Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey
[2] After attending the Royal High School for six years, he studied at the University of Glasgow from 1787 to May 1789, and at Queen's College, Oxford, from September 1791 to June 1792.
He was admitted to the Scottish bar in December 1794, but, having abandoned the Tory principles in which he had been educated, he found that his Whig politics hampered his legal prospects.
When he left for England the work devolved chiefly on Jeffrey, who, by an arrangement with Archibald Constable, the publisher, was eventually appointed editor at a fixed salary.
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.
Jeffrey's editorship lasted about twenty-six years, ceasing with the ninety-eighth number, published in June 1829, when he resigned in favour of Macvey Napier.
Great fluency and ease of diction, considerable warmth of imagination and moral sentiment, and a sharp eye for 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 Samuel Rogers and Thomas Campbell.
The affair led to a warm friendship, and Moore contributed to the Review, while Jeffrey made ample amends in a later article on Lalla Rookh (1817).
Before returning to Scotland, they visited several of the chief American cities, and his experience strengthened Jeffrey in the conciliatory policy he had advocated towards the States.
As an advocate his sharpness and rapidity of insight gave him a formidable advantage in detecting 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.
[3] 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.
A bust by Sir John Steell stands on the east wall of Parliament Hall, behind St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.
[5] Francis Jeffrey's first wife, Catherine Wilson, died 8 August 1805, aged only 28, and is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, with their infant child George (d.1802).
