SMITH, Sydney, one of the wittiest and wisest churchmen which England has known during the present century, was born at Woodford, in Essex, in 1771. His father, who was a clever, sagacious man, with very odd ways, after wandering all over the world, at last settled down at Bishop's Lydiard, in Somerset. His mother was of French extraction, and Smith was accustomed to attribute not a little of his constitutional gaiety to this infusion of foreign blood. In after years, Sydney was fond of representing, in his peculiar way, that the "Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs;" and was fond of repeating the answer of Junot to the old noblesse when boasting of their ancestry, "Ah, ma foi! je n'en sais rien; moi je suis mon ancêtre." Sydney was the second of four boisterous, overbearing, intellectual young athletes, as old Smith calls them, who, according to an original view of their father's, were sent to different schools, to weed out of them the strong personal rivalry which existed at home. Robert, or "Bobus," as he was called, had the good fortune to be sent to Eton, where he established for himself that character for learning and intellectual power which so greatly distinguished him in after years; while Sydney was admitted to the foundation at Winchester. In spite of "hunger and neglect," he soon rose to be captain of the school, and to be foremost in every frolic. The Winchester boys were glad when it became the captain's turn to set out for Oxford; for "one could never get any prizes where those Smiths were." A touch of sorrow mingled with their joy, however, as they looked on that bright manly face for the last time. To have been still possessed of his gay leadership in all their mad pranks, they would gladly have foregone all the prizes. After a visit of six months to Normandy, he entered New College, Oxford, in 1780, and was chosen a fellow ten years afterwards. He had to contend with the sharp pinchings of poverty during his university career, which was perhaps better for his head than it was for his heart. At all events, he, who afterwards became one of the most social spirits in all England, lived in those days much out of society. His own inclination led him to the bar, but his father's finances had been so much drained by equipping his other sons for the world, that Sydney was prevailed upon to enter the church. With a shrug he complied with his father's wishes, although, with such shining talents as he
possessed, he would doubtless have attained a much greater pre-eminence in connection with the legal profession, than a man of his liberality would be able to gain in connection with the English Church. Smith accordingly became a curate of the Church of England, in a small village in the midst of Salisbury Plain. Of all places in the world, this was the very last for a man who, like Sydney Smith, possessed such powers of wit and conversation. Yet he contrived to show to his people, that "in the midst of worldly misery, he had the heart of a gentleman, the spirit of a Christian, and the kindness of a pastor." The squire was the only person he could speak to in the place, and he stormed his affections so completely, that in two years he appointed him tutor to his son. He accordingly bade good-bye to Nether-Avon, and, in 1797, started for Edinburgh with his young charge. The political state of the continent of Europe at that time compelled the annual tourists and others to find out some more fitting place for their sojourn, and Edinburgh was selected as the most fashionable and the most cultivated city open to Englishmen in the later years of the eighteenth century. The northern metropolis at that day presented one of the brightest galaxies of talent of any city in the world. There were Jeffrey, Horner, Playfair, Walter Scott, Dugald Stewart, Brougham, Allen, Thomas Brown, Murray, Leyden, Lord Webb Seymour, Lord Woodhouselee, Alison, Sir James Hall, and many others, whose lights are now well-nigh all gone out. Society, besides, was on the easiest and most agreeable footing in Edinburgh at the time; its inhabitants were simple, and its hospitality was of the most generous kind. Sydney Smith could hardly have happened better had he made a personal selection, than to be thrown upon the generosity and talent of Edinburgh half a century ago. The peculiarities and foibles of the Scotch struck his English eye as exceedingly ludicrous. He says, in his exaggerating way, that "it requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding." Smith must have been well skilled in that delicate art by the time he left Edinburgh, for he practised it daily, and took lessons likewise in the theory of medicine as then taught in the university. Edinburgh was at that day so much given over to metaphysics, that he says his fair citizens were accustomed to make love metaphysically. During his residence in Edinburgh he married an English lady, and set a-going with Jeffrey and Brougham the Edinburgh Review. "Towards the end of my residence in Edinburgh," says Smith, "Brougham, Jeffrey, and myself happened to meet in the eighth or ninth storey or flat in Buccleuch Place, the then elevated residence of Mr Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a Review. This was acceded to with acclamation; I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Review. The motto I proposed for the Review was, Tenui musam meditamur aena (we cultivate literature on a little oatmeal); but this was too near the truth to be admitted, so we took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus, of whom none of us had, I am sure, read a single line; and so began what has since turned out to be a very important and able journal. When I left Edinburgh it fell into the stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Brougham, and reached the highest point of popularity and success." It is impossible here to exhibit even in the briefest manner the enormous influence of that journal in letting in the light upon crazy institutions, in sweeping away those barriers to progress which ignorance and bigotry had raised, and in promoting the general cause of toleration and philanthropy, both in literature and in politics. It is not saying too much to assert that a large share of the success which attended the early life of that adventurous publication was due to the Rev. Sydney Smith. He was always proud of his connection with it, and in those days, to be an Edin-
burgh Reviewer and a Churchman was judged nearly as incompatible as to be a justice of the peace and a pick-pocket in one person. Common justice and common sense were the two poles, so to speak, between which all his faculties moved. His flashing wit, his sturdy understanding, his airy fancy, his kindly benevolence, and the exuberant luxury of his talk, all found play between the springs of sense and rectitude. In his writings he seems to have had no youth. He was much too great a wit to fall into the blundering extravagance peculiar to young writers. While his articles gained in staidness and in wisdom, they lost not a spark of that brilliance which wit and sense had originally lent them. Leaving Edinburgh in 1804, he carried south with him to London perhaps the largest stock of animal spirits then possessed by any individual in England. He became an earnest and rousing preacher at the Foundling Hospital; delivered clever, witty lectures, on what he chose to call "Moral Philosophy," at the Royal Institution; became famous as a "diner out;" and more famous still as a contributor to the savage northern Review.
