Minimally successful in the legal profession for which he was trained, Jeffrey found his calling in 1802 when he and a few of his friends founded the Edinburgh Review, with Jeffrey taking over as editor in 1803. Though Jeffrey often expressed literary views vigorously unsympathetic to the Romantic authors of his day, espousing judgments that have not stood the test of time, he remains a major figure in the history of literary criticism, journalism, and the development of the modern periodical. With the rise of the reform movement in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Jeffrey also began a career as a whig politician before returning to the legal profession in 1834 as a judge.