. When Jeffrey gave up the 'Review,' this 'baron'
aspired to something more like domination than independence. He made the
unfortunate editor's life a burden to him. He wrote voluminous letters,
objurgating, entreating, boasting of past services, denouncing rival
contributors, declaring that a regard for the views of any other man was
base subservience to a renegade Ministry, or foolish attention to the
hints of understrappers; threatening, if he was neglected, to set up a
rival Review, and generally hectoring, bullying, and declaiming in a
manner which gives one the highest opinion of the diplomatic skill of
the editor, who managed, without truckling, to avoid a breach with his
tremendous contributor. Brougham, indeed, was not quite blind to the
fact that the 'Review' was as useful to him as he could be to the
'Review,' and was therefore more amenable than might have been expected,
in the last resort. But he was in every relation one of those men who
are nearly as much hated and dreaded by their colleagues as by the
adversary--a kind of irrepressible rocket, only too easy to discharge,
but whose course defied prediction.

It is, however, admitted by everyone that the literary results of this
portentous activity were essentially ephemeral. His writings are
hopelessly commonplace in substance and slipshod in style. His garden
offers a bushel of potatoes instead of a single peach. Much of
Brougham's work was up to the level necessary to give effect to the
manifesto of an active politician. It was a forcible exposition of the
arguments common at the time; but it has nowhere that stamp of
originality in thought or brilliance in expression which could confer
upon it a permanent vitality.

Jeffrey and Sydney Smith deserve more respectful treatment. Macaulay
speaks of his first editor with respectful enthusiasm. He says of the
collected contributions that the 'variety and fertility of Jeffrey's
mind' seem more extraordinary than ever. Scarcely could any three men
have produced such 'diversified excellence.' 'When I compare him with
Sydney and myself, I feel, with humility perfectly sincere, that his
range is immeasurably wider than ours. And this is only as a writer. But
he is not only a writer, he has been a great advocate, and he is a great
judge. Take him all in all, I think him more nearly an universal genius
than any man of our time; certainly far more nearly than Brougham, much
as Brougham affects the character.' Macaul