brilliant and incisive, of the author’s views on politics, social subjects, ethics or literature. These general principles and the novelty of the method ensured the success of the undertaking even after the original circle of exceptionally able men who founded it had been dispersed. It had a circulation, great for those days, of 12,000 copies. The period of Jeffrey’s editorship extended to about twenty-six years, ceasing with the ninety-eighth number, published in June 1829, when he resigned in favour of Macvey Napier.
Jeffrey’s own contributions, according to a list which has the sanction of his authority, numbered two hundred, all except six being written before his resignation of the editorship. Jeffrey wrote with great rapidity, at odd moments of leisure and with little special preparation. Great fluency and ease of diction, considerable warmth of imagination and moral sentiment, and a sharp eye to discover any oddity of style or violation of the accepted canons of good taste, made his criticisms pungent and effective. But the essential narrowness and timidity of his general outlook prevented him from detecting and estimating latent forces, either in politics or in matters strictly intellectual and moral; and this lack of understanding and sympathy accounts for his distrust and dislike of the passion and fancy of Shelley and Keats, and for his praise of the half-hearted and elegant romanticism of Rogers and Campbell. (For his treatment of the lake poets see Wordsworth, William.)
A criticism in the fifteenth number of the Review on the morality of Moore’s poems led in 1806 to a duel between the two authors at Chalk Farm. The proceedings were stopped by the police, and Jeffrey’s pistol was found to contain no bullet. The affair led to a warm friendship, however, and Moore contributed to the Review, while Jeffrey made ample amends in a later article on Lalla Rookh (1817).
Jeffrey’s wife had died in 1805, and in 1810 he became acquainted with Charlotte, daughter of Charles Wilkes of New York, and great-niece of John Wilkes. When she returned to America, Jeffrey followed her, and they were married in 1813. Before returning to England they visited several of the chief American cities, and his experience strengthened Jeffrey in the conciliatory policy he had before advocated towards the States. Notwithstanding the increasing success of the Review, Jeffrey always continued to look to the bar as the chief field of his ambition. As a matter of fact, his literary reputation helped his professional advancement. His practice extended rapidly in the civil and criminal courts, and he regularly appeared before the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, where his work, though not financially profitable, increased his reputation. As an advocate his sharpness and rapidity of insight gave him a formidable advantage in the detection of the weaknesses of a witness and the vulnerable points of his opponent’s case, while he grouped his own arguments with an admirable eye to effect, especially excelling in eloquent closing appeals to a jury. Jeffrey was twice, in 1820 and 1822, elected lord rector of the university of Glasgow. In 1829 he was chosen dean of the faculty of advocates. On the return of the Whigs to power in 1830 he became lord advocate, and entered parliament as member for the Perth burghs. He was unseated, and afterwards returned for Malton, a borough in the interest of Lord Fitzwilliam. After the passing of the Scottish Reform Bill, which he introduced in parliament, he was returned for Edinburgh in December 1832. His parliamentary career, which, though not brilliantly successful, had won him high general esteem, was terminated by his elevation to the judicial bench as Lord Jeffrey in May 1834. In 1842 he was moved to the first division of the Court of Session. On the disruption of the Scottish Church he took the side of the seceders, giving a judicial opinion in their favour, afterwards reversed by the house of lords. He died at Edinburgh on the 26th of January 1850.
Some of his contributions to the Edinburgh Review appeared in four volumes in 1844 and 1845. This selection includes the essay on “Beauty” contributed to the Ency. Brit. The Life of Lord Jeffrey, with a Selection from his Correspondence, by Lord Cockburn, appeared in 1852 in 2 vols. See also the Selected Correspondence of Macvey Napier (1877); the sketch of Jeffrey in Carlyle’s Reminiscences, vol. ii. (1881); and an essay by Lewis E. Gates in Three Studies in Literature (New York, 1899).
JEFFREYS, GEORGE JEFFREYS, 1st Baron (1648–1689),
lord chancellor of England, son of John Jeffreys, a Welsh country
gentleman, was born at Acton Park, his father’s seat in Denbighshire,
in 1648. His family, though not wealthy, was of good
social standing and repute in Wales; his mother, a daughter of
Sir Thomas Ireland of Bewsey, Lancashire, was “a very pious
good woman.” He was educated at Shrewsbury, St Paul’s
and Westminster schools, at the last of which he was a pupil
of Busby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge; but he left the
university without taking a degree, and entered the Inner
Temple as a student in May 1663. From his childhood Jeffreys
displayed exceptional talent, but on coming to London he
occupied himself more with the pleasures of conviviality than
with serious study of the law. Though he never appears to
have fallen into the licentious immorality prevalent at that
period, he early became addicted to hard drinking and boisterous
company. But as the records of his early years, and indeed of his
whole life, are derived almost exclusively from vehemently hostile
sources, the numerous anecdotes of his depravity cannot be
accepted without a large measure of scepticism. He was a
handsome, witty and attractive boon-companion, and in the
taverns of the city he made friends among attorneys with
practice in the criminal courts. Thus assisted he rose so rapidly
in his profession that within three years of his call to the bar
in 1668, he was elected common serjeant of the city of London.
Such advancement, however, was not to be attained even in
the reign of Charles II. solely by the aid of disreputable friendships.
Jeffreys had remarkable aptitude for the profession of
an advocate—quick intelligence, caustic humour, copious eloquence.
His powers of cross-examination were masterly;
and if he was insufficiently grounded in legal principles to become
a profound lawyer, nothing but greater application was needed in
the opinion of so hostile a critic as Lord Campbell, to have made
him the rival of Nottingham and Hale. Jeffreys could count
on the influence of respectable men of position in the city, such as
Sir Robert Clayton and his own namesake Alderman Jeffreys;
and he also enjoyed the personal friendship of the virtuous
Sir Matthew Hale. In 1667 Jeffreys had married in circumstances
which, if improvident, were creditable to his generosity
and sense of honour; and his domestic life, so far as is known,
was free from the scandal common among his contemporaries.
While holding the judicial office of common serjeant, he pursued
his practice at the bar. With a view to further preferment
he now sought to ingratiate himself with the court party,
to which he obtained an introduction possibly through William
Chiffinch, the notorious keeper of the king’s closet. He at once
attached himself to the king’s mistress, the duchess of Portsmouth;
and as early as 1672 he was employed in confidential
business by the court. His influence in the city of London,
where opposition to the government of Charles II. was now becoming
pronounced, enabled Jeffreys to make himself useful to
Danby. In September 1677 he received a knighthood, and his
growing favour with the court was further marked by his
appointment as solicitor-general to James, duke of York; while
the city showed its continued confidence in him by electing
him to the post of recorder in October 1678.
In the previous month Titus Oates had made his first revelations of the alleged popish plot, and from this time forward Jeffreys was prominently identified, either as advocate or judge, with the memorable state trials by which the political conflict between the Crown and the people was waged during the remainder of the 17th century. The popish plot, followed by the growing agitation for the exclusion of the duke of York from the succession, widened the breach between the city and the court. Jeffreys threw in his lot with the latter, displaying his zeal by initiating the movement of the “abhorrers” (q.v.) against the “petitioners” who were giving voice to the popular demand for the summoning of parliament. He was rewarded with the coveted office of chief justice of Chester on the 30th
