everence which might serve as a pretty text
for a casuistical discussion. Henry Erskine, Dean of the Faculty of
Advocates, was in 1796 deprived by vote of that, the most honourable
position of the Scotch bar, for having presided at a Whig meeting.
Jeffrey, like Gibbon, sighed as a Whig, but obeyed as a son, and stayed
away from the poll. His days were certainly long in the land; but I am
inclined to think that, in a parallel case, some Tories at least would
have taken the chance of shorter life with less speckled honour.
However, it is hard to quarrel with a man for obeying his parents; and
perhaps, after all, the Whigs did not think the matter of so much
importance as they affected to do. It is certain that Jeffrey was a
little dashed by the slowness of his success at the bar. Towards the end
of 1798, he set out for London with a budget of letters of introduction,
and thoughts of settling down to literature. But the editors and
publishers to whom he was introduced did not know what a treasure lay
underneath the scanty surface of this Scotch advocate, and they were
either inaccessible or repulsive. He returned to Edinburgh, and, for
another two years, waited for fortune philosophically enough, though
with lingering thoughts of England, and growing ones of India. It was
just at the turn of the century, that his fortunes began, in various
ways, also to take a turn. For some years, though a person by no means
given to miscellaneous acquaintances, he had been slowly forming the
remarkable circle of friends from whose combined brains was soon to
start the _Edinburgh Review_. He fell in love, and married his second
cousin, Catherine Wilson, on 1st November 1801--a bold and by no means
canny step, for his father was ill-off, the bride was tocherless, and he
says that he had never earned a hundred pounds a year in fees. They did
not, however, launch out greatly, and their house in Buccleuch Place
(not the least famous locality in literature) was furnished on a scale
which some modern colleges, conducted on the principles of enforced
economy, would think Spartan for an undergraduate. Shortly afterwards,
and very little before the appearance of the Blue and Yellow, Jeffrey
made another innovation, which was perhaps not less profitable to him,
by establishing a practice in ecclesiastical causes; though he met with
a professional check in his rejection, on party principles, for the
so-called collectorship, a kind of reporter's post o