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 innocence
was doomed, and the thought how small a share of the useless luxuries
in which we (such comparatively poor creatures) indulge, would have
sufficed to shed joy and cheerfulness in their dwellings, and perhaps
to have saved that glorious spirit from the trials and temptations
under which he fell so prematurely. Oh! my dear Empson, there must be
something _terribly_ wrong in the present arrangements of the
universe, when those things can happen, and be thought natural. I
could lie down in the dirt, and cry and grovel there, I think, for a
century, to save such a soul as Burns from the suffering, and the