universities, who even, though he may not like spring-guns
much, thinks that John Jones had only himself to blame if, after ample
warning and with no business except the business of supplying a London
poulterer with his landlord's game, he trespassed and came to the worst.
Yet even this monster, if he happened to be possessed of the sense of
fun and literature, (which is perhaps impossible), could not read even
the most acrid of Sydney's political diatribes without shrieking with
laughter, if, in his ogreish way, he were given to such violent
demonstrations; could certainly not read the _Life_ and the letters
without admitting, in a moment of unwonted humanity, that here was a man
who, for goodness as well as for cleverness, for sound practical wisdom
as well as for fantastic verbal wit, has had hardly a superior and very
few equals.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] To speak of him in this way is not impertinence or familiarity. He
was most generally addressed as "Mr. Sydney," and his references to his
wife are nearly always to "Mrs. Sydney," seldom or never to "Mrs.
Smith."

[9] See next Essay.

IV

JEFFREY

"Jeffrey and I," says Christopher North in one of his more malicious
moments, "do nothing original; it's porter's work." A tolerably
experienced student of human nature might almost, without knowing the
facts, guess the amount of truth contained in this fling. North, as
North, had done nothing that the world calls original: North, as Wilson,
had done a by no means inconsiderable quantity of such work in verse and
prose. But Jeffrey really did underlie the accusation contained in the
words. A great name in literature, nothing stands to his credit in
permanent literary record but a volume (a sufficiently big one, no
doubt[10]) of criticisms on the work of other men; and though this
volume is only a selection from his actual writings, no further gleaning
could be made of any different material. Even his celebrated, or once
celebrated, "Treatise on Beauty" is but a review article, worked up into
an encyclopaedia article, and dealing almost wholly with pure criticism.
Against him, if against any one, the famous and constantly repeated gibe
about the fellows who have failed in literature and art, falls short and
harmless. In another of its forms, "the corruption of a poet is the
generation of a critic," it might be more appropriate. For Jeffrey, as
we know from his boyish letters, once thought, like almost every boy who