JEFFREY, FRANCIS, was born in Edinburgh, on the 23rd or October 1773, in the upper part of a house now marked No. 7, Charlee-street, George-square. His father, George Jeffrey, was one of the depute clerks of the Court of Session ; his mother, Henrietta Loudoun, was the daughter of a Lanarkshire Etrmer. They had a rather numerous family, Francis being tho eldest son, though not the eldest child. In the year 1781 he was sent to High School of Edinburgh, where he was for four years under the care of one of the under-masters, Mr. Luke Fraser—a worthy man, whose celebrity depends on he having, in three successive classes, three pupils no less famous than Walter Scott, Jeffrey, and Brougham. Jeffrey's class fellows, 'obit° he was under Mr. Fraser, used afterwards to remember him as "a little, clever, anxious boy, always near the top of his class, and who never lost a place without shedding tears" From lerasser's class, he pa-sed, in regular course, in the year 1785 to that of the rector, Dr. Adam, the author of the Roman Antiquities,' and noted alike for hie scholarship and the simple integrity of his character. Jeffrey, as well as Scott, used afterwards to speak with the highest re-pect of this good old man. It was in the winter of 1786.87, while still attending Dr. Adam's class, that Jeffrey, then a boy in his four teenth year, saw the poet Burns. He was walking along the High street, when ho was attracted by the appearance of a man on the pavement, who, from his dress and manner, seemed to be from the country, but in whose looks otherwise there was something uncommon. It was Burns, then on his filet visit to Edinburgh; and as "the little black fellow " was gazing at him, some one standing at a shop-door near said to him " Ay, laddie, you may weal look at that man; that's Robert Burns " Jeffrey never saw Burns again ; but he used to dwell with pleasure on the incident.
In the winter of 1787, Jeffrey (his mother being then just dead) was sent to the University of Glasgow; his father for some reason or other preferring that university to the University of Edinburgh. Here he attended tho Greek classes under Young, the logic class under Jardine (then recently appointed, bat already with something of that reputa tion as a teacher which he afterwards maintained and increased), and the moral philosophy class, then taught by a Professor Arthur, the successor of the philosopher Reid. That he did not also attend the law class, then taught by the able and speculative Millar, is accounted for by the fact that his father, who was a strict and rather gloomy man, was a bigoted Tory, and likely to regard the teaching of a Whig like Millar with suspicion. Jeffrey's class-fellows at Glasgow remem bered him afterwards as being there one of the cleverest of the younger students, somewhat "petulant" in his manners, and conspicu ous for a little black moustache which he persisted in wearing on his upper lip in spite of remonstrance and ridicule. It was in the debating societies of the college however that he first broke on his companions of that day in the full display of his superiority. He was even then a fluent and rapid speaker, a ready and ingenious writer, and a merciless critic of the essays and opinions of others. It was at this time also that he commenced the habit of serious and versatile reading, and of note-taking and essay-writing for the purposes of private culture. This habit he kept up assiduously after his revival from Glasgow back to Edinburgh in the year 1789. In his little room in his father's house in the LaWnroarket, he read and wrote conti nually, filling quires of manuscript with notes and abstracts from books and miscellaneous dissertations of his own. His biographer Lord Cockburn gives a list of 31 different manuscript essays on literary and metaphysical topics, all written by him between November 1789 and March 1790. About the same time he attended the Scotch law and the civil law classes in the University of Edinburgh. In 1791 he went to Queen's College, Oxford, intending to complete his studies there. While at Oxford he was very solitary and melancholy ; he disliked the place; and after nine months was overjoyed to leave it. "Except praying and drinking," he wrote to a friend during his stay at Oxford, "I see nothing that it is possible to acquire in this place." On his return to Edinburgh in July 1792, his friends found that his stay at Oxford had altered him in at least one thing : he now no longer spoke in his former natural Scotch accent, but in a sharp, and, as some thought it, an affected English style of pronunciation. "Jeffrey," Lord Holland used afterwards to say, "had lost his broad Scotch at Oxford, but be had gained only the narrow English." Very soon
