FRANCIS JEFFREY. Francis Jeffrey was born in Edinburgh in 1773. He received his early education in the High School of his native city, and afterwards in the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford. He divided his time between law and letters, and became equally eminent as judge and as the editor of the famous Edinburgh Review. Criticism is a comparatively modern science, and the reviewer has but lately been admitted among authors. The faculty of appreciation, even in its highest forms, is very different from that of creation; but some critics have displayed so much learning and taste, have infused so much of imagination into their work, and have so powerfully directed the current of public opinion, that they must be recognized, in any survey of literary history, as among the most useful, if not always the most brilliant, of writers. The essays of Jeffrey, now published in one large octavo volume, extend over a period of nearly thirty years-a almost unexampled in the number of great and original works to which it gave birth. In his capacity as critic he was frequently in the wrong-not always recognizing genius at first sight; but he was never consciously unfair; and when allowance is made for the shock of novel impressions, and especially for the lurking prejudice arising from party politics and from literary clanship, Jeffrey will be allowed a high rank as a just, inflexible, well-informed, and elegant writer. He died in 1850. THE UNCERTAIN TENURE OF LITERARY FAME. [From a Review of Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets.] period NEXT to the impression of the vast fertility, compass, and beauty of our English poetry, the reflection that recurs most frequently and forcibly to us in accompanying Mr. Campbell through his wide survey, is the perishable nature of poetical fame, and the speedy obliv ion that has overtaken so many of the promised heirs of immortality. Of near two hundred and fifty authors, whose works are cited in these volumes, by far the greater part of whom were celebrated in their generation, there are not thirty who now enjoy anything that can be called popularity — whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers, in the shops of ordinary booksellers, or in the press for republication. About fifty more may be tolerably familiar to men of taste or literature: the rest slumber on the shelves of collectors, and are partially known to a few antiquaries and scholars. Now, the fame of a poet is popular, or nothing. He does not address himself, like the man of science, to the learned, or those who desire to learn, but to all mankind; and his purpose being to delight and to be praised, necessarily extends to all who can receive pleasure, or join in applause. It is strange, and somewhat humiliating, to see how great a proportion of those who had once fought their way successfully to distinction, and surmounted the rivalry of contemporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. We have great def erence for public opinion, and readily admit that nothing but what |