THE curious reader will assuredly have no | objection to transport himself for a moment, chronologically, to about the year eighty of the last century, and geographically to Woodford, in Essex, there to inspect a small section of the innumerable Smith family. Behold the father, tall and stalwart in aspect, dressed in drab, as though he were an amateur quaker, and surmounted by a hat of the strangest proportions, like that which a retired coalheaver might be supposed to adopt from old association. The mother is fair to look on, with a charm of mind and manner yet more potent than the beauty of that frame, too delicate for long life among household cares. He is of quick, restless temperament, self-reliant, with a dash of whimsicality in his habit; never long in one place; fond of building and unbuilding; buying and selling some score of places in different parts of England. She has French blood in her veins, and the French vivacity sparkles through her native sweetness. So the children, four boys and a girl, have a goodly * A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. By his Daughter, LADY HOLLAND. With a Selection from his Letters. Edited by MRS. AUSTIN. 2 vols. Longman. 1855. VOL. VXXX.-NO. V. heritage of qualities,-strength from one side the channel, brilliance from the other. All were remarkable for early tokens of talent. To the boys, books and disputation were as tarts and marbles. They read with insatiable greediness, and would try their skill against each other by fierce arguments on questions beyond their years. No other boys can stand a moment against these practised word-gladiators. They grow intolerably overbearing-the young Sophistae. Away with them from home, ere they be spoilt ! A public school shall be their Socrates-shall exercise and temper those quick wits of theirs-show them their limit and their level. Sydney Smith, the second of these lads, is the subject, and his daughter Lady Holland, the author of the memoir now before us. Every one who knew Sydney Smith was aware that but a part of his nature-and that not the most truly noble-was known to the public. None was so deeply convinced of this as she who knew him best, and it was the beloved and melancholy task of his widow to prepare the memoranda and collect the letters which should form material for a worthy biography. But who should undertake it ? Those who best understood him were 37 | too old, or too much occupied, or gone. | palsied by convulsive cacchinations were too Some said there would be little to tell for unsteady to hold the measure and fit the cowhich the public would care; others, that lossus with a judgment. Now it is better unthe time was not yet come for the telling. But derstood how all that wit was only the efMrs. Smith had consecrated her remaining florescence of his greatness-the waving wild days to the memory of her husband, and urg- flowers on the surface of a pyramid. Time ed on Mrs. Austin her anxious request that may take from the edifice of his fame some she would undertake the memoir and corre- of its lighter decorations, obliterate quaint spondence. Failing health compelled that carvings, decapitate some grotesque and penlady to decline any labor beyond that of ed- dant gargoyles, destroy some rich flamboy. iting a selection from the letters. She stipu- ant word traceries; but that very spoliation lated, very properly, for full liberty to suppress will only display more completely the solid anything that might injure the dead or foundation, the broad harmonious plan of his wound the feelings of the living. An excel- life's structure, and exhibit the fine conscienlent discretion has guided her hand throughout tiousness with which those parts of the buildthe execution of her work. A righteous ing most remote from the public eye were disappointment awaits those prurient eyes finished, even as those most seen. that may scan this correspondence in search. of pungent personalities and the piquancy of scandal. The slightest note admitted into the volume has at least its touch to contribute towards the desired portraiture. Nothing is excessive or wearisome, while enough is given faithfully to represent the writer in heart and act. Lady Holland's memoir, too, is right pleasant reading. We cannot regret that even friends like Moore and Jeffrey were unable to undertake what a daughter has so admirably accomplished. This biography is characterized by good sense and good taste. The narrative is clearly and gracefully written, the anecdotes and good stories well told, with a terse idiomatic raciness at times, that happily marks the lineage of the authoress. Above all-and this must be the source of truest satisfaction to the writer-the work justifies before the world the cherished convictions of domestic affection,-makes it manifest that there were in the subject of it admirable qualities of mind and heart of higher worth by far than any attribute which the common judgment had assigned to the dazzling talker and the trenchant controversialist. Mrs. Austin justly remarks, that the reputation of Sydney Smith has risen since his death. It has risen, and it is to rise. Every year lessens the number of those who can remember the marvellous charm of his conversation that diaphragm shaking, fancychasing, oddity-piling, incongruity-linking, hyperbole-topping, wonder-working, faculty of his which a bookful of Homeric compound adjectives would still leave undescribed. But meanwhile, the true proportions of that large intellect have been growing upon the vision of men. Blinded with tears of laughter, they could not estimate his magnitude .Hands In the elder days of art, Builders wrought with greatest care For the gods are everywhere. It