ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS
SYDNEY SMITH
by
GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL
LONDON, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIVE
PREFACE
In writing this Study of Sydney Smith, I have been working in a
harvest-field where a succession of diligent gleaners had preceded me.
As soon as Sydney Smith died, his widow began to accumulate material for
her husband's biography. She did not live to see the work accomplished, but
she enjoined in her will that some record of his life should be written.
The duty was undertaken by his daughter, Saba Lady Holland, who in 1855
published _A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith_. To this memoir was
subjoined a volume of extracts from his letters, compiled by his friend and
admirer Mrs. Austin.
For nearly thirty years Lady Holland's Memoir and Mrs, Austin's Selection
of Letters together constituted the sole Biography of Sydney Smith, and
they still remain of prime authority; but they are lamentably inaccurate in
dates.
Lord Houghton's slight but vivid monograph was published in 1873. In 1884
Mr. Stuart Reid produced _A Sketch of the Life and Times of Sydney Smith_,
in which he supplemented the earlier narrative with some traditions derived
from friends then living, and "painted the figure of Sydney Smith against
the background of his times." In 1898 the late Sir Leslie Stephen
contributed an article on Sydney Smith to the _Dictionary of National
Biography_; but added little to what was already known.
On these various writings I have perforce relied, for their respective
authors seemed to have exhausted all available resources. Lord Carlisle has
some of Sydney Smith's letters at Castle Howard, and Lord Ilchester has
some at Holland House; but both assure me that everything worth publishing
has already been published.
I have, however, been more fortunate in my application to my cousin, Mr.
Rollo Russell, and to four of Sydney Smith's descendants--Mr. Sydney
Holland, Mr. Holland-Hibbert of Munden, Miss Caroline Holland, and Mrs.
Cropper of Ellergreen. To all these my thanks are due for interesting
information, and access to valuable records. In common with all who use the
Reading-Room of the British Museum, I am greatly indebted to the skill and
courtesy of Mr. G.F. Barwick.
So much for the biographical part of my work. In the critical part I have
relied less on authority, and more on my own devotion to Sydney Smith's
writings. That devotion dates from my schooldays at Harrow, and is due to
the kindness of my father. He had known "dear old Sydney" well, and gave me
the Collected Works, exhorting me to study them as models of forcible and
pointed English. From that day to this, I have had no more favourite
reading.
G.W.E.R.
November 12th, 1904.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
EDUCATION--SALISBURY PLAIN--EDINBURGH
CHAPTER II
"THE EDINBURGH REVIEW"--LONDON--"MORAL PHILOSOPHY"
CHAPTER III
"PETER PLYMLEY"
CHAPTER IV
FOSTON--"PERSECUTING BISHOPS"--BENCH AND BAR
CHAPTER V
"CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION "--BRISTOL--COMBE FLOREY--REFORM--PROMOTION
CHAPTER VI
ST. PAUL'S--THE PARALLELOGRAM--"ARCHDEACON SINGLETON"--COLLECTED WORKS
CHAPTER VII
CHARACTERISTICS--HUMOUR--POLITICS--CULTURE--THEORIES OF LIFE--RELIGION
APPENDICES
INDEX
SYDNEY SMITH
CHAPTER I
EDUCATION--SALISBURY PLAIN--EDINBURGH
A worthy tradesman, who had accumulated a large fortune, married a lady of
gentle birth and manners. In later years one of his daughters said to a
friend of the family, "I dare say you notice a great difference between
papa's behaviour and mamma's. It is easily accounted for. Papa, immensely
to his credit, raised himself to his present position from the shop; but
mamma was extremely well born. She was a Miss Smith--one of _the old
Smiths, of Essex_."
