There seems, however, to have been some suspicion on the part of certain ladies who used to assemble together from delight in each other's company." It was when Dante was once in such a company that he was asked by a fair enquirer, who thought that a lover who lived only on the passing smiles of his mistress, and who concerned himself by "sighing like furnace," was but an indifferently foolish wooer- "To what end (said this experienced lady) dost thou love this mistress of thine, since thou can'st not support the presence of her eyes. Certainly, the end of such work must be most novel." When Dante saw all this fair circle smilingly gazing on his face awaiting an answer, he talked an infinite deal of nothing, touching a mysterious delight. "We beg thee to tell us in what thy delight rests" (said one); and the poet confessed that it was in "writing those words that praise my mistress." A confession which the ladies looked upon but with qualified admiration, admiring, as they acknowledged, gentle works as well as gentle words.

The following spirited sketch gives a prose view of one whom Dante has immortalized in poetry:

"Count Ugolino della Gheradesca was decended from one of those feudal lords who, from taking up their abode in the town, had become powerful citizens. He had formerly been a Ghibelline, but now for some years had become a Guelph. In 1285 he raised a tumult in Pisa, and placed the city under the dominion of the Guelphs who had so lately been triumphant: he then formed a close alliance with her two enemies, Lucca and Florence, and yielded up to them the best castles of the Pisan territory: thus he became undisputed head of the commune. He was padesta-he was captain of the troops-he was everything within the city; and by this means he became one of the principal leaders of the Guelph party in Tuscany. After this state of things had lasted for some years, the Pisan Guelphs became divided amongst themselves, even in Ugolino's own family. Nino Visconti, the son of his daughter, and the judge of Gallure in Sardinia, revolted against his grandfather, drawing along with him it appears all the most extreme Guelphs. Ugolino, who in name was once a Ghibelline and was now a Guelph, and who probably in his heart was indifferent to both parties, allied himself with the Archbishop Ruggeiri degli Ubeldini of Mugello, and the Ghibelline leaders, of whom the principal were

'The Gualandis, with the Sismondis and Lanfranches.'

"Nino of Gallara, with his party, was driven from the city (Inferno, c. xxxiii. v. 32), and Ugolino was declared Lord of Pisa. But Ugolino soon fell under the suspicion of the archbishop and these powerful Ghibelline families: he was attacked by the populace in his own house, laid hands on violently and made prisoner, and was shut up in the Tower of the Gualandis, which was situated at the meeting of seven streets. With

him were his two sons, Gaddo and Uguccione; and his three grandsons, Ugolino surnamed Il Brigata, and Arrigo (both children of his son Guelfo); his third grandson was Anselranccio, whose father was Ugolino's son Lotto, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Meloria. The archbishop remained head of the commune with the title of 'padesta' five monhts, and then resigned the office to Gueltiere di Branforte. Gueltiere resigned it to Guido di Montifeltro, a powerful Ghibelline lord of Komegua, who had been expelled from it by the Guelphs, and were then in banishment at Asti. Scarcely had the new padesta arrived, when, with the rancour of an exile, on the 10th of March 1289, he ordered the horrible tower, in which the old man and the five youths had been for the last nine months languishing, to be locked up and the keys to be thrown into the river Arno. Thus he left them in unknown sufferings to perish by the dreadful death of starvation. For this cruelty (says Villani) the Pisans were reproved and blamed by the whole world, not so much for the sake of the count who, by his crimes and treasons, had perchance deserved such a death, but on account of his sons and grandsons, who were little boys and quite innocent.' A late historian has proved Dante and Villani both to be mistaken in calling these sons and grandsons little boys of tender age. I fear he has not equally succeeded in clearing the archbishop from the odium of the crime, whether he were padesta or not: he was certainly all-powerful at Pisa, and he was called to account for this crime at the Roman Curia, though it is not known whether he was condemned or absolved. At any rate, it appears that the youthful poet Dante received the account of this scandalous event from the reports spread, with more or less accuracy, throughout indignant Italy; and his Guelph tendencies must have rendered him still more compassionate towards Ugolino and indignant towards the archbishop. Every one knows how these early impressions were afterwards expressed in a maturer form, in that immortal narrative, the longest and most terrible in his Commedia"."

With these extracts we take leave of a work in which there is much graceful writing. With the biography of Dante, and an account of his works, there are also sketches of his contemporaries and many interesting illustrations of Italian history in his times. The translation has been admirably executed, and the whole forms a work that must necessarily secure for itself an undivided admiration.

ART. V.-Life of Lord Jeffrey: with a Selection from his Correspondence. By Lord COCKBURN. Two Volumes. Edinburgh: Black, 1852.

JEFFREY was a man remarkably amiable in private life, warm and steadfast in his friendships, talented and industrious in his

profession, and gaining thereby its highest honours; but these qualities would scarce have sufficed to establish a claim for public notice or to cause his name to be remembered by posterity. It is as having been one of the original projectors of the Edinburgh Review, and as its editor for more than five and twenty years and as the largest contributor to that journal, that Jeffrey became known beyond the circle of private friendship, or outside of the courts of law, in the good city of Edinburgh.