however his friends, who knew his real intellectual force and the genial goodness of his heart, became reconciled to his now style of speech ; and Lord Cockburn certiflea that to his latest years, Jeffrey had never really forgotten his native Doric, but could talk broad Scotch, and mimic even the provincial dialects of his countrymen when he chose. He had a strong relish, too, for Scottish anecdotes and humours. For a while after his return from Oxford, it seemed uncertain whether he might not be called upon by his father to give up the law and become a merchant ; but the legal profession was at last definitely resolved on. In 1792-93 he again attended tho law classes of Edinburgh University under Professors Hume and Wyld, as also the class of history under Alexander Tytler. Strange to say, he did not attend Dugald Stewart —Stewart's Whiggiam being an objection in his father'a eyes. On the 12th of December 1792, he became a member of the famous Speculative Society, then at the height of its fame; and here he first formed the acquaintance of Scott and many other young men of the Edinburgh act, who afterwards rose to distinction as lawyers, literary men, and statesmen. For several years Jeffrey was ono of the orna ments of this society, reading essays in his turn, and figuring with peculiar echlt in almost every debate. Indeed, it used afterwards to be said of Jeffrey, as well as of Horner and Brougham, that never in their most glorious days did they speak better than they did when young members of the Speculative. Already in these debates, Jeffrey, despite the Toryism of his father, was a Whig of the keenest and most pronounced order. Meanwhile he continued his habits of various, though desultory reading, and of incessant composition in private on all sorts of subjects. He had even a dream at this time that ho was born to be a poet ; and he wrote, his biographer tells us, a great quan tity of verse. Of this verse, Lord Cockburn says, from inspection, that though "viewed as mere literary practice it is rather respectable," it could never have been accepted as poetry. He adds that in one constitutional quality of the poet, Jeffrey was certainly highly endowed —the love of external nature and the delight in beautiful scenery. On the 16th of December 1794, Jeffrey was called to the Scottish Bar. It was the time when Scotland was politically stagnant under the so-called Mindss reign; when the whole country was managed by cor ruption and patronage; when such a thing as the free expression of political opinion by meetings or through the press was unknown; when three-fourths of the entire million and a half who then constituted the population of Scotland were Tories, at the absolute bidding of Dundas; and when such few leading Whigs as there were in Scotland were chiefly to he found in Edinburgh, where they were watched and laid under a kind of social ban. Of these Whigs the most zealous were lawyers, bold enough to avow their principles even at the expense of the hostility of the Bench, and the loss of all hope of preferment. The party however was increasing; and year after year young lawyers of talent were attaching themselves to it. Among these young Whig lawyers, beating their heels idly in the Parliament House with no chance of briefs, and amusing themselves-by social meetings at each other'a lodgings and by essays and debates in the Speculative, Jeffrey was confessedly one of the chief, if not the chief. His prospects of practice were ao small that for a time he had ample leisure for reading and literature. He began to contribute to the Monthly Review' and other periodicals; and for a time contemplated the pursuit of literature professionally. In 1800-1 he attended Dugald Stewart'a lectures on political economy. At last, in November 1801, his talents as a pleader had procured him an income verging upon 100/. a year ; and on this, with what other resources he had, he ventured to marry his second cousin, Catherine Wilson, of St. Andrews. The young couple took up their residence in a modestly furnished third story of the house No. 18, Buccleugh-place; and it was here, at a convivial meeting of Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Horner, and Brougham, that the Edinburgh Review' was projected. Smith was the originator of the idea, but the others immediately concurred, and Constable, a rising bookseller, became the publisher. The first number of the new journal saw the light on the 10th of October 1802 ; that number and two more were edited by Smith; but, on Smith's return to London, the entire manage ment devolved on Jeffrey.