It might appear that Sydney Smith was a growth of the same majestic but
mysterious tree, for he was born at Woodford; but further research traces
his ancestry to Devonshire. "We are all one family," he used to say, "all
the Smiths who dwell on the face of the earth. You may try to disguise it
in any way you like--Smyth, or Smythe, or Smijth[1]--but you always get
back to Smith after all--the most numerous and most respectable family in
England." When a compiler of pedigrees asked permission to insert Sydney's
arms in a County History, he replied, "I regret, sir, not to be able to
contribute to so valuable a work; but the Smiths never had any arms. They
invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs." In later life he
adopted the excellent and characteristic motto--_Faber meæ fortunæ_; and,
to some impertinent questions about his grandfather, he replied with
becoming gravity--"He disappeared about the time of the assizes, and we
asked no questions."
As a matter of fact, this maligned progenitor came to London from
Devonshire, established a business in Eastcheap, and left it to his two
sons, Robert and James. Robert Smith[2] made over his share to his brother
and went forth to see the world. This object he pursued, amid great
vicissitudes of fortune and environment, till in old age he settled down at
Bishop's Lydeard, in Somerset. He married Maria Olier, a pretty girl of
French descent, and by her had five children: Robert Percy--better known as
"Bobus"--born in 1770; Sydney in 1771; Cecil in 1772; Courtenay in 1773;
and Maria in 1774.
Sydney Smith was born on the 3rd of June; and was baptized on the 1st of
July in the parish church of Woodford. His infancy was passed at South
Stoneham, near Southampton. At the age of six he was sent to a private
school at Southampton, and on the 19th of July 1782 was elected a Scholar
of Winchester College. He stayed at Winchester for six years, and worked
his way to the top place in the school, being "Prefect of Hall" when he
left in 1788. Beyond these facts, Winchester seems to retain no impressions
of her brilliant son, in this respect contrasting strangely with other
Public Schools. Westminster knows all about Cowper--and a sorry tale it is.
Canning left an ineffaceable mark on Eton. Harrow abounds in traditions,
oral and written, of Sheridan and Byron, Peel and Palmerston. But
Winchester is silent about Sydney Smith.
Sydney, however, was not silent about Winchester. In one of the liveliest
passages of his controversial writings, he said:--
"I was at school and college with the Archbishop of Canterbury:[3]
fifty-three years ago he knocked me down with the chess-board for
checkmating him--and now he is attempting to take away my patronage. I
believe these are the only two acts of violence he ever committed in
his life."
Now Howley was a prefect when Sydney was a junior, and this game of chess
must have been (as a living Wykehamist has pointed out to me) "a command
performance." The big boy liked chess, so the little boy had to play it:
the big boy disliked being checkmated, so the little boy was knocked down.
This and similar experiences probably coloured Sydney's mind when he wrote
in 1810:--
"At a Public School (for such is the system established by immemorial
custom) every boy is alternately tyrant and slave. The power which the
elder part of these communities exercises over the younger is
exceedingly great; very difficult to be controlled; and accompanied,
not unfrequently, with cruelty and caprice. It is the common law of
these places, that the younger should be implicitly obedient to the
elder boys; and this obedience resembles more the submission of a
slave to his master, or of a sailor to his captain, than the common
and natural deference which would always be shown by one boy to
another a few years older than himself. Now, this system we cannot
help considering as an evil, because it inflicts upon boys, for two or
three years of their lives, many painful hardships, and much
unpleasant servitude. These sufferings might perhaps be of some use in
military schools; but to give to a boy the habit of enduring
privations to which he will never again be called upon to submit--to
inure him to pains which he will never again feel--and to subject him
to the privation of comforts, with which he will always in future
abound--is surely not a very useful and valuable severity in
education. It is not the life in miniature which he is to lead
hereafter, nor does it bear any relation to it; he will never again be
subjected to so much insolence and caprice; nor ever, in all human
probability, called upon to make so many sacrifices. The servile
obedience which it teaches might be useful to a menial domestic; or
the habit of enterprise which it encourages prove of importance to a
military partisan; but we cannot see what bearing it has upon the
calm, regular, civil life, which the sons of gentlemen, destined to
opulent idleness, or to any of the more learned professions, are
destined to lead. Such a system makes many boys very miserable; and
produces those bad effects upon the temper and disposition which
boyish suffering always does produce. But what good it does, we are
much at a loss to conceive. Reasonable obedience is extremely useful
in forming the disposition. Submission to tyranny lays the foundation
of hatred, suspicion, cunning, and a variety of odious passions....
