f
living together intimately since our infancy, had wound so many
threads of affection round my heart, that when they were burst at
once, the shock was almost overwhelming. Then, the unequalled
gentleness of her disposition, the unaffected worth of her affections,
and miraculous simplicity of character and manners, which made her
always appear as pure and innocent as an infant, took so firm, though
gentle a hold on the heart of every one who approached her, that even
those who have been comparatively strangers to her worth, have been
greatly affected by her loss.... During the whole of her illness, she
looked beautiful; and when I gazed upon her the moment after she had
breathed her last, as she lay still, still, and calm, with her bright
eyes half closed, and her red lips half open, I thought I had never
seen a countenance so lovely. A statuary might have taken her for a
model. Poor, dear love! I kissed her cold lips, and pressed her cold,
wan, lifeless hand, and would willingly at that moment have put off my
own life too, and followed her. When I came here, the sun was rising,
and the birds were singing gaily, as I sobbed along the empty
streets.'

The sensibility of Jeffrey to all fine expression that comes to us
through the medium of literature was intense, most so in his latter
days, when his whole character seems to have undergone a mellowing
process. While pining under his greatness as Lord Advocate, and an
authority in parliament (1833), he says: 'If it were not for my love
of beautiful nature and poetry, my heart would have died within me
long ago. I never felt before what immeasurable benefactors these same
poets are to their kind, and how large a measure, both of actual
happiness and prevention of misery, they have imparted to the race. I
would willingly give up half my fortune, and some little fragments of
health and bodily enjoyment that yet remain to me, rather than that
Shakspeare should not have lived before me.' Who that had only read
his lively, acute articles in the formal Review, could have believed
him to be so deeply sympathetic with an unfortunate poet, as he shews
in the following fine passage in one of his letters (1837)? 'In the
last week, I have read all Burns's Life and Works--not without many
tears, for the life especially. What touches me most, is the pitiable
poverty in which that gifted being (and his noble-minded father)
passed his early days--the painful frugality to which their innoce