On the triumph of the Whigs in 1806, Lord Erskine presented Smith with the living of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire. In the summer of 1807 appeared the celebrated Letters of Peter Plymley on the subject of the Roman Catholics, which burst over England like a thunder-cloud. They lay on every table; they were discussed by every coterie which design or chance had brought together; their periodical publication was eagerly anticipated; the curiosity of the public had become irrepressible; but the secret of their authorship could not be cleared up. There were doubtless cultivated individuals who knew Sydney Smith who harboured secret suspicions, assured as they were that no man in England could convey so much sound sense and unanswerable argument on the vehicle of irresistible wit and pleasantry, except the obscure preacher at the Foundling Hospital. But such men were content to hold their tongues until the correspondent of "my dear Abraham" was disposed to disclose himself.
Smith having removed his family to Yorkshire, began the work of his pastorate in right earnest. The prospect of the place on his arrival was of the most forbidding character; yet the gaiety of his disposition had life and heat in it capable of warming a county. In the first place, the parsonage-house was the meanest hovel, in which there had not been a resident clergyman for 150 years, and the church bore the nearest resemblance to a barn. Add to this, that the ground was so impassable that any ordinary foot sunk in it beyond reach of recovery, and Mrs Smith actually lost her shoe on her first attempting to walk on Yorkshire soil. In the second place, his rustic flock were so unaccustomed to the sights of civilised life, that the half of the parish would turn out to witness a four-wheeled carriage, or a gentleman in a superfine coat. If such was the outside of these Yorkshire folks, one may faintly guess what sort of furniture adorned the interior of them. His attention to medicine here stood him in good stead. He preached, doctored, lectured, talked, and joked to the Yorkshirers, till they would have laid down their lives for him. He designed, built, and completed one of the ugliest parsonage-houses that ever eye had looked on; but it had the rare advantage of being one of the most commodious houses one could choose to live in. Nothing could be plainer than his table. He never affected to be what he was not. He strove to inculcate upon his family throughout life his favourite motto, "Avoid shame, but do not seek glory; nothing so expensive as glory." He studied literally in the midst of his family; and the talking and music, that would have distracted another mind, only seemed to lend him renewed stimulus. Through love of his society the learned and the wealthy made pilgrimages to Foston-le-Clay. Among these were Sir Samuel Romilly,
Sir James Mackintosh, Lord Jeffrey, the Earl of Carlisle, Mr Horner, Lord and Lady Holland, Dr Marcet, and his distinguished brother Bobus.1
In 1828 Smith was promoted, by Lord Lyndhurst's patronage, to be canon of Bristol, and rector of Combe-Florey, a lovely little spot near Taunton. Amid the joy of this sudden change of prospect and of scene he had the unspeakable sorrow to lose his eldest son, Douglas, by death. He had to begin his old trade of architect over again at Combe-Florey; but with his increased experience and means, he succeeded much better in pleasing the taste of his friends than he had done before on his parsonage-house in Yorkshire. He now resigned his connection with the Edinburgh Review, esteeming it more becoming a dignitary of the church to attach his name to whatever he might write. Ten years afterwards he collected and published the greater part of his contributions to that periodical. His fame greatly increased after his removal to Bristol; and in 1832 he was appointed canon of St Paul's, the last preferment he was destined to receive. Writing to Lord Holland, he says, "I have entirely lost all wish to be a bishop," and dissuades him from making any friendly attempts in his favour. He would assuredly have been the wittiest bishop on record, and not one of the least wise, but a man whom his friend, Lord Macaulay, could characterize as "the greatest master of ridicule who has appeared among us since Swift," was a dangerous subject to bear the ermine of the church. He was not the approved, "grave, elderly man, full of Greek," &c., whom his lively fancy was accustomed to depict as the "real bishop."
