Jeffrey, Francis

jef'ri, Francis (1773-1850), a Scottish lawyer and man of letters. He was well educated at the high school and University of Glasgow. He attended Oxford also. He studied law at Edinburgh and was admitted to the bar. He had little practice as a lawyer. With Sydney Smith he entered into a project to establish a political magazine. October 10, 1802, the first number of the Edinburgh Review appeared. The editorial management belonged to no one in particular at first, but later it devolved on Jeffrey. Constable was the publisher. Jeffrey was a writer of ability. His own contributions to the Review exceed 200. He had a faculty of discovering young writers and of giving talent free scope. Sir Walter Scott, Carlyle, and Macaulay were among his contributors. His judgment was not always correct. He attacked Byron bitterly, and failed to recognize the merits of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. Despite his faults and his bitter partisanship as a Whig, Jeffrey will rank always as one of the greatest review editors the world has known. His editorial work came to a close in 1829. He represented Edinburgh in Parliament for several years, and sat on the supreme bench of Scotland for sixteen years, leaving a reputation as a popular, upright judge. See Macaulay