is the work of time either to detect or to vindicate the architecture of every conspicuous name. The decay which exposes pretence justifies truthfulness, and gives the very life it seems to steal. But, while the truth and the power that lay in such a man might be thus secure of recognition, it remained for a memoir like the present to exhibit the love with which his nature overflowed-his strong affectionsthe thoughtful tenderness of his sympathyhis generous spirit of self-sacrifice-his passion for making all about him happy, from the least unto the greatest. It is a right thing and a delightful that we should be assured, by those who alone can render such testimony, that the wit and mirthfulness of the noted Sydney Smith were not mere drawing-room and dinner-table coruscations, stimulated by reputation, by company, by wine, but the daily sunshine of a home. For many years his life was a struggle with the incumbrance of inevitable debt, remote from society, in disappointment, in a kind of exile. How many, so circumstanced, would have made themselves and all about them wretched,-visiting their vexations, in fretfulness or gloom, on wife, and children, and servants! He was indomitable in good temper, indefatigable in prompt clear-headed action; sharing and lightening every one's burden by some blithe pleasantry or other; and esteeming no handicraft job a trouble, no contrivance a trifle, which could increase the comfort of any child, domestic, or even animal, beneath his care. We have seen, as from a distance, the scintillations of his wit, like the sparks that find their way up into the night from | It was not that the writers in this periodithe mouth of some lowly cottage chimney. cal evinced a talent which distanced what How goodly is it to enter the door,-to look a literature rich as that of England had upon the great genial fire of household love hitherto produced. The real strength of the from which they all were born-to watch the new comer lay in the genius and the daring beaming faces round the ingle-to hear the of those successive assaults upon political ringing laugh of childhood, the merriment, and social abuses under which we groaned, the music, the singing. Whether at home from our Dan unto our Beersheba. There or abroad, the wit of this man was the play- were the Catholics unemancipated-bloodful overflow of the strength given to a great thirsty game-laws-Test and Corporation lover of his kind. Bright it was, but no Acts-prisoners could have no council-the mere brilliance, no feu de joie ;—it was shi- laws of debt and conspiracy were scandalningly benign, as the rocket gleaming through ously oppressive-terrorism and taxation the sky, whose fire-path is followed by the made up the business of the State, and dirope that saves a shipwrecked crew. gestion seemed the chief end of the Church. All the most thorough and most telling protests against abuses such as these, which made luminous the early course of the Review, proceeded from the pen of Sydney Smith. It is to his commanding genius that we must award the honor of winning a hearing for the Edinburgh from listless, despondent, or prejudiced auditors, on those great questions with which its deserved success must be forever associated. At Winchester School, under much misery and semi-starvation, young Sydney produced thousands of Latin verses; ripening through this wretchedness for a fellowship at New College, Oxford. His inclinations would have led him to the bar; but it had been a costly matter to provide a legal education for his clever elder brother, Robert. So Sydney, after narrowly escaping being sent as supercargo to China, is urged by his father to enter the Church. At last he complies; and is next to be discovered, on diligent in quiry, a curate, in the midst of Salisbury Plain—a pauper pastor, horseless, bookless -nay, too often meatless, saying solitary grace over potatoes sprinkled with ketchup. Unhappy!-not for this poverty, but for the pressure which drove him to a calling for which he had no spontaneous vocation. At all events, filthy lucre did not entice him within the pale ecclesiastic. Once entered there, his duty was discharged most conscientiously, according to his views of it. It appears to us as much a matter of course as the stopping of the heroine's runaway horse by the hero in a novel, that the squire of the parish, having ears on his head and some brains in it, should have taken a great fancy to Mr. Smith, the curate. He sends him to the Continent as tutor to his son; but war breaking out, they put into Edinburgh, "in stress of politics." In that "energetic and unfragrant city," he took two eventful steps-matrimony, the first; the second, the projection and production of the Edinburgh Review, of which he edited the first number. In estimating the share of Sydney Smith in a movement of such importance, it is necessary to ascertain the secret of the power possessed by that portentous creation of buff and blue which was born, ideally at least, in the ninth flat of Buccleugh-place, Edinburgh.* *See a full discussion of this question in No. XXXI. of this Review. Jeffrey worked harder for the Review than any one else. Most praiseworthy is the steadiness with which the versatile mind cooped up in that wiry little body, labored at the periodical oar; and, had the Edinburgh existed for Scotland only, it would have needed for success nothing but what Jeffrey could have furnished. His analytical, dissecting-knife style of mind, his metaphysical acuteness, his proneness to philosophize about men as mere abstractions, his love of disquisition-all these were articles in demand north of the Tweed. The clever owner of such qualities might be pardoned, on their account, his flippancy, his critical destructiveness, his weary steppes, here and there, of unrelieved prosiness, As to wit, no one asked for it. Sydney Smith used to say that it required a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. But in England humor is native and of high account. We do not think a man the less in earnest for his jest by the way, for an extravaganza now and then. With all our practicality, we love a playful fancy, quaint indirectness, grotesque collocations, sudden turns, gravely comic ironies. We do not always speak upon the square; we are not ashamed of having been known to utter an impracticable wish. Caledonia has given us some humorists of note, but they have always been formed by the culture and the society of England. Jeffrey, as Smith jocularly told him, was brimful at any time of arguments on every imaginable question; but Sydney alone could render the arguments he urged irresistible from laughter as well as logic. It is not too much to say that to his mind, more than to any other, was the Edinburgh indebted for the vigorous hold it took upon the public feeling of that time. His own modest estimate of his share in the work is thus expressed in one of his letters to Jeffrey : "You must consider that Edinburgh is a very grave place, and that you live with philosophers who are very intolerent of nonsense. I write for the London, not for the Scotch market, and perhaps more people read my nonsense than your sense. The complaint was loud and universal of the extreme dulness and lengthiness of the Edinburgh Review. Too much, I admit, would not do of my style; but the proportion in which it exists enlivens the Review, if you appeal to the whole public, and not to the eight or ten grave Scotchmen with whom you live. I am a very ignorant, frivolous, half-inch person; but, such as I am, I am sure I have done your Review good, and contributed to bring it into notice. Such as I am, I shall be, and cannot promise to alter. Such is my opinion of the effect of my articles. Almost any one of the sensible men who write for the Review would have written a much wiser and more profound article than I have done upon the game-laws. I am quite certain nobody would obtain more readers for his essay upon such a subject; and I am equally certain that the principles are right, and that there is no lack of sense in it."-Vol. ii., p. 181. After a residence of five years in Edinburgh, Sydney Smith removed to London, straitened in means, too liberal in his views to hope for much beyond merest journeyman's wages from his Church, but consoled by the entrée of Holland House, by an increasing circle of friends, and by signal popularity as a preacher. Languid West-Endians crowded to hear a man who preached in the every-day speech of good society, who was earnest, practical, intelligible, even interesting, in the pulpit, and under whom they almost forgot to yawn. The lectures on Moral Philosophy, delivered at the Royal Institution, added deservedly to his fame and funds, and blocked up with equipages the streets which are named after Albemarle and Grafton. In 1809 preferment came, through Lord and Lady Holland, in the shape of a small living at Foston le Clay, in Yorkshire. A change in the law made residence and building compulsory, and Sydney Smith must atone in his own person for the ecclesiastical negligence and abuse of a hundred and fifty chose wrathfully to fancy him, he must have perished for lack of ices, champagne, and small-talk. He must have lost at least one pair of boots and all his peace of mind in the stiff clay of Foston. Nor would he have been the first London parson who has all but died of a living in Yorkshire. "Muster Smith," said the octogenarian clerk of Foston, on his first appearance," it often stroikes my moind, that people as comes from London is such fools." Clerk and people straightway discover that their new pastor is no fool. He adapts himself to the situation with a facility that would have been amazing in any one except himself and Alcibiades. At London or at Foston, at Susa or at Sparta, your true lord of circumstance is equally at home. In the twinkling of an eye Sydney Smith has bucolic. His ignorance of agriculture grown is vanishing every day. He dines with the farmers, he sets on foot gardens for the poor, he doctors peasants or cattle, as the case may be (for he heard medical lectures at Edinburgh), he takes an absorbing interest in the diet and gestation of sheep and kine, and can find amusement in the trifles which constitute the events of a hamlet, so sparsely peopled, "that you never for years see so many as four people all together except on a very fine Sunday at church." Nine months of cheerful untiring energy sufficed to build the new parsonage-house which was to replace the crumbling hovel formerly so called. He says: "It made me a very poor man for many years, but I never repented it. I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer, as I could not let I my caught up a little garden-girl, made like a mileland. A man-servant was too expensive; so stone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals; Bunch became the best butler in the county. "I had little furniture, so I bought a cart-load of deals; took a carpenter (who came to me for like a full moon, into my service; established parish relief, called Jack Robinson), with a face him in a barn, and said Jack, furnish my house.' You see the result!"-Vol. i., p. 159. Apropos of "Bunch," Mrs. Marcet records an amusing scene which she witnessed on a visit to Foston. "I was coming down stairs the next morning, when Mr. Smith suddenly said to Bunch, who was passing, Bunch, do you like roast duck or boiled chicken?' Bunch had probably never tasted either the one or the other in her life, but answered, without a moment's hesitation, Roast duck, please sir, and disappeared. I laughed. 