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zeal of four or five writers, but, as in the subsequent period, its character has been sustained and modified chiefly by one ingenious individual, it is impossible to consider the work except in the most intimate connexion with him, and all the peculiarities of his habits, prejudices, and genius.

Mr Jeffray is an advocate before the parliament of Edinburgh,^[1] and is supposed to be surpassed by few of his brethren, either in the dexterity or eloquence of his judicial pleadings. I lament extremely that I myself have never heard him speak, but I suppose the barrister very nearly resembles the reviewer; and if this be so, I have no doubt that the client, whose interest it is that the minds of his judges should be perplexed by the intricacies of subtle argument, or dazzled by the splendour of sophistical declamation, cannot place his fee in better hands than those of Mr Jeffray. His writings manifest, indeed, the most complete possession of all those faculties which form the armour of a pleader. He can open his case in such a way as to make you think favourably of the blackest, or suspiciously of the fairest cause. He can throw a radiance of magnanimity over the character of a murderer, or plant, if it so pleases him, the foulest weeds of distrust and envy round the resting place of a saint. He can examine his witnesses with so much dexterity as to make them reveal every thing he wishes to know, and preserve inviolable silence respecting whatever it is his interest to have concealed. The question with him is never, which side is the right, but which side he has undertaken to defend. He never shews any keen feeling in his case, till he has become, as it were, a party in it, by having conducted it long, and engaged his self-love in its issue. Light, careless, and perfectly self-possessed, he runs from one bar to another, and pleads, in the same day, twenty different causes, all agreeably, many ingeniously, a few powerfully; but none with that plain straight-forward earnestness which marks the manner of a man speaking in his own just cause. A lawyer is always a man of doubts; and the intellectual timidity of Jeffray's profession has clung to him in all his pursuits, and prevented him from coming manfully and decidedly to any firm opinion respecting matters of such moment, that it is absolutely impossible to be a great critic while the mind remains unsettled in regard to them. The mercenary transitions of a barrister are but a bad preparation for the gravity of a judge; and I suspect that no metamorphosis can be more hopeless than that of an accomplished advocate into a calm and trust-worthy Reviewer. He that is obliged to plead causes every day, soon begins to find that it is a wearisome thing to tell a plain, simple, true story, and refuses to rouse his vigour for the debate, unless he is conscious that it will require all his ingenuity to give the side he has undertaken to defend even the semblance of justice. The man who is accustomed to exert all his power of speaking, in order to defend crimes and fraud, and darken the light of justice, cannot but look upon it as a small matter to write in support of paradoxes, and derision of intellectual greatness.

I look upon it as a very great misfortune, both for England and for Jeffray himself, that he should have devoted his talents to administer food to the diseased and novelty-hunting appetites of superficial readers. He shews an acuteness of discernment, a power of arranging arguments, an irresistible tact in deducing inferences, and at times, too, a manly dignity of sentiment and feeling, which prove abundantly, that had he educated his mind in more profound habits of meditation, and enlarged his views with a more copious erudition, he might easily have attained a station in the world of intellect, far, very far above what the utmost perfection of ingenious and elegant sophistries ever can confer. He might have taken his place among the great thinkers of England, the Bacons, the Hobbeses, the Lockes, and the Humes, or among her masters of enduring and magnificent eloquence, the rich and various Barrow, the sublime and energetic Chatham, and the classic Burke. A man of genius, like Mr Jeffray, who chooses to devote himself to please the multitude, can very easily accomplish this ignoble purpose. He can very easily persuade them that nothing is

1. ↑ The Court of Session is meant.