"The wretchedness of school tyranny is trifling enough to a man who
only contemplates it, in ease of body and tranquillity of mind,
through the medium of twenty intervening years; but it is quite as
real, and quite as acute, while it lasts, as any of the sufferings of
mature life: and the utility of these sufferings, or the price paid in
compensation for them, should be clearly made out to a conscientious
parent before he consents to expose his children to them."
Lady Holland tells us that in old age her father "used to shudder at the
recollections of Winchester," and represented the system prevailing there
in his youth as composed of "abuse, neglect, and vice." And, speaking of
the experience of lower boys at Public Schools in general, he described it
as "an intense system of tyranny, of which the English are very fond, and
think it fits a boy for the world; but the world, bad as it is, has nothing
half so bad."
"A man gets well pummelled at a Public School; is subject to every
misery and every indignity which seventeen years of age can inflict
upon nine and ten; has his eye nearly knocked out, and his clothes
stolen and cut to pieces; and twenty years afterwards, when he is a
chrysalis, and has forgotten the miseries of his grub state, is
determined to act a manly part in life, and says, 'I passed through
all that myself, and I am determined my son shall pass through it as I
have done'; and away goes his bleating progeny to the tyranny and
servitude of the Long Chamber or the Large Dormitory. It would surely
be much more rational to say, 'Because I have passed through it, I am
determined my son shall not pass through it. Because I was kicked for
nothing, and cuffed for nothing, and fagged for everything, I will
spare all these miseries to my child.'"
And, while he thus condemned the discipline under which he had been reared,
he had no better opinion of the instruction. Not that he was an opponent of
classical education: on the contrary, he had a genuine and reasoned
admiration for "the two ancient languages." He held that, compared to them,
"merely as vehicles of thought and passion, all modern languages are dull,
ill-contrived, and barbarous." He thought that even the most accomplished
of modern writers might still be glad to "borrow descriptive power from
Tacitus; dignified perspicuity from Livy; simplicity from Caesar; and from
Homer some portion of that light and heat which, dispersed into ten
thousand channels, has filled the world with bright images and illustrious
thoughts. Let the cultivator of modern literature addict himself to the
purest models of taste which France, Italy, and England could supply--he
might still learn from Virgil to be majestic, and from Tibullus to be
tender; he might not yet look upon the face of nature as Theocritus saw it;
nor might he reach those springs of pathos with which Euripides softened
the hearts of his audience."
This sound appreciation of what was best in classical literature was
accompanied in Sydney Smith by the most outspoken contempt for the way in
which Greek and Latin are taught in Public Schools. He thought that
schoolmasters encouraged their pupils to "love the instrument better than
the end--not the luxury which the difficulty encloses, but the
difficulty--not the filbert, but the shell--not what may be read in Greek,
but Greek itself?"
"We think that, in order to secure an attention to Homer and Virgil, we
must catch up every man, whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke,
begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is
twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so
teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan
the verses of the Greek Tragedians."
He desired that boys should obtain a quick and easy mastery over the
authors whom they had to read, and on this account he urged that they
should be taught by the use of literal and interlinear translations; but "a
literal translation, or any translation, of a school-book is a contraband
article in English schools, which a schoolmaster would instantly seize, as
a custom-house officer would seize a barrel of gin."
Grammar, gerund-grinding, the tyranny of the Lexicon and the Dictionary,
had got the schoolboys of England in their grasp, and the boy "was
suffocated with the nonsense of grammarians, overwhelmed with every species
of difficulty disproportionate to his age, and driven by despair to pegtop
or marbles"; while the British Parent stood and spoke thus with himself:--
"Have I read through Lilly? Have I learnt by heart that most atrocious
monument of absurdity, the Westminster Grammar? Have I been whipt for
the substantives? whipt for the verbs? and whipt for and with the
interjections? Have I picked the sense slowly, and word by word, out
of Hederich? and shall my son be exempt from all this misery?... Ay,
ay, it's all mighty well; but I went through this myself, and I am
determined my children shall do the same."
