FRANCIS JEFFREY was not specially a metaphysician, but he studied metaphysics and wrote upon them, and so deserves a passing notice.He was the son of a depute clerk of the Court of Session, and was born on a " flat " in Charles Street, Edinburgh, October 23, 1773.At the age of eight, he entered (in an intensely excited state) the high school, at that time presided over by Dr.Adam, a scholar and a man of character; and at fourteen be entered Glasgow College with some idea of getting an Oxford exhibition, and there he was under Jardine, the professor of logic and rhetoric, of whom he says:" It is to him and his most judicious instruction Iowe my taste for letters, and any literary distinction I may since have been enabled to attain." A fellow-student, afterwards Principal Macfarlan of Glasgow, reports of him that in the first year " he exhibited nothing remarkable, {338} except a decree of quickness, bordering, as some thought, on petulance; " and another fellow-student, afterwards Principal Haldane of St.Andrews, describes him as a little black creature whom he had not observed, but was noticed by him as haranguing some boys on the college green against voting for Adam Smith as lord rector, and who was opposed by young Jeffrey because he was the candidate of the professors.In the second year he broke upon them very brilliantly as one of the most acute and fluent speakers, his favorite subjects being criticism and metaphysics.While at college be was most diligent in writing, in a terribly illegible hand, whole volumes of notes of his professors'
lectures, mixed with remarks of his own, and innumerable essays, most of them of a critical character.Francis Jeffrey was absolutely destined to be a critic.Any one might have seen this in these restless eyes, ever scintillating, and might have argued it from his quick and clear apprehension, from his searching spirit and his sound judgment on all subjects not requiring wide comprehension or original genius.On leaving Glasgow, he went home to the "dear, retired, adored little window " of his Lawnmarket garret, and again scribbled papers, sixty of which remained in the time of his biographer.Jeffrey was the genuine product of the lecture-hearing, essay-writing, debating-society privileges of the Scottish colleges.In 1791 he went up to Oxford, the instruction in which, as requiring quiet study and no writing, he did not enjoy so much as that of Glasgow, and he describes his fellow-students as "pedants, coxcombs, and strangers." He eagerly sought when in England to get rid of his Scotch pronunciation, and succeeded in acquiring a clipped and affected English.At the end of the academic year, he went back to Scotland, where he got into the heart of a body of clever and ambitious youths.His peculiar talents were specially called forth by the "Speculative Society," which had been instituted in 1764, and which reached its highest reputation at the time he attended it; and there he had to wrestle with such men as Francis Horner, Henry Brougham, Lord Lansdowne, and David Boyle, afterwards president of the Court of Session; and Henry Cockburn tells us how enraptured he was with speeches by him on national character, by Horner on the immortality of the soul, and Brougham on the power of Russia.I doubt much whether any of them threw {339} much light on these subjects; but they discussed them ably, and to the great delight of the aspiring youths of Edinburgh.His business consisted in attending law lectures, and his amusement in writing thousands of lines of poetry, the moon being the special object of his admiration among, natural beauties.
His ambition then was, " I should like, therefore, to be the rival of Smith and Hume." He joined conscientiously and eagerly the Whig party, which included such men as James Gibson (afterwards Sir James Gibson Craig), the Rev.Sir Henry Wellwood Moncreiff, John Allen, John Thomson in the medical profession, and Dugald Stewart and John Playfair in the college and in doing so he knowingly cut himself off from all hope of receiving government patronage.
We now come to the most important event in his life, the establishment of the " Edinburgh Review," the first number of which appeared in October, 1802.The account is given by Sydney Smith: " One day we happened to meet on the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buccleuch Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr.Jeffrey.I proposed we should set up a Review: