His own idea of the more grave critical
claims put forth by him in his early days, found
expression in later life. He had constantly
endeavoured, he said, to combine ethical
precepts with literary criticism. He had earnestly
sought to impress his readers with a sense,
both of the close connection between sound
intellectual attainments, and the higher
elements of duty and enjoyment; and of the just
and ultimate subordination of the former to
the latter. Nor without good reason did
he take this praise to himself. The taste
which Dugald Stewart had implanted in
him, governed him more than any other at
the outset of his career; and may often
have contributed not a little, though quite
unconsciously, to lift the aspiring young
metaphysician somewhat too ambitiously above
the level of the luckless author summoned
to his judgment seat. Before the third
year of the review had opened, he had
broken a spear in the lists of metaphysical
philosophy even with his old tutor, and with
Jeremy Bentham, both in the maturity of their
fame; he had assailed, with equal gallantry,
the opposite errors of Priestley and Reid;
and, not many years later, he invited his
friend Alison to a friendly contest, from
which the fancies of that amiable man came
out dulled by a superior brightness, by more
lively, varied, and animated conceptions of
beauty, and by a style which recommended a
more than Scotch soberness of doctrine with
a more than French vivacity of expression.

For it is to be said of Jeffrey, that when he
opposed himself to enthusiasm, he did so in
the spirit of an enthusiast; and that this had a
tendency to correct such critical mistakes as
he may occasionally have committed. And as
of him, so of his Review. In professing to go
deeply into the principles on which its
judgments were to be rested, as well as to take
large and original views of all the important
questions to which those works might relate,—
it substantially succeeded, as Jeffrey presumed
to think it had done, in familiarising the public
mind with higher speculations, and sounder
and larger views of the great objects of human
pursuit; as well as in permanently raising the
standard, and increasing the influence, of all
such occasional writings far beyond the limits
of Great Britain.

Nor let it be forgotten that the system on
which Jeffrey established relations between
his writers and publishers has been of the
highest value as a precedent in such
matters, and has protected the independence and
dignity of a later race of reviewers. He
would never receive an unpaid-for contribution.
He declined to make it the interest of
the proprietors to prefer a certain class of
contributors. The payment was ten guineas a
sheet at first, and rose gradually to double
that sum, with increase on special occasions;
and even when rank or other circumstances
made remuneration a matter of perfect
indifference, Jeffrey insisted that it should
nevertheless be received. The Czar Peter, when
working in the trenches, he was wont to say,
received pay as a common soldier. Another
principle which he rigidly carried out, was that
of a thorough independence of publishing
interests. The Edinburgh Review was never
made in any manner tributary to particular
bookselling schemes. It assailed or supported
with equal vehemence or heartiness the
productions of Albemarle-street and Paternoster-
row. ' I never asked such a thing of him but
once,' said the late Mr. Constable, describing
an attempt to obtain a favourable notice from
his obdurate Editor, ' and I assure you the
result was no encouragement to repeat such
petitions.' The book was Scott's edition of
Swift; and the result one of the bitterest
attacks on the popularity of Swift, in one of
Jeffrey's most masterly criticisms.

He was the better able thus to carry his
point, because against more potent influences
he had already taken a decisive stand.
It was not till six years after the Review
was started that Scott remonstrated with
Jeffrey on the virulence of its party politics.
But much earlier even than this, the principal
proprietors had made the same complaint;
had pushed their objections to the contemplation
of Jeffrey's surrender of the editorship;
and had opened negotiations with writers
known to be bitterly opposed to him. To his
honour, Southey declined these overtures, and
advised a compromise of the dispute. Some
of the leading Whigs themselves were
discontented, and Horner had appealed to him from
the library of Holland House. Nevertheless,
Jeffrey stood firm. He carried the day
against Paternoster-row, and unassailably
established the all-important principle of a
perfect independence of his publishers'
control. He stood as resolute against his friend
Scott; protesting that on one leg, and the
weakest, the Review could not and should not
stand, for that its right leg he knew to be
politics. To Horner he replied by carrying
the war into the Holland House country with
inimitable spirit and cogency. ' Do, for
Heaven's sake, let your Whigs do something
popular and effective this session. Don't you
see the nation is now divided into two, and
only two parties; and that between these stand
the Whigs, utterly inefficient, and incapable
of ever becoming efficient, if they will still
maintain themselves at an equal distance from
both. You must lay aside a great part of
your aristocratic feelings, and side with the
most respectable and sane of the democrats.'

The vigorous wisdom of the advice was
amply proved by subsequent events, and
its courage nobody will doubt who knows
anything of what Scotland was at the time.
In office, if not in intellect, the Tories were
supreme. A single one of the Dundases
named the sixteen Scots peers, and forty-three
of the Scots commoners; nor was it an
impossible farce, that the sheriff of a county
should be the only freeholder present at the