We are not Whigs or Liberals, and on many other points are opposed to the principles of the Edinburgh Review; but this does not render us blind to its literary merits or slow to acknowledge the great effects which it produced in England as well as Scotland; for it not only improved the taste of those who had been readers already, but it also created a very large class of readers, and increased the number of authors, and thus gave a literary impulse to the age. Many who had been accustomed to read nothing more than the newspapers before received from that Review their first taste for literature, most of its articles being both instructive and suggestive; and not a few of the literary institutions which are now so common in the land unconsciously owe their origin to the impetus in this direction first given by the Edinburgh Review.

For this Review, of which Jeffrey was the soul, wrought a remarkable change, not only among publications of its own class, but upon English literature generally. It not only introduced a higher style of writing into periodical and ephemeral publications, but exercising on perfectly independent principles a severer tone of criticism than the floating literature of the day had been before subjected to. The authors themselves were benefitted by passing through such an ordeal, and the public taste was also directed and improved. Through these means a taste for literature became much more widely diffused, and was more zealously as well as more popularly cultivated. And many similar journals followed in the wake of the Edinburgh Review, incited by its example or opposed to it in politics, and desiring to counteract its influence.

Our sole reason for noticing Jeffrey's life arises from his connection with the Review, and our only concern with the Review is to show how the peculiar turn of Jeffrey's mind fitted him for doing the work then in hand-not that Jeffrey himself was aware of this, or that any of the first contributors to the Review had determined the sort of character it should assume, and still less calculated upon the influence which it afterwards acquired. But each felt a desire for the enlargement and the improvement of our periodical literature; and each followed his own impulse

rather than a preconcerted plan pursued in common by them all. The first numbers consisted of very short articles on a great variety of subjects, treated with spirit but in a desultory manner; and it was not until the Review came under the sole management of Jeffrey that it assumed its fixed character, and the articles then became fewer and took the form of distinct essays or short treatises, in which principles of criticism might be enunciated and measures of government might be freely discussed:-"There were Reviews in England; but, though respectable according to the notions at that time of critical respectability, they merely languished in decent feebleness, Indeed, the circumstance of their almost restricting themselves to the examination of books, exclusively of public measures and principles, narrowed the range of their criticism and congealed its spirit" (i. 129).

It was intended that the first number should appear in June, 1802. Jeffrey wrote in June:

"Our Review is still at a stand. However, I have completely abandoned the idea of taking any permanent share in it, and shall probably desert after fulfilling my engagements, which only extend to a certain contribution for the four first numbers. I suspect that the work itself will not have a much longer life. I believe we shall come out in October, and have no sort of doubt of making a respectable appearance, though we may not, perhaps, either obtain popularity or deserve it."

This despondency of public affairs had become habitual in Jeffrey at that time, and made him regard every effort to ameliorate or alter the condition of things as unavailing and likely to prove abortive. Indeed, the most sanguine might despond of the Whig party when they did not even dare to hold a public meeting in Edinburgh :

Meetings of the adherents of Government for party purposes, and for such things as victories and charities, were common enough. But with ample materials for opposition meetings, they were in total disuse. I doubt if there was one held in Edinburgh between the year 1795 and the year 1820. Attendance was understood to be fatal. Thus, politically, Scotland was dead. It was not unlike a village at a great man's gate. Without a single free institution or habit, opposition was rebellion-submission probable success. There were many with whom horror of French principles, to the extent to which it was carried, was a party pretext. But there were also many with whom it was a sincere feeling, and who, in their fright, saw in every Whig a person who was already a Republican, and not unwilling to become a regicide ” (i. 77).

This accounts for the alarm felt by all who engaged in so hazardous an undertaking as a liberal and independent journal;

for "Scotland did not maintain a single opposition newspaper, or magazine, or periodical publication" (76). "Smith was by far the most timid of the confederacy, and believed that unless our incognito was strictly maintained we could not go on a day; and this was his object for making us hold our dark divans at Willison's office, to which he insisted on our repairing singly and by back approaches or by different lanes! He also had so strong an impression of's indiscretion and rashness that he would not let him be a member of our association, though wished for by all the rest" (i. 137.)

Yet in less than a year the same Sydney Smith had so changed his opinion by the success which the Review met with that he wrote to Mr. Constable, the publisher, in the following

terms:

"You ask me for my opinion about the continuation of the Edinburgh Review. I have the greatest confidence in giving it you, as I find everybody here, who is capable of forming an opinion upon the subject, unanimous in the idea of its success and in the hope of its continuation. It is notorious that all the Reviews are the organs either of party or booksellers. I have no manner of doubt that an able, intrepid, and independent Review would be as useful to the public as it would be profitable to those engaged in it."

And though Jeffrey scarcely expected that the Review would succeed, this was only in accordance with the gloomy aspect which at that time all things seemed to wear in his eyes. Yet, when it succeeded beyond his expectations, he gave himself heartily to the work of the editor which now devolved entirely upon him; and to his presiding spirit the Review owes the chief portion of its brilliancy as well as its consistency and stability. For he not only contributed more than two hundred articles wholly written by himself, but as editor gave the tone to all the rest; and often suggested additions where any flatness or deficiency might be felt, or omissions of anything which might seem discordant with the principles generally and customarily maintained.

The principles were avowedly those of the Whigs, and it must be allowed by all that the Review did well the work which it proposed to do: of this the sensation which it produced is the best evidence. We have no right to complain of its leaving other work undone-work which its conductors never proposed to do; and for doing which, if it had been proposed, they might have felt themselves disqualified. Literature of the lighter kind, physical science in its more popular aspect, and politics of the Liberal school, were meant to form the chief topics of discussion. In the classics they were shallow, and when they crossed