A volume of his essays, selected by himself, has been published, and it is well worthy of any reader's time and thought. The style is not picturesque and full, like Macaulay's, nor quaint and charming like Charles Lamb's, nor so varied as Hazlitt's, but it is luminous and pleasing and often felicitous.

He

Jeffrey always goes directly to the point, and holds it firmly. He never divagates, nor goes out of his way to add a grace to his manner. is usually downright and always dogmatic. His limitations are apparent, but within them he is an acute and often admirable critic.

In many respects he was a model editor, and could turn his hand to anything—a volume on Scotch metaphysics, French memoirs, English poetry or German fiction, and he possessed the audacity that made him afraid of no subject, and the egotism that convinced him he could adequately write upon it. He had a happy knack of touching up the articles sent in to him, often on timely or excellent subjects, but not always well or carefully written. A graceful sentence here and there or an apt quotation was all that was necessary to make them effective. Sometimes, however, he went far beyond the rights of an editor in this respect, and would change an

article to such an extent that its own father would

not know it. This "editorial hacking to right and to left" drew a growling protest from Carlyle on more than one occasion. Sydney Smith often laughed at these traits-though Jeffrey never "doctored" his articles-and used to say that all Jeffrey lacked was modesty to make him the most charming of men. But his industry and versatility were amazing.

As a critic Jeffrey meant to be impartial and just, but his range was too narrow and certain of his literary judgments upon his contemporaries have not been confirmed by time. "This will never do," is the famous sentence with which he began his critique on "The Excursion."

Undoubtedly it is a tedious poem and few readers have the courage to pursue that journey to the end, but the same may be said in these days of "Paradise Lost."

Wordsworth's poem, in spite of its dulness in places, "has done.”

So too Jeffrey's remark on "The White Doe of Rylstone" that it was "the very worst poem ever imprinted in a quarto volume" is exaggerated dispraise, though it is the undoubted fact that "The White Doe" is a very dull poem in many respects. But Jeffrey also lacked in appre

ciation of Wordsworth's shorter poems, such as the ode on "Immortality," the "Lines on Tintern Abbey," and the sonnets.

On the other hand he most unduly praised and overestimated Southey-whom he placed far above Wordsworth. The tiresome epics of Kehama " and "Roderick" were received by the Review with acclaim, but modern readers care nothing for them, and they are now seldom, if ever, read.

Jeffrey also gave Rogers and Campbell a higher place than Shelley, Keats, and Byron, but a later generation does not confirm this judgment.

But when we turn to the mass of his criticism it is sane and abiding. There is nothing better in English criticism than his essays on Swift, on Hazlitt's "Characters of Shakespeare," on Campbell's "Specimens of the British Poets," and on "Byron.". The essay on Swift is particularly fine and marked by a justice which had not then been accorded to the great Dean in a world still under the influence of Dr. Johnson.

Jeffrey also recognized the genius of Keats and set the stamp of his critical approval on those immortal poems that were so savagely assailed and vilified in the pages of the Quarterly and of Blackwood's Magazine.

Jeffrey's biography, by Lord Cockburn, gives

a very excellent portraiture and we get glimpses of him in many of the diaries, journals, and biographies of his contemporaries. Every testimony shows him to have been a man of warm heart, genial manners, and charitable disposition.

His hand was ever ready to help those who needed it and he often did this in secret and without solicitation. He offered an annuity to Carlyle when the latter was making his London plunge, though it was refused. A loan of fifty pounds was, however, accepted. of the few men Carlyle praised. When Hazlitt was oppressed by sickness and poverty Jeffrey sent him one hundred pounds and offered him another one hundred pounds if it were needed.

Jeffrey was one

He retained his youthful feelings into old age and the anecdote has been often told of how, when "The Old Curiosity Shop" was coming out and all England was crying over the sad fate of Little Nell, Jeffrey was one of the thousands of readers who wrote to Dickens praying him to spare the life of the heroine.

He lived a long, happy, and successful life, was raised to the Scottish bench, on which he sat until his death in 1850 in his seventy-seventh

year.

Few public careers have been more enviable,

SYDNEY SMITH,

HUMORIST AND REVIEWER.

(1771-1845.)

THE honor of being the first to propose the founding of the Edinburgh Review is usually accorded to Sydney Smith, and, as already stated, he was the editor of the first number.

Receiving the appointment of a curacy in Yorkshire, he was obliged to leave Edinburgh, and the editorship of the Review passed to Jeffrey, but for many years he was a constant contributor and its main support next to Jeffrey.

His contributions, like those of Jeffrey and Macaulay, have been published in a single volume, and, while they do not possess the literary art and fulness of Macaulay, they are extremely readable and interesting.

They have another value, too, as showing the advance in human progress in the last one hundred years. He has the merit of having been on