Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/83

Rh consequence, and therefore the first remuneration was fixed at ten guineas a sheet, which rose to sixteen as the minimum price, while the editor was salaried at £300 per annum. By these changes, a coalition of talented writers were bound together, and pledged to the furtherance of the work. But the life and soul of that coalition was Jeffrey, and nothing could have been more appropriate than his appointment to the editorship. Unconsciously, he had made his whole life a training for the office, not only by the multifariousness of his studies, but his early practice of analyzing the authors he read, as well as his own miscellaneous compositions, so that the practice as well as the talents of a critic were ready for instant action. On the appointment being offered to him, he had some dubitation on the subject, which he thus expresses at full to his excellent friend and adviser, Francis Horner:—"There are pros and cons in the case, no doubt. What the pros are I need not tell you. £300 a-year is a monstrous bribe to a man in my situation. The cons are vexation and trouble, interference with professional employment and character, and risk of general degradation. The first I have had some little experience of, and am not afraid for. The second, upon a fair consideration, I am persuaded I ought to risk. It will be long before I make 300 more than I now do by my profession, and by far the greater part of the employment I have will remain with me, I know, in spite of anything of this sort. The character and success of the work, and the liberality of the allowance, are not to be disregarded. But what influences me the most is, that I engaged in it at first gratuitously, along with a set of men whose character and situation in life must command the respect of the multitude, and that I hope to go on with it as a matter of emolument along with the same associates. All the men here will take their ten guineas I find, and, under the sanction of that example, I think I may take my editor's salary also, without being supposed to have suffered any degradation. It would be easy to say a great deal on this subject, but the sum of it, I believe, is here, and you will understand me as well as if I had been more eloquent, I would undoubtedly prefer making the same sum by my profession; but I really want the money, and think that I may take it this way, without compromising either my honour or my future interest."

Such was the train of reasoning by which Jeffrey committed himself to the "Review." It was that important step in life which a man can take but once, and by which the whole tenor of his after-course is determined. In Jeffrey's case it was both wise and prosperous, notwithstanding the manifold feuds of authorship in which it necessarily involved him. It was not merely from the small fry of writers, who writhed under his critical inflictions, that these quarrels arose, but also from men of the highest mark, whom he tried by a standard proportioned to their merits, and therefore occasionally found wanting. In this way he offended such distinguished authors as Scott, Byron, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge; but in most instances the resentment he kindled was transient, and followed by a cordial reconciliation. Even Byron, the most indignant and most formidable of the whole, recanted his vilifications of Jeffrey in a much higher strain of poetry than that which characterized his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." But of all'these quarrels, that with Thomas Moore threatened to be the most serious. In 1806 the young poet of Erin published a volume, which will ever remain a blot upon his fair fame. It was entitled "Epistles, Odes, and other Poems;" and notwithstanding its undoubted merits, which no one was more ready to acknowledge than Jeffrey, he opened