scotch age that Scotland was destined to see—still lingered among us. Several were then to be met with who had seen the Pretender, with his court and his wild followers, in the Palace of Holyrood. Almost the whole official state, as settled at the Union, survived; and all graced the capital, unconscious of the economical scythe which has since mowed it down. All our nobility had not then fled. A few had sense not to feel degraded by being happy at home. The Old Town was not quite deserted. Many of our principal people still dignified its picturesque recesses and historical mansions, and were dignified by them. The closing of the continent sent many excellent English families and youths among us, for education and for pleasure. The war brightened us with uniforms, and strangers, and shows.
'Over all this, there was diffused the influence of a greater number of persons attached to literature and science, some as their calling, and some for pleasure, than could be found, in proportion to the population, in any other city in the empire. Within a few years, including the period I am speaking of, the College contained Principal Robertson, Joseph Black, his successor Hope, the second Munro, James Gregory, John Robison, John Playfair, and Dugald Stewart; none of them confined monastically to their books, but all—except Robison, who was in bad health—partaking of the enjoyments of the world. Episcopacy gave us the Rev. Archibald Alison; and in Blair, Henry, John Home, Sir Harry Moncreiff, and others, Presbytery made an excellent contribution, the more to be admired that it came from a church which eschews rank, and boasts of poverty. The law, to which Edinburgh has always been so largely indebted, sent its copious supplies; who, instead of disturbing good company by professional matter—an offence with which the lawyers of every place are charged—were remarkably free of this vulgarity; and being trained to take difference of opinion easily, and to conduct discussions with forbearance, were, without undue obtrusion, the most cheerful people that were to be met with. Lords Monboddo, Hailes, Glenlee, Meadowbank, and Woodhouselee, all literary judges, and Robert Blair, Henry Erskine, and Henry Mackenzie, senior, were at the earlier end of this file; Scott and Jeffrey at the later—but including a variety of valuable persons between these extremities. Sir William Forbes, Sir James Hall, and Mr Clerk of Eldin, represented a class of country gentlemen cultivating learning on its account. And there were several, who, like the founder of the Huttonian theory, selected this city for their residence solely from the consideration in which science and letters were here held, and the facilities, or rather the temptations, presented for their prosecution. Philosophy had become indigenous in the place, and all classes, even in their gayest hours, were proud of the presence of its cultivators. Thus learning was improved by society, and society by learning. And unless when party-spirit interfered—which, at one time, however, it did frequently and bitterly—perfect harmony, and, indeed, lively cordiality, prevailed.
'And all this was still a Scotch scene. The whole country had not begun to be absorbed in the ocean of London. There were still little great places—places with attractions quite sufficient to retain men of talent or learning in their comfortable and respectable provincial positions, and which were dignified by the tastes and institutions which learning and talent naturally rear. The operation of the commercial principle which tempts all superiority to try its fortune in the greatest accessible market, is perhaps irresistible; but anything is surely to be lamented which annihilates local intellect, and degrades the provincial spheres which intellect and its consequences can alone adorn. According to the modern rate of travelling, the capitals of Scotland and of England were then about 2400 miles asunder. Edinburgh was still more distant in its style and habits. It had then its own independent tastes, and ideas, and pursuits. Enough of the generation that was retiring survived to cast an antiquarian air over the city, and the generation that was advancing was still a Scotch production. Its character may be estimated by the names I have mentioned, and by the fact, that the genius of Scott and of Jeffrey had made it the seat at once of the most popular poetry and the most brilliant criticism that then existed. This city has advantages, including its being the capital of Scotland, its old reputation, and its external beauties, which have enabled it, in a certain degree, to resist the centralising tendency, and have hitherto always supplied it with a succession of eminent men. But now that London is at our door, how precarious is our hold of them, and how many have we lost!'
We would just add one remark which occurs to us after reviewing the career of this eminent patriot and writer, and it may be of service to young men now entering upon the various paths of ambition. It is the fortune of many to be led by whim, prejudice, and other reasons, into certain tracks of opinion, which, as they do not lead to the public good, so neither do they conduce to any ultimate benefit for those treading them. How striking the contrast between the retrospect of a literary man, who has spent, perhaps, brilliant abilities in supporting every bad cause and every condemned error of his time, and necessarily found all barren at last, and the reflections of one like Francis Jeffrey, who, having embraced just views at first, continued temperately to advocate them until he saw them adopted as necessary for the good of his country, and had the glory of being almost universally thanked for his share in bringing about their triumph! Let young literary men particularly take this duly to heart, for it may save them from many a bitter pang in their latter days.