Another grotesque abuse with regard to which Sydney Smith was a reformer
fifty years before his time was compulsory versification.--
"There are few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or nineteen at a
Public School without making above ten thousand Latin verses--a
greater number than is contained in the _Aeneid_; and, after he
has made this quantity of verses in a dead language, unless the poet
should happen to be a very weak man indeed, he never makes another as
long as he lives."[4]
"The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely rests, bring up
the first young men of the country as if they were all to keep
grammar-schools in little country-towns; and a nobleman, upon whose
knowledge and liberality the honour and welfare of his country may
depend, is diligently worried, for half his life, with the small
pedantry of longs and shorts."
The same process is applied at the other end of the social scale. The
baker's son, young Crumpet, is sent to a grammar-school, "takes to his
books, spends the best years of his life, as all eminent Englishmen do, in
making Latin verses, learns that the _Crum_ in Crumpet is long and the
_pet_ short, goes to the University, gets a prize for an essay on the
Dispersion of the Jews, takes Orders, becomes a Bishop's chaplain, has a
young nobleman for his pupil, publishes a useless classic and a Serious
Call to the Unconverted, and then goes through the Elysian transitions of
Prebendary, Dean, Prelate, and the long train of purple, profit, and
power."
In this vivacious passage, Sydney Smith caricatures his own career; which,
though it neither began in a baker's shop nor ended in an episcopal palace,
followed pretty closely the line of development here indicated. At
Winchester he "took to his books" with such goodwill that, in spite of all
hindrances, he became an excellent scholar, and laid the strong foundations
for a wide and generous culture. His family indeed propagated some pleasing
traditions about his schooldays--one of a benevolent stranger who found him
reading Virgil when other boys were playing cricket, patted his head, and
foretold his future greatness; another of a round-robin from his
schoolfellows, declining to compete against him for prizes, "because he
always gained them." But this is not history.
From Winchester Sydney Smith passed in natural course to the other of "the
two colleges of St. Mary Winton"; and, in the interval between Winchester
and Oxford, his father sent him for six months to Normandy, with a view to
improving his French. Revolution was in the air, and it was thought a
salutary precaution that he should join one of the Jacobin clubs in the
town where he boarded, and he was duly entered as "Le Citoyen Smit, Membre
Affilié au Club des Jacobins de Mont Villiers."
But he was soon recalled to more tranquil scenes. He was elected Scholar of
New College, Oxford, on the 5th of January 1789, and at the end of his
second year he exchanged his Scholarship for a Fellowship. From that time
on he never cost his father a farthing, and he paid a considerable debt for
his younger brother Courtenay, though, as he justly remarks, "a hundred
pounds a year was very difficult to spread over the wants of a College
life." Ten years later he wrote--"I got in debt by buying books. I never
borrowed a farthing of anybody, and never received much; and have lived in
poverty and economy all my life."
His career at Oxford is buried in even deeper obscurity than his schooltime
at Winchester. This is no doubt to be explained, on the intellectual side,
by the fact that members of New College were at that time exempt from
public examination; and, on the social side, by the straitened
circumstances which prevented him from showing hospitality, and the pride
which made him unwilling to accept what he could not return. We are left to
gather his feelings about Oxford and the system pursued there, from casual
references in his critical writings; and these are uncomplimentary enough.
When he wishes to stigmatize a proposition as enormously and preposterously
absurd, he says that there is "no authority on earth (always excepting the
Dean of Christ Church), which could make it credible to me." When stirred
to the liveliest indignation by the iniquities which a Tory Government is
practising in Ireland, he exclaims--"A Senior Proctor of the University of
Oxford, the Head of a House, or the examining chaplain to a Bishop, may
believe these things can last; but every man of the world, whose
understanding has been exercised in the business of life, must see (and see
with a breaking heart) that they will soon come to a fearful termination."
He praised a comparison of the Universities to "enormous hulks confined
with mooring-chains, everything flowing and progressing around them," while
they themselves stood still.
