36

LETTER TO WHEWELL.

joy a fashionable mania at the same time with Master Betty who reaped that season, from his first London engagements, no less than eight thousand pounds. The literary journal which gives us an account of the latter with a portrait of the triumphant prodigy, has not a word of the lecturer at the Royal Institution. We remember how, not many years since, disappointment and chagrin at the success of Tom Thumb ended the career of the artist Haydon. Sydney Smith was made of other stuff. Had his fortune been different, had Roscius carried away his audience, the lecturer would have consoled himself with his own philosophy, laughed at the folly of the town, and kept his head on his shoulders for a more lucky time.

Sydney Smith, following the definition of Moral Philosophy in use in the Scottish Universities where he had found it comprehending mental philosophy as well, ran over the history of ancient and modern theories, discussed the faculties of the mind, laws of conception, the memory, imagination, judgment; the theories of the beautiful and the sublime; the escaping essences of wit and humour; the qualities and methods of the more direct moral affections; the practical conduct of the understanding, and the everyday virtues of life. "Every week," he writes, in the letter to Dr. Whewell, which we have cited, "I had a new theory about conception and perception; and supported by a natural manner, a torrent of words, and an impudence scarcely credible in this prudent age. Still, in justice to myself, I must say there were some good things in them. But good and bad are all gone." He did not publish them at the time or afterward. Resorting to them as a quarry, he drew forth some passages on education for his arti

fortune of a quarter of a million sterling, which he acquired in business, as a wholesale hatter. There is a pleasing anecdote of Grattan in connection with Sharp's seat at Mickleham. In the old age of the Irish statesman, Horner took him down there on a visit, in the spring, "on purpose to hear the night ingales, for he loves music like an Italian, and the country like a truc-born Englishman." (Horner Correspondence, May, 1816 ii. 355.)

*European Magazine, xlvii. 374.

MERITS OF THE LECTURES.

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cles in the Edinburgh Review, destroyed many of the remaining pages, and would have burnt the whole had not his wife interposed and saved the mutilated manuscripts for posthumous publication. Enough fortunately survived to fill an octavo of four hundred pages, which was published in London, in 1850. Though incomplete as a view of mental science, it is not without considerable merit on that score. It is a mine of pleasantries and subtleties, of sound thinking in eloquent terms, of description and sentiment, of human nature and natural history, of quips and cranks, familiarities and profundities, theories of morality, equally below the clouds and above the earth. The style was well adapted to the purposes of the popular lecturer with whom it is a necessity to mix entertainment with instruction; though there are few who can equal Sydney Smith in a laughing course of morals and metaphysics.†

The house, situated in Orchard street, was furnished with the proceeds, and Sydney Smith continued to occupy it during his early

* Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy, delivered at the Royal Institution, in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806, by the late Rev. Sydney Smith, M.A. London: Longmans, 1850, 8vo. pp. 424.

† Henry Rogers, the metaphysician, author of the essay on "Reason and Faith,” in an article in the Edinburgh Review says of the Lectures :—“ Inexhaustible vivacity and variety of illustration, one would, of course, expect from such a mind; but this is far from being all. The sound judgment and discrimination with which he often treats very difficult topics - the equilib rium of mind which he maintains when discussing those on which his own idiosyncracy might be supposed to have led him astray-of which an instance is seen in his temperate estimate of the value of wit and humour-the union of independence and modesty with which he canvasses the opinions of those from whom he differs-the comprehensiveness of many of his speculations and the ingenuity of others- the masterly ease and perspicuity with which even abstruse thoughts are expressed, and the frequently original, and sometimes profound remarks on human nature, to which he gives utterance -remarks hardly to be expected from any young metaphysician, and least of all from one of so lively and mercurial a temperament— all render these lectures very profitable as well as very pleasant reading; and show conclusively that the author might, if he had pleased, have acquired no mean reputation as an expositor of the very arduous branch of science to which they relate." (Ed. Rev. April, 1850.)

residence in London. The sketchers of his biography have dwelt with pleasure upon his mode of living at this time. With an increasing family, his means were narrow and required the practice of rigid economy. Still he supported his family with honour, and enjoyed, in their essentials, the delights of English hospitality. Costly entertainments he could not, and, what was more to the purpose of virtuous independence, would not give; but he encouraged a weekly meeting of friends at his house by the entertainment of a frugal supper, and when such men as Horner, Mackintosh, Romilly, Luttrell, Lord Holland, and others of that stamp, came, each guest, as Goldsmith says in the Retaliation, brought the best dish in himself. We are not to suppose, however, that the company ever went away hungry or thirsty. We find him, too, member of a weekly dining "King of Clubs," where, the intellect justified the name. There never was a time in his life, apparently, when the social powers of Smith were not in requisition. He was eminently what Dr. Johnson said Sir John Hawkins was not, a clubable man. In after-life, in London, he became a member of Johnson's own famous Literary Club. Pity that no Boswell bore him company in these resorts!*

