Excerpt from Edgehill Essays In the longest of these papers it was not my pur pose to present an original review of the life and work of Francis Jeffrey, but only to give an outline of his career and to cite some contemporaneous estimates of his personality, his character, and his merits. He is now little known except to those who make a study of the books of the middle nineteenth century. His Life by Cockburn is a melancholy monument of dull mediocrity on the part of the biographer. Sir Leslie Stephen's admirable sketch in the Dictionary of Na tional Biography is far more satisfactory and I have used it freely. In recent years Professor Gates has published a critical study of Jeffrey as a reviewer in Three Studies in Literature and Professor Winchester has added a brief supplement in his Group of English Essayists I have not attempted to invade their province. If I have quoted liberally from books of gossip and reminiscence, it has been because the writers gave a more vivid presentation of their subject than I could give by mere paraphrase. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.