JEFFREY, FRANCIS, a Scottish lawyer, jurist, essayist, and critic, born at Edinburgh, October 23, 1773; died at Craigcrook, near Edinburgh, January 26, 1850. He was educated mainly at the University of Edinburgh, and was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1794. He rose to eminence in his profession. In 1821 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; in 1829 Dean of the Faculty of Advocates; became a member of Parliament in 1831, and was elevated to the Scottish bench in 1834. Jeffrey is specially notable from his connection with the Edinburgh Review, which was started in 1802 by a few young men, mostly advocates, prominent among whom were Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham, Sydney Smith, and Francis Horner. In 1803 Jeffrey became the acknowledged editor of the Review, retaining the position until 1829, when he resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. MacVey Napier; but he continued to write for it at intervals until near the close of his life. The entire number of his papers in the Edinburgh Review was about two hundred, of which seventy-nine were selected for republication in 1846. His biography, written by Lord Cockburn, with a selection from his correspondence, appeared in 1852. A good example of Jeffrey's manner as a critic is to be found in the review of Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets, written in 1819.

THE PERISHABLE NATURE OF POETICAL FAME.

Next to the impression of the vast fertility, compass and beauty of our English poetry, the reflection that recurs most frequently and forcibly to us in accompanying Mr. Campbell through his wide survey is the perishable nature of poetical fame and the speedy oblivion that has overtaken so many of the promised heirs of immortality. Of near two hundred and fifty authors, whose works are cited in these volumes, by far the greater part of whom were celebrated in their generation, there are not thirty who now enjoy anything that can be called popularity-whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers, in the shops of ordinary booksellers, or in the press for republication. About fifty more may be tolerably familiar to men of taste or literature; the rest slumber on the shelves of collectors, and are partially known to a few antiquaries and scholars. Now the fame of a poet is popular, or nothing. He does not address himself, like the man of science, to the learned, or those who desire to learn, but to all mankind; and his purpose, being to delight and to be praised, necessarily extends to all who can receive pleasure, or join in applause. It is strange, and somewhat humiliating, to see how great a proportion of those who have once fought their way successfully to distinction, and surmounted the rivalry of contemporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. We have great deference for public opinion, and readily admit that nothing but what is good can be permanently popular. But though its vivat be generally oracular, its pereat appears to us to be often sufficiently capricious; and while we would foster all that it bids to leave we would willingly revive much that it leaves to die. The very multiplication of works of amusement necessarily withdraws many from notice that deserve to be kept in remembrance for we should soon find it labor, and not amusement, if we were obliged to make use of them all, or even to take all upon trial. As the materials of enjoyment and instruction accumulate around us, more and more must thus be daily rejected and left to waste: for while our tasks lengthen, our lives remain as short

as ever; and the calls on our time multiply, while our time itself is flying swiftly away. This superfluity and abundance of our treasures, therefore, necessarily renders much of them worthless; and the veriest accidents may, in such a case, determine what part shall be preserved, and what thrown away and neglected. When an army is decimated, the very bravest may fall; and many poets, worthy of eternal remembrance, have been forgotten, merely because there was not room in our memories for all.

By such a work as the Specimens, however, this injustice of fortune may be partly redressed-some small fragments of an immortal strain may still be rescued from oblivion—and a wreck of a name preserved, which time appeared to have swallowed up forever. There is something pious, we think, and endearing, in the office of thus gathering up the ashes of renown that has passed away; or, rather, of calling back the departed life for a transitory glow, and enabling those great spirits which seemed to be laid forever still to draw a tear of pity, or a throb of admiration, from the hearts of a forgetful generation. The body of their poetry, probably, can never be revived; but some sparks of its spirit may yet be preserved, in a narrower and feebler frame.

When we look back upon the havoc which two hundred years have thus made in the ranks of our immortals-and, above all, when we refer their rapid disappearance to the quick succession of new competitors, and the accumulations of more good works than there is time to peruse we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect which lies before the writers of the present day. There never was an age so prolific of popular poetry as that in which we now live; and, as wealth, population, and education extend, the produce is likely to go on increasing. The last ten years have produced, we think, an annual supply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry-poetry from the very first hands that we can boast of that runs quickly to three or four large editions and is as likely to be permanent as present success can make it. Now, if this goes on for a hundred years longer, what a task will await the poetical readers of 1919! Our living poets will then be nearly as old as Pope or Swift are at present, but there will

stand between them and that generation nearly ten times as much fresh and fashionable poetry as is now interposed between us and those writers; and if Scott, and Byron, and Campbell have already cast Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions are they themselves likely to be presented to the eyes of their great-grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appalling; and, we confess, we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens -the centenary of the present publication. There-if the future editor have anything like the indulgence and veneration for antiquity of his predecessor-there shall posterity still hang with rapture on the half of Campbell, and the fourth part of Byron, and the sixth of Scott, and the scattered tithes of Crabbe, and the three per cent. of Southey; while some good-natured critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than half prefer them to those by whom they have been superseded! It is an hyperbole of good-nature, however, we fear, to ascribe to them even those dimensions at the end of a century. After a lapse of two hundred and fifty years, we are afraid to think of the space they may have shrunk into. We have no Shakespeare, alas! to shed a neversetting light on his contemporaries; and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for two hundred years longer, there must be some new art of short-hand reading invented, or all reading must be given up in despair.