Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

Scottish journalist

• Born: October 23, 1773
• Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
• Died: January 26, 1850
• Place of death: Edinburgh, Scotland

As founder and editor of the Edinburgh Review, Jeffrey created a forceful instrument for critical analysis and the shaping of popular opinion, making him a unique force in early nineteenth century journalism. His review won readers through its courageous espousal of often unpopular causes, dissent from conventional wisdom, and sophisticated, readable style.

Early Life

Francis Jeffrey was the son of George Jeffrey. His mother, Henrietta Louden, was loving and gentle but died when Francis was thirteen. His father, a moody and pessimistic man, served as deputy clerk for the Court of Session. Jeffrey’s education, shaped by his father’s high Tory views, was conservative. He found his real education, however, among the bleakly beautiful hills of Scotland and the books of an uncle’s library. In 1791, he spent a year at Queen’s College, Oxford, but was miserable and returned to Edinburgh to study law.

At the age of twenty, Jeffrey was shy, slight of build, and romantic. He was barely five feet in height; his oval face was intensely expressive and his black eyes gleamed. It was a face, a friend noted, that reflected “honesty, intelligence and kindly fire.” Like many sensitive young men maturing during the opening years of a revolutionary era, Jeffrey saw himself as a poet and dramatist. Nevertheless, economic reality dictated his career, and he was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1794.

Despite his father’s Tory views and the strong patronage system of Scottish politics, Jeffrey had already made the great political transition. In 1793, in a youthful essay on politics, he adopted a lofty intellectual allegiance to the Whig Party, a loyalty that he never relinquished. He paid the price of conversion for nearly a decade. In Tory Scotland, legal fees and political opportunities were virtually nonexistent for young Whigs.

Jeffrey was married in 1801 and established his bride in a flat in Buccleuch Place. His wife, Catherine Wilson, was a cousin, and marriage gave the young Jeffrey a stable, happy home life. Around the young couple, a coterie of promising talent gathered. Edinburgh, long a center of learning, was filled with good conversation and conviviality. In 1802, a group of young men, including Sydney Smith and Henry Brougham, met at Buccleuch Place, and Smith proposed that they found a review. Jeffrey and the others had apparently discussed the idea for some time, but the expense of such a project was formidable. Nevertheless, their enthusiasm conquered their hesitation. Thus, almost casually, was born the Edinburgh Review, one of the foremost journals of the modern era.

Life’s Work

The first issues of the Edinburgh Review were hastily put together in a dreary printing office off Craig’s Close by a committee of friends, none of whom could have predicted its enormous popularity. Almost immediately, however, the sales startled the young contributors. In an era when a few hundred copies counted as a good circulation, the Edinburgh Review achieved a circulation of twenty-five hundred within six months. Clearly, financial success would have to breed greater efficiency. Although the witty Sydney Smith had acted as self-appointed editor of the earliest issues, he had little organizational ability. Moreover, although he remained a popular and eloquent essayist, Smith lacked intellectual depth. Within a year of its establishment, Jeffrey was appointed the official editor of the review.

One of his first and most important decisions was to pay contributors. Not yet thirty, Jeffrey had struggled with near-poverty for years. He recognized that a successful journal was often doomed after an original success when bright young authors had to choose between art and earning a livelihood. His own meager law practice made his income of fifty pounds an issue particularly precious. Others in the circle, he knew, would drift away to the dazzle of London. Generous payment for articles would hold young talent and attract proven authors. It was a wise decision and would be widely copied by later publications.

More important, Jeffrey set out to make the Edinburgh Review interesting, provocative, and authoritative. Although journalism traced its roots back to the formidable diatribes and satire of Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, it remained, like acting, a somewhat suspect profession. Jeffrey constantly worried about the possible harm to his reputation or legal career from his editorship. The challenge and the work proved, however, irresistible. Under his direction, the Edinburgh Review continued to present the strongest essays on important issues as well as the most critical reviews of books and art in Great Britain. As a result, its circulation continued to expand, and by 1814 it was being read by a phenomenal thirteen thousand people.

Much of the Edinburgh Review’s popularity resulted from Jeffrey’s ability to persuade others to work with him creatively. Although the original articles proudly proclaimed devotion to Whig, or liberal, principles, Jeffrey steered a moderate course politically. As a result, the early years of publication attracted writers of the stature and popularity of Sir Walter Scott . Scott, a staunch Tory, not only wrote several articles but also encouraged friends such as Robert Southey to consider the review. Nevertheless, the times were chaotic and dangerous and journalistic partisanship all too common. Increasingly, the Edinburgh Review reflected the Whig interpretations of events. Although kind and diffident with his family and friends, Jeffrey was a tiger when it came to his convictions.

In 1808, Jeffrey wrote, with minor assistance from Brougham, the famous Cevallos article. It was a scathing attack upon the Iberian campaign and British governmental policies in Spain. Scott was so incensed that he dropped his subscription and encouraged the founding of a rival publication, the Quarterly Review . Nevertheless, Jeffrey continued to express his opposition to the Napoleonic Wars and to the later war with the United States in 1812. Equally unpopular was his courageous support for Catholic emancipation.

The tone of the review after the Cevallos article became more openly liberal, and Jeffrey took pride in the quality of the discussion and the spread of liberal philosophy. In 1832, when the Reform Bill passed, he believed strongly that the Edinburgh Review for three decades had prepared the public for the great change in politics.

Ironically, it was not Jeffrey’s politically controversial opinions that endangered his life, but rather his equally passionate views of poetry. Jeffrey, although an outstanding editor, was not always a good judge of poetic quality. A product of the Scottish Enlightenment in training, he disliked intensely the early outpourings of the “Lake Poets.” In the fifteenth issue of the review, he attacked Thomas Moore’s Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806). Jeffrey considered them immoral and depraved. An indignant Moore challenged Jeffrey to a duel in 1806.

In the end, the meeting of editor and poet proved more ludicrous than dangerous. Moore had hastily borrowed pistols from a friend who in turn had reported the affair to the famous Bow Street Runners. As the two men tried to “do or die” on the field of honor, the police intervened and hauled both of them off to court. When the diminutive Jeffrey and the lanky Moore were questioned, it turned out that Jeffrey had intentionally not even loaded his pistol. He was willing to die for his views but not kill for them. Lord Byron later erroneously imputed the unloaded pistol to Moore.

As a result of their tumultuous introduction and their ignominious visit to the police, the two men wound up close friends. Moore later published articles in the Edinburgh Review and in 1825 visited Jeffrey in Scotland.

Although touched by the amusing and the occasionally absurd, Jeffrey’s personal life had taken a tragic turn. Within a month in 1805, he lost his young wife and his favorite sister. His only child had died two years earlier. In late 1810, a French refugee family, related to the controversial parliamentarian John Wilkes, visited Jeffrey. On their voyage to the United States, they were accompanied by their niece Charlotte Wilkes. Jeffrey fell deeply in love but realized the depth of his feelings belatedly. By that time, Miss Wilkes had arrived in the United States. Despite the fact that he was thirty-seven years old and prone to seasickness, and despite the fact that the War of 1812 had begun, Jeffrey resolved, like a Scottish Lochinvar, to find Wilkes. Calling on friends to take over the review for the interim, Jeffrey set sail for New York. His daring won Wilkes’s hand.

After his marriage in 1813, Jeffrey traveled in the United States and met with President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe. Even before the outbreak of the War of 1812, he had been highly critical of British foreign policy in North America, but he was conscientious in explaining British sentiments and official policies to Madison and Monroe. His genuine concern for the young nation expressed frequently in subsequent review articles did much to dissipate British ire following the war. In addition to his editorial work, Jeffrey carried on a growing legal practice. He developed a rapport with Edinburgh juries that, combined with a passion for detail, real charm, and kindness, won his clients’ acquittal. By 1820, he was considered one of Scotland’s finest criminal attorneys. In 1830, Whig victories enabled the party to recognize his years of service with an appointment as lord advocate.

Jeffrey’s new position required him to enter Parliament in the rough-and-tumble elections of 1830-1832. Jeffrey was fifty-seven and in poor health. He soon found the seemingly endless committee meetings and innumerable details of the reform bills to be exhausting. In 1834, he retired from Parliament to accept a judgeship in the Court of Sessions, becoming, on June 7, 1834, Lord Jeffrey.

Gradually, his legal and political life diverted Jeffrey from the Edinburgh Review. In 1829, he resigned from the journal. MacVey Napier succeeded him as editor. Although he occasionally contributed articles to the review after his return from Parliament, his judicial work took up much of his time. In addition, his home near Edinburgh, Craigcrook, and its gardens became an absorbing interest. In his old age, he served as a mentor to younger authors such as Charles Dickens, whose novels he loved, and as a stylistic consultant to fellow Whigs such as Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose early volumes he proofread. He died on January 26, 1850, and was buried in the Dean cemetery near Edinburgh.

Significance

Lord Jeffrey’s contributions as editor to the Edinburgh Review made him a unique force in early nineteenth century journalism. The review soon captured a popular readership by the courage of its espousal of often unpopular causes, its dissent from conventional wisdom, and its sophisticated, readable style.

Everything that went into the early review was crafted and polished by Jeffrey, sometimes to the anger or dismay of the contributor. His legal logic, vivid style, and intellect made him a great and feared critic, yet he was quick to see both sides of an issue, generous to political foes, and swift to detect and encourage talent. Although the Edinburgh Review under Jeffrey soon faced competition from journals as renowned as the Quarterly Review and Blackwood’s, its influence was unrivaled during the early decades of the century. Jeffrey’s passionate devotion to liberal politics, combined with his love of literature, caused an unusual tension in analytical criticism. It created an entirely new tone in periodical literature, combining philosophical, political, and literary topics not only to entertain but also to educate a readership. Jeffrey had created in large measure a revolution in the scope and purpose of journalistic literature.

Bibliography

Carlyle, Thomas. Reminiscences. Edited by James Anthony Froude. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1881. Contains an excellent and penetrating sketch of Jeffrey, who admired Thomas and Jane Carlyle intensely. Carlyle gives a fine description of Jeffrey’s appearance, character, and legal prowess in criminal cases.

Cockburn, Henry Thomas, Lord. Life and Correspondence of Lord Jeffrey. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1852. This voluminous work, written shortly after Jeffrey’s death, is dated but still essential to any study of his career. The letters give a sense of Jeffrey’s critical acumen.

Demata, Massimiliano, and Duncan Wu, eds. British Romanticism and the “Edinburgh Review”: Bicentenary Essays. New York: Palgrave, 2002. A collection of essays reassessing the Edinburgh Review’s significance and influence during its first two hundred years of publication. The essays contain numerous references to Jeffrey.

Houghton, Walter Edwards, ed. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966. An invaluable work on nineteenth century journals. It deals with the early years of the Edinburgh Review (1802-1823) in the context of the entire publication.

Jeffrey, Francis. Contributions to the “Edinburgh Review.” 4 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844. A selection of essays that indicates the quality and scope of Jeffrey’s work. It includes his famous essay on beauty that appeared in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Reid, Stuart J. The Life and Times of Sydney Smith. London: S. Low, Marston, 1884. Contains a discussion of the founding of the Edinburgh Review and the friendship between Smith and Jeffrey, as well as some useful correspondence.