When pleading for a wider and more reasonable course of studies at Oxford,
he says:--
"A genuine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young men disputing
upon moral and political truth, forming and putting down theories, and
indulging in all the boldness of youthful discussion. He would augur
nothing from it but impiety to God and treason to Kings."
Protesting against the undue predominance of classical studies in the
Universities, as at the Public Schools, he says:--
"Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. Many minds so
employed have produced many works, and much fame in that department:
but if all liberal arts and sciences useful to human life had been
taught there; if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to
mathematics, some to experimental philosophy; and if every attainment
had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility; the
system of such an University would have been much more valuable, but
the splendour of its name something less."
The hopelessness of any attempt to reform the curriculum of Oxford by
opening the door to Political Economy is stated with characteristic
vigour.--
"When an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it
appears at first degrading to them to be useful A set of lectures upon
Political Economy would be discouraged in Oxford, possibly despised,
probably not permitted. To discuss the Enclosure of Commons, and to
dwell upon imports and exports--to come so near to common life, would
seem to be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr
or the Bentley of his day would be scandalised to be put on a level
with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet what other measure is
there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness and
difficulty? And what ought the term _University_ to mean, but a
place where every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same
time useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical
literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to
these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up
pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses
and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is
the lot of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast."
In 1810 he wrote, with reference to the newly-invented Examination for
Honours at Oxford:--
"If Oxford is become at last sensible of the miserable state to which
it was reduced, as everybody else was out of Oxford, and if it is
making serious efforts to recover from the degradation into which it
was plunged a few years past, the good wishes of every respectable man
must go with it."
And again:--
"On the new plan of Oxford education we shall offer no remarks. It has
many defects; but it is very honourable to the University to have made
such an experiment. The improvement upon the old plan is certainly
very great; and we most sincerely and honestly wish to it every
species of success."
His opinions on the subject of the Universities did not mellow with age. As
late as 1831 he wrote of a friend who had just sent his son to Cambridge:--
"He has put him there to spend his money, to lose what good qualities
he has, and to gain nothing useful in return. If men had made no more
progress in the common arts of life than they have in education, we
should at this moment be dividing our food with our fingers, and
drinking out of the palms of our hands."
It was just as bad when a lady sent her son to his own University.--
"I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, that the
only consequences of a University education are the growth of vice and
the waste of money."
In 1792 Sydney Smith took his degree,[5] and now the question of a
profession had to be faced and decided. It was necessary that he should
begin to make money at once, for the pecuniary resources of the family,
narrow at the beat, were now severely taxed by his mother's failing health
and by the cost of starting his brothers in the world. At Oxford, he had
dabbled in medicine and anatomy, and had attended the lectures of Dr.,
afterwards Sir Christopher, Pegge,[6] who recommended him to become a
doctor. His father wished to send him as a super-cargo to China! His own
strong preference was for the Bar, but his father, who had already brought
up one son to that profession and found it more expensive than profitable,
looked very unfavourably on the design; and under paternal pressure the
wittiest Englishman of his generation determined to seek Holy Orders, or,
to use his own old-fashioned phrase, to "enter the Church." He assumed the
sacred character without enthusiasm, and looked back on its adoption with
regret. "The law," he said in after life, "is decidedly the best profession
for a young man if he has anything in him. In the Church a man is thrown
into life with his hands tied, and bid to swim; he does well if he keeps
his head above water."
Under these rather dismal auspices, Sydney Smith was ordained Deacon in
1794. He might, one would suppose, have been ordained on his Fellowship,
and have continued to reside in College with a view to obtaining a
Lectureship or some other office of profit. Perhaps he found the mental
atmosphere of Oxford insalubrious. Perhaps he was unpopular in College.
Perhaps his political opinions were already too liberal for the place.