'You may laugh,' said he, but you have no idea of the labor it has cost me to give her that decision of character. The Yorkshire peasantry are the quickest and shrewdest in the world, but you can never get a direct answer from them; if you ask them even their own names, they always scratch their heads, and say, ' A's sur ai don't knaw, sir;' but I have brought Bunch to such perfection, that she never hesitates now on any subject, however difficult. I am very strict with her. Would you like to hear her repeat her crimes? She has them by heart, and repeats them every day. Come here, Bunch!' (calling out to her), 'come and repeat your crimes to Mrs. Marcet;' and Bunch, a clean, fair, squat, tidy little girl, about ten or twelve years of age, quite as a matter of course, as grave as a judge, without the least hesitation, and with a loud voice, began to repeat-'Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door slamming, blue-bottle flycatching, and curtsey-bobbing. Explain to Mrs. Marcet what blue-bottle fly-catching is.' Standing with my mouth open and not attending, sir.' 'And what is curtsey-bobbing?' Curtseying to the centre of the earth, please sir.' Good girl! now you may go' She makes a capital waiter, I assure you. On state occasions, Jack Robinson, my carpenter, takes off his apron and waits too, and does pretty well; but he sometimes naturally makes a mistake, and sticks a gimblet into the bread instead of a fork.'"-Vol. i., p. 186. Here is another illustration of the man from the same pen : 66 "But I came up to speak to Annie Kay. Where is Annie Kay? Ring the bell for Annie Kay." Kay appeared. Bring me my medicine-book, Annie Kay. Kay is my apothecary's boy, and makes up my medicines." Kay appears with the book. "I am a great doctor; would you like to hear some of my medicines?" "Oh yes, Mr. Sydney." "There is the gentlejog, a pleasure to take it; the bull-dog for more serious cases; Peter's puke; heart's delight, the comfort of all the old women in the village; ruba-dub, a capital embrocation; dead-stop settles the matter at once; up-with-it-then, needs no explanation; and so on. Now, Annie Kay, give Mrs. Spratt a bottle of rub-a-dub; and to Mr. Coles a dose of dead-stop and twenty drops of laudanum. This is the house to be ill in (turning to us); indeed, everybody who comes is expected to take a little something; I consider it a delicate compliment when my guests have a slight illness here. We have contrivances for everything Have you seen my patent armor? No? Annie Kay, bring my patent armor. Now, look here: if you have a stiff neck or swelled face, here is this sweet case of tin filled with hot water, and covered with flannel to put round your neck, and you are well directly. Likewise, a patent tin shoulder, in case of rheumatism. There you see a stomach-tin, the greatest comfort in life; and lastly, here is a tin slipper, to be filled with hot water, which you can sit with in the drawingroom, should you come in chilled, without wetting your feet. Come and see my apothecary's shop. We all went down stairs, and entered a Foom filled entirely on one side with medicines. and on the other with every description of groceries and household or agricultural necessaries; in the centre, a large chest, forming a table, and divided into compartments for soap, candles, salt, and sugar. "Here you see,' said he,' every human want before you : "Man wants but little here below, As beef, veal, mutton, pork, lamb, venison show." spreading out his arms to exhibit everything, and laughing. 'Life is a difficult thing in the country, I assure you, and it requires a good deal of forethought to steer the ship, when you live twelve miles from a lemon. By-the-by, that reminds me of one of our greatest domestic triumphs. Some years ago, my friend Cthe arch epicure of the Northern Circuit, was dining with me in the country. On sitting down to dinner, he turned round to the servant and desired him to look in his great-coat pocket and he would find a lemon; 'for,' he said, 'I thought it likely you might have duck and green peas for dinner, and therefore thought it prudent, at this distance from a town, to provide a lemon.' I turned round and exclaimed indignantly, ' Bunch, bring in the lemon-bag!' and Bunch appeared with a bag containing a dozen lemons. He respected us wonderfully after that. Oh, it is reported that he goes to bed with concentrated lozenges of wild-duck, so as to have the taste constantly in his mouth when he wakes in the night.””—Vol. i., p. 355. Nor was this gaiety in any measure the result of mere heedlessness or insensibility. His strong affections gave poignancy to all that was trying in his lot. But the sense of duty, the spirit of love, the manly resolve to make the best of whatever might befall, bore him bravely up till better days. "I have not unfrequently seen him in an evening," says Lady Holland, "when bill after bill poured in, as he was sitting at his desk (carefully examining them and gradually paying them off) quite overcome by the feeling of the hands, and exclaim Ah! I see I shall end my debt hanging over him, cover his face in his old age in a gaol!' This was the more striking from one the buoyancy of whose spirits usually rose above all difficulties. It made a deep impression upon us; and I remember many little family councils, to see if it were not possible to economize in something more, and lessen our daily expenses to assist him." Meanwhile he was a diligent contributor to the Edinburgh. He was never without |