Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860Saintsbury, George
History
Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860
Saintsbury, George
English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
ludicrous duel, or beginning of a duel, with Moore, in which several
police constables did perform the friendly office which Mr. Winkle
vainly deprecated, and in which Jeffrey's, not Moore's, pistol was
discovered to be leadless. There is a sentence in a letter of Jeffrey's
concerning the thing which is characteristic and amusing: "I am glad to
have gone through this scene, both because it satisfies me that my
nerves are good enough to enable me to act in conformity to my notions
of propriety without any suffering, and because it also assures me that
I am really as little in love with life as I have been for some time in
the habit of professing." It is needless to say that this was an example
of the excellence of beginning with a little aversion, for Jeffrey and
Moore fraternised immediately afterwards and remained friends for life.
The quarrel, or half quarrel, with Scott as to the review of "Marmion,"
the planning and producing of the _Quarterly Review, English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers_, not a few other events of the same kind, must be
passed over rapidly. About six years after the death of his first wife,
Jeffrey met, and fell in love with, a certain Miss Charlotte Wilkes,
great-niece of the patriot, and niece of a New York banker, and of a
Monsieur and Madame Simond, who were travelling in Europe. He married
her two years later, having gone through the very respectable probation
of crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic (he was a very bad sailor) in a
sailing ship, in winter, and in time of war, to fetch his bride. Nor had
he long been married before he took the celebrated country house of
Craigcrook, where, for more than thirty years, he spent all the spare
time of an exceedingly happy life. Then we may jump some fifteen years
to the great Reform contest which gave Jeffrey the reward, such as it
was, of his long constancy in opposition, in the shape of the Lord
Advocateship. He was not always successful as a debater; but he had the
opportunity of adding a third reputation to those which he had already
gained in literature and in law. He had the historical duty of piloting
the Scotch Reform Bill through Parliament, and he had the, in his case,
pleasurable and honourable pain of taking the official steps in
Parliament necessitated by the mental incapacity of Sir Walter Scott.
Early in 1834 he was provided for by promotion to the Scotch Bench. He
had five years before, on being appointed Dean of Faculty, given up the
editorship of the _Review_, which he had held for seven-and-twenty
years. For some time previous to his resignation, his own contributions,
which in early days had run up to half a dozen in a single number, and
had averaged two or three for more than twenty years, had become more
and more intermittent. After that resignation he contributed two or
three articles at very long intervals. He was perhaps more lavish of
advice than he need have been to Macvey Napier, and after Napier's death
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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