Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/80

344 new position were of no trivial amount. Even at the outset his undistinguished birth was against him; and those who belonged to the lordly line of high Saint Clair," could scarcely be expected to admit the son of a clerk-depute into full fraternity. He undoubtedly possessed a superiority of talent that might more than counterpoise such inferiority; but here, instead of holding the field without a rival, he had many who were fully his match competitors as well equipped for the encounter, and who attained as high professional rank and reputation as himself. Still, however, one remedy remained. The tide of Toryism was at the height, and by throwing himself implicitly upon it, he would be borne onward to fortune. And this, too, he might do not only without degradation, but with universal approval; for loyalty was the order of the day, and every step was commended that went against the anarchy with which throne and altar were menaced. But Jeffrey was a Whig. From an early period he had revolved the questions of civil and political liberty, and instead of discarding them as the mere Brutus and Cassius dreams of college boyhood, he had clung to them with all the greater tenacity as years went onward; and, now that he was about to enter into active life, he boldly avowed them as the conclusions of his matured judgment, and the principles of his future political conduct. And what chance had he, then, of success in a profession where his opinions of popular rights were not only condemned as mischievous, but despised as vulgar and mobbish? There were men, indeed, not only in Edinburgh, but even the Court of Session, who in political principles were like-minded with himself; but they were for the most part so independent either by family, or fortune, or position, that they could better afford to oppose the prevailing current than a young man to whom the pathway of life was just opened, with nothing but his own energies to bear him forward. Taking all these circumstances into account, there is none, be his principles in politics what they may, who can refuse to Jeffrey the award of unswerving integrity and high heroic consistency. And, truly, he reaped the reward he merited, not only in his own advancement, but the final ascendency of those obnoxious political doctrines which he so bravely advocated and consistently maintained through good and through evil report.

On commencing practice at the bar, Jeffrey laboured under a difficulty upon which, perhaps, he had not calculated. This was the unlucky half English mode of speaking which he had learned or assumed at Oxford, but which he had not the good taste to discard at Edinburgh; and such was the strength of popular prejudice at this period, that there were few who would not have scrupled to intrust the management of a law case to an "Englified" pleader. "With this mode of speech, which was thought to savour of affectation, he combined an oppressive sharpness of tone, volubility of words, and keenness of sarcasm, calculated to wound the self-love of those who could not parry and return the thrusts of such an agile fencer. His business, therefore, as an advocate went on very slowly, and his fees were proportionably scanty. Most of the cases, indeed, which passed through his hands, were obtained by the influence of his father. The necessity of having some other dependence than the bar became so strong, that in 1798 he conceived the idea of commencing authorship in London as his future profession; and for this purpose he repaired thither, furnished with introductions to the editors of some of the principal reviews and newspapers, and buoyed up with the expectation that he would quadruple the scanty revenue that he could ever hope to enjoy from his pro-