In 1834 Lord Holland received the hand of Smith's daughter, who, in the character of Lady Holland, has, in 1855, furnished the public with so interesting a biography of her father. He now removed his residence to London, where he purchased a house in Green Street, Mayfair. There is a fine glimpse into the generous and pathetic side of Smith's nature afforded by his employment of the living of Edmonton, which he might in justice have appropriated, or given over to a relation or a friend. He writes to his wife, "I went over yesterday to the Tates at Edmonton. The family consists of three delicate daughters, an aunt, the old lady, and her son, then curate of Edmonton; the old lady was in bed. I found there a physician, an old friend of Tate's, attending them from friendship, who had come from London for that purpose. They were in daily expectation of being turned out from house and curacy. I began by inquiring the character of their servant; then turned the conversation upon their affairs, and expressed a hope the chapter might ultimately do something for them. I then said, 'It is my duty to state to you (they were all assembled) that I have given away the living of Edmonton, and have written to our chapter clerk this morning to mention the person to whom I have given it; and I must also tell you, that I am sure he will appoint his curate (a general silence and dejection). It is a very odd coincidence,' I added, 'that the gentleman I have selected is a namesake of this family; his name is Tate. Have you any relations?' 'No, we have not.' 'And, by a more singular coincidence, his name is Thomas Tate; in short, there is no use in mincing the matter, you are vicar of Edmonton.' They all burst into tears. It flung me also into a great agitation of tears, and I wept and groaned for a long time. Then I rose, and said, I thought it was very likely to end in their keeping a buggy; at which we all laughed as violently. The poor old lady, who was sleeping in a garret, because she could not bear to enter into the room lately inhabited by her husband, sent for me, and kissed me, sobbing with a thousand emotions. The charitable physician wept too. I never
passed so remarkable a morning, nor was so deeply impressed with the sufferings of human life, and never felt more thoroughly the happiness of doing good" (Life, by Lady Holland, vol. i., p. 290). What can a man do after a king? One need not be ashamed to laugh and weep in such company. This must suffice for Smith's wisdom. Another illustration of his wit, which was as multifarious as the forms of an evening cloud, and we have done. "Some one mentioned that a young Scotchman, who had been lately in the neighbourhood, was about to marry an Irish widow, double his age, and of considerable dimensions. 'Going to marry her!' he exclaimed, bursting out laughing; 'going to marry her! impossible! you mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy, but trigamy; the neighbourhood or the magistrates should interfere. There is enough of her to furnish wives for a whole parish. One man marry her! it is monstrous. You might people a colony with her; or, perhaps, take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting-places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half-way, and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the riot act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything with her but marry her.'" This affords a good specimen of the spirit of subtle, fanciful exaggeration which ran through many of Smith's jokes. One may fancy what sort of an opponent he would have made had he been inclined to controversy. It is singular, however, how very few enemies his wit and sarcasm, of which he was so eminent a master, ever were the means of making him. It must be clear to every one, that nothing but the unfailing kindness of his disposition, his generosity, his pathos, his sympathy with his fellow-men under every phase of suffering, and under every aspect of enjoyment, could have kept him so far out of the way of error. He was subjected to no ordinary temptation in being endowed with a faculty of such singular brilliancy, and of such equivocal consequences to its possessor. Sydney Smith laid claim to no more than practical common sense; and his intellect, while very acute, was not of the most searching kind. He possessed, however, an unfailing stock of the richest and choicest language, which would flow out from the fountain of his mind as spontaneously as water from a spring. He was always intrepid in his inquiry into alleged abuses, and fearless in his exposure of all kinds of clerical misrule. His letters to the States of North America regarding the payment of old debts contracted by them, written a short time before his death, is as full of pungent satire, of gay humour, and of strong sense, as anything he wrote in his more vigorous years. He died of water in the chest, consequent upon disease of the heart, on the 22d February 1845. He was buried in the family cemetery of Kensall Green. His widow and his son inherited the greater portion of his property. His works, consisting of sermons, lectures, essays, and pamphlets, were published in 3 vols. in 1839. His Sketches of Moral Philosophy were republished in 1850; and there has been since published a small edition of the Letters of Peter Plymley, with selections from his Essays and Speeches, but without a date. (See Memoirs of Rev. Sydney Smith, by his daughter, Lady Holland, and Mrs Austin, 2 vols. 8vo, 1855.) (J. D.—S.)