Certain it is that his visit to France, in the earlier stages of the
Revolution, had led him to extol the French for teaching mankind "the use
of their power, their reason, and their rights." Whatever was the cause, he
turned his back on Oxford, and, as soon as he was ordained, became Curate
of Netheravon, a village near Amesbury.[7] As he himself said, "the name of
Curate had lost its legal meaning, and, instead of denoting the incumbent
of a living, came to signify the deputy of an absentee." He had sole charge
of the parish of Netheravon, and was also expected to perform one service
every Sunday at the adjoining village of Fittleton. "Nothing," wrote the
new-fledged Curate, "can equal the profound, the immeasurable, the awful
dulness of this place, in the which I lie, dead and buried, in hope of a
joyful resurrection in 1796." Indeed, it is not easy to conceive a more
dismal situation for a young, ardent, and active man, fresh from Oxford,
full of intellectual ambition, and not very keenly alive to the spiritual
opportunities of his calling. The village, a kind of oasis in the desert of
Salisbury Plain, was not touched by any of the coaching-roads. The only
method of communication with the outside world was by the market-cart which
brought the necessaries of life from Salisbury once a week. The vicar was
non-resident; and the squire, Mr. Hicks-Beach, was only an occasional
visitor, for his principal residence was fifty miles off, at Williamstrip,
near Fairford. (He had acquired Netheravon by his marriage with Miss
Beach.) The church was empty, and the curate in charge likened his
preaching to the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The condition of
the village may best be judged from a report made to Mr. Hicks-Beach by his
steward in 1793. Nearly every one was dependent on parochial relief. Not a
man earned ten shillings a week. A man with a wife and four children worked
for six shillings a week. A girl earned, by spinning, four shillings a
month. Idleness, disease, and immorality were rife; and, as an incentive to
profitable industry, a young farmer beat a sickly labourer within an inch
of his life.
Mrs. Hicks-Beach referred this uncomfortable report on the condition of her
property to the newly-installed curate, requesting his opinion on the cases
specified. The curate replied with characteristic vigour. One family owed
its wretched condition to mismanagement and extravagance; another to
"ignorance bordering on brutality"; another to "Irish extraction, numbers,
disease, and habits of idleness." One family was composed of "weak, witless
people, totally wretched, without sense to extricate them from their
wretchedness"; a second was "perfectly wretched and helpless"; and a third
was "aliment for Newgate, food for the halter--a ragged, wretched, savage,
stubborn race."[8]
The squire and Mrs. Hicks-Beach, who seem to have been thoroughly
high-principled and intelligent people, were much concerned to find the
curate corroborating and even expanding the evil reports of the steward.
They immediately began considering remedies, and decided that their first
reform should be to establish a Sunday-school. The institution so named
bore little resemblance to the Sunday-schools of the present day, but
followed a plan which Robert Raikes[9] and Mrs. Hannah More[10] had
originated, and which Bishop Shute Barrington[11] (who was translated to
Durham in 1791) had strongly urged on the Diocese of Sarum.[12] Boys and
girls were taught together. The master and mistress were paid the modest
salary of two shillings a Sunday. The children were taught spelling and
reading, and, as soon as they had mastered those arts, were made to read
the Bible, the Prayer Book, and Mrs. More's tracts. The children attended
church, sitting together in a big pew, and, in hot weather, had their
lessons in the church, before and after the service. As soon as the
Sunday-school had proved itself popular and successful, an Industrial
School was arranged for three nights in the week, so that the girls of the
village might be taught domestic arts. Both institutions prospered, and
ninety years later Mr. Stuart Reid, visiting the cottages of Netheravon in
order to collect material for his book, caught the lingering tradition that
Sydney Smith "was fond of children and young people, and took pains to
teach them."
This tradition bears out what Sydney Smith said in his Farewell Sermon to
the people of Netheravon. Preaching from Proverbs iv. 13, "Take fast hold
of instruction," he said:--
"The Sunday-school which, with some trouble and expense, has been
brought to the state in which you see it, will afford to the poorest
people an opportunity of giving to their children some share of
education, and I will not suppose that anybody can be so indolent, and
so unprincipled, as not to exact from their children a regular
attendance upon it. I sincerely exhort you, and beg of you now, for
the last time, that after this institution has been got into some kind
of order, you will not suffer it to fall to ruin by your own
negligence. I have lived among your children, and have taught them
myself, and have seen them improve, and I know it will make them
better and happier men."
And now a change was at hand. The curate of Netheravon had never intended
to stay there longer than he was obliged, and the "happy resurrection" for
which he had hoped came in an unexpected fashion. Here is his own account
of his translation, written in 1839:--
"The squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and requested me to go
with his son to reside at the University of Weimar; before we could
get there, Germany became the seat of war, and in stress of politics
we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. The principles of
the French Revolution were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to
conceive a more violent and agitated state of society."
Sydney Smith and his pupil, Michael Beach,[13] arrived at Edinburgh in June
1798. They lodged successively at 38 South Hanover Street, 19 Ann Street,
and 46 George Street. The University of Edinburgh was then in its days of
glory. Dugald Stewart was Professor of Moral Philosophy; John Playfair, of
Mathematics; John Hill, of Humanity. The teaching was at once interesting
and systematic, the intellectual atmosphere liberal and enterprising.
English parents who cared seriously for mental and moral freedom, such as
the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Lansdowne, sent their
sons to Edinburgh instead of Oxford or Cambridge. The University was in
close relations with the Bar, then adorned by the great names of Francis
Jeffrey, Francis Homer, Henry Brougham, and Walter Scott. While Michael
Beach was duly attending the professorial lectures, his tutor was not idle.
From Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown, he acquired the elements of Moral
Philosophy. He gratified a lifelong fancy by attending the Clinical
Lectures given by Dr. Gregory[14] in the hospitals of Edinburgh, and
studied Chemistry under Dr. Black.[15] He amused himself with chemical
experiments.--
"I mix'd 4 of Holland gin with 8 of olive oil, and stirr'd them well
together. I then added 4 of nitric acid. A violent ebullition ensued.
Nitrous oether, as I suppos'd, was generated, and in about four hours
the oil became perfectly concrete, white and hard as tallow."
To these scientific pastimes were soon added some more professional
activities. The Episcopalians of Edinburgh at this time worshipped in
Charlotte Chapel, Rose Street, which was sold in 1818 to the Baptists. The
incumbent was the Rev. Archibald Alison,[16] who wrote a treatise on
"Taste" and ministered in one of the ugliest buildings in the world. The
arrival in Edinburgh of a clever young man in English Orders was an
opportunity not to be neglected, and Sydney Smith was often invited to
preach in Charlotte Chapel. Writing to Mr. Hicks-Beach, he says:--
"I have the pleasure of seeing my audience nod approbation while they
sleep."
And again:--
"The people of Edinburgh gape at my sermons. In the middle of an
exquisite address to Virtue, beginning 'O Virtue!' I saw a rascal
gaping as if his jaws were torn asunder."
But this, though perhaps it may have perplexed the worthy squire to whom it
was addressed, is mere self-banter. Sydney's preaching attracted some of
the keenest minds in Edinburgh. It was fresh, practical, pungent; and,
though rich in a vigorous and resounding eloquence, was poles asunder from
the rhetoric of which "O Virtue!" is a typical instance.
So popular were these sermons at Charlotte Chapel that in 1800 the preacher
ventured to publish a small volume of them, which was soon followed by a
second and enlarged edition. This book of sermons is dedicated to Lord Webb
Seymour[17]--"because I know no man who, in spite of the disadvantages of
high birth, lives to more honourable and commendable purposes than
yourself."
The preface to the book is a vigorous plea for greater animation in
preaching, a wider variety of topics, and a more direct bearing on
practical life, than were then usual in the pulpits of the Church of
England.
"Is it wonder," he asks, "that every semi-delirious sectary, who pours
forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of
passion, should gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound
and learned divine of the Established Church, and in two Sundays
preach him bare to the very sexton? Why are we natural everywhere but
in the pulpit? No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere
else, with his mouth alone, but with his whole body; he articulates
with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices.
Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions alone? Why call in the aid of
paralysis to piety? Is it a rule of oratory to balance the style
against the subject, and to handle the most sublime truths in the
dullest language and the driest manner? Is sin to be taken from men,
as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber? Or from
what possible perversion of common sense are we to look like
field-preachers in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence
and stagnation and mumbling?"
The subjects with which these sermons deal are practical in the highest
degree, such as "The Love of Country," "The Poor Magdalen," "The Causes of
Republican Opinions," "The Effect of Christianity on Manners," and "The
Treatment of Servants." One or two short samples of his thought and style
will not be out of place.
This is from his sermon on the Magdalen:--
"The best mediation with God Almighty the Father, and His Son of Mercy
and Love, is the prayer of a human being whom you have saved from
perdition."
This is from the sermon on "Christianity and Manners":--
"If ye would that men should love you, love ye also them, not with
gentleness of face alone, or the shallow mockery of smiles, but in
singleness of heart, in forbearance, judging mercifully, entering into
the mind of thy brother, to spare him pain, to prevent his wrath, to
be unto him an eternal fountain of peace. These are the fruits of the
Spirit, and this the soul that emanates from our sacred religion. If
ye bear these fruits now in the time of this life, if ye write these
laws on the tablets of your hearts so as ye not only say but do them,
then indeed are ye the true servants of Jesus and the children of His
redemption. For you He came down from Heaven; for you He was scorned
and hated upon earth; for you mangled on the Cross; and at the last
day, when the trumpet shall sound, and the earth melt, and the heavens
groan and die, ye shall spring up from the dust of the grave, the
ever-living spirits of God."
All the sermons breathe the same fiery indignation against cruelty and
tyranny, the same quick sympathy with poverty, suffering, and debasement;
and, here and there, especially in the occasional references to France and
Switzerland, they show pretty clearly the preacher's political bias. In his
own phrase, he "loved truth better than he loved Dundas,[18] at that time
the tyrant of Scotland"; and it would have been a miracle if his
outspokenness had passed without remonstrance from the authoritative and
privileged classes. But the spirited preface to the second edition shows
that he had already learned to hold his own, unshaken and unterrified, in
what he believed to be a righteous cause:--
"As long as God gives me life and strength I will never cease to
attack, in the way of my profession and to the best of my abilities,
any system of principles injurious to the public happiness, whether
they be sanctioned by the voice of the many, or whether they be not;
and may the same God take that unworthy life away, whenever I shrink
from the contempt and misrepresentation to which my duty shall call me
to submit."
The year 1800 was marked, for Sydney Smith, by an event even more momentous
than the publication of his first book. It was the year of his marriage.
His sister Maria had a friend and schoolfellow called Catharine Amelia
Pybus. He had known her as a child; and while still quite young had become
engaged to marry her, whenever circumstances should make it possible. The
young lady's father was John Pybus, who had gone to India in the service of
the Company, attained official distinction and made money. Returning to
England, he settled at Cheam in Surrey, where he died in 1789. In 1800 his
daughter Catharine was twenty-two years old. Her brother, a Tory Member of
Parliament and a placeman under Pitt, strongly objected to an alliance with
a penniless and unknown clergyman of Liberal principles; but Miss Pybus
happily knew her own mind, and she was married to Sydney Smith in the
parish church of Cheam on the 2nd of July 1800. The bride had a small
fortune of her own, and this was just as well, for her husband's total
wealth consisted of "six small silver teaspoons," which he flung into her
lap, saying, "There, Kate, you lucky girl, I give you all my fortune!"
In the autumn of 1800, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Smith established themselves at
No. 46 George Street, Edinburgh. Mrs. Smith sold her pearl necklace for
£500, and bought plate and linen with the proceeds. Michael Beach had now
quitted Edinburgh for Oxford, but his younger brother William took his
place in the Smiths' house, and was joined by the eldest son of Mr. Gordon
of Ellon. Lady Holland states that with each of these young gentlemen her
father received £400 a year; and Mr. Hicks-Beach, grateful for his good
influence on Michael, made a considerable addition to the covenanted
payment.
In 1802 the Smiths' eldest child was born and was christened