“I have, barely within my time, finished that paper [’Characteristics’], to which you are now heartily welcome, if you have room for it.  The doctrines here set forth have mostly long been familiar convictions with me; yet it is perhaps only within the last twelvemonth that the public utterance of some of them could have seemed a duty.  I have striven to express myself with what guardedness was possible; and, as there will now be no time for correcting proofs, I must leave it wholly in your editorial hands.  Nay, should it on due consideration appear to you in your place (for I see that matter dimly, and nothing is clear but my own mind and the general condition of the world), unadvisable to print the paper at all, then pray understand, my dear Sir, now and always, that I am no unreasonable man; but if dogmatic enough (as Jeffrey used to call it) in my own beliefs, also truly desirous to be just towards those of others.  I shall, in all sincerity, beg of you to do, without fear of offence (for in no point of view will there be any), what you yourself see good.  A mighty work lies before the writers of this time.”

It is always interesting, to the man of letters at any rate if not to his neighbours, to find what was first thought by men of admitted competence of the beginnings of writers who are now seen to have made a mark on the world.  “When the reputation of authors is made,” said Sainte-Beuve, “it is easy to speak of them convenablement:  we have only to guide ourselves by the common opinion.  But at the start, at the moment when they are trying their first flight and are in part ignorant of themselves, then to judge them with tact, with precision, not to exaggerate their scope, to predict their flight, or divine their limits, to put the reasonable objections in the midst of all due respect—­this is the quality of the critic who is born to be a critic.”  We have been speaking of Mr. Carlyle.  This is what Jeffrey thought of him in 1832:—­

“I fear Carlyle will not do, that is, if you do not take the liberties and the pains with him that I did, by striking out freely, and writing in occasionally.  The misfortune is, that he is very obstinate, and unluckily in a place like this, he finds people enough to abet and applaud him, to intercept the operation of the otherwise infallible remedy of general avoidance and neglect.  It is a great pity, for he is a man of genius and industry, and with the capacity of being an elegant and impressive writer”

The notion of Jeffrey occasionally writing elegantly and impressively into Carlyle’s proof-sheets is rather striking.  Some of Jeffrey’s other criticisms sound very curiously in our ear in these days.  It is startling to find Mill’s Logic described (1843) as a “great unreadable book, and its elaborate demonstration of axioms and truisms.”  A couple of years later Jeffrey admits, in speaking of Mr. Mill’s paper on Guizot—­“Though I have long thought very highly of his powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and sound views of realities and practical results as are displayed in this article.”  Sir James Stephen—­the distinguished sire of two distinguished contributors, who may remind more than one editor of our generation of the Horatian saying, that