When, in those early London days, the host made his way on foot to the dinner parties of the wealthy, he neutralized the astonishment of the lackeys in the hall, as he released his grimed overshoes, by his humourous remarks on the occasion. Far preferable was this cheerful encounter with the world, this adroit turning of its conventionalities, this healthy share in its activity, to the

*The King of Clubs was founded about the end of the last century by a party at Sir James Mackintosh's house consisting of himself and Mr. Rogers, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Robert Smith (who gave the name to the club) Mr. Scarlett and Mr. John Allen. To these original members were afterward added the names of many of the most distinguished men of the time, amongst others, Lords Lansdowne, Holland, Brougham, Cooper, King and Selkirk; Messrs. Porson, Romilly, Payne Knight, Horner, Bryan Edwards, Sydney Smith, Dumont, Jeffrey, Smithson, Tennant, Whishaw, Alexander Baring, Luttrell, Blake, Hallam, Ricardo, Hoppner. Mr. Windham was to be balloted for on the Saturday succeeding his lamented death. The King of Clubs came to a sudden dissolution in the year 1824.-Life of Sir James Mackintosh, i. 137.

SOCIAL INCONVENIENCES.

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too frequent morosity which repines at the unequal distribution of fortune, and eats its heart (a much inferior banquet to a good dinner) in solitude. Sydney Smith, by virtue of his clerical profession, the family connection with Lord Holland, his talents, had a just right of entry into the best London society. That he enjoyed its privileges without paying for them the price exacted from Moore and Theodore Hook is to be set down to the courage and good sense of his nature. That it did not cost him an effort to overcome the inequality of fortune between him and his wealthy friends, “in a country," where, as he insisted, "poverty is infamous," is witnessed by a remark he let fall in after-life, when he had tasted the emoluments of church preferment. "Moralists tell you of the evils of wealth and station, and the happiness of poverty. I have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and have borne it as well, I believe, as most people, but I can safely say that I have been happier every guinea I have gained. I well remember when Mrs. Sydney and I were young, in London, with no other equipage than my umbrella, when we went out to dinner in a hackney coach, when the rattling step was let down, and the proud, powdered red plushes grinned, and her gown was fringed with straw, how the iron entered into my soul."† There was but a short period in Sydney Smith's life, however, in which he is to be looked upon as a very poor man, though for a considerable period he remained a very ill-rewarded one. In the first years of his London residence, when he was making his way, he was assisted by a hundred pounds a year from his brother; but his chapel preaching and lecturing provided him the means of a limited independence. A turn in politics, on the death of Pitt, brought Smith's friends, the Whigs, into office in 1806, and the prompt efforts of Lord, or rather, Lady Holland, secured him a slice of church patronage from the Chancellor, Lord Erskine, in the living of Foston-le-Clay,

* First letter to Archdeacon Singleton. † Lady Holland's memoir, p. 200. Smith went to thank Erskine for the appointment. "Oh," said Erskine, "don't thank me, Mr. Smith. I gave you the living because Lady Holland

in Yorkshire, a parish embracing a small, rude farmer population, some eleven miles from York. It seems to have been a sinecure when it was presented, since at that time there had not been a resident clergyman for a hundred and fifty years, and Smith, through the indulgence of his diocesan Archbishop Markham, and by virtue of his preachership at the Foundling, enjoyed the first year or two of his incumbency quietly in London, while a curate performed the duty for him at the north.

The year 1807 gave birth to the Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, to my Brother Abraham, who lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley. They were ten in number, and followed in quick succession, disturbing not a little the equanimity of the ministry of Canning and Perceval, by their sharp, pungent attacks, while strengthening the cause of liberal reform by their enormous popular success. Though published anonymously, they who knew Sydney Smith knew Peter Plymley. No more caustic wit had been expended on politics since the productions of Swift. Peter Plymley's object was to rescue the claims of the Irish Catholics from the vast mass of prejudice, unsound political economy, and false reasoning which, as he justly thought, overlaid justice and judgment in the minds of well-disposed but bigoted and unthinking Englishmen. The vehicle chosen for the discussion, a series of expostulatory letters on the affairs of the day, addressed by a man of the world to a clergyman in the country, gave the author an opportunity to play off his knowledge of clerical habitudes, and the peculiar idiosyncracies of the Establishment. The main scope

insisted on my doing so and if she had desired me to give it to the devil, he must have had it."-Dyce's Table Talk of Rogers.

"The Government of that day," says Sydney Smith, in the preface to his writings, “took great pains to find out the author; all that they could find was, that they were brought to Mr. Budd, the publisher, by the Earl of Lauderdale. Somehow or another, it came to be conjectured that I was that author: I have always denied it; but, finding that I denied it in vain, I have thought it might be as well to include the Letters in this Collection: they had an immense circulation at the time, and I think above twenty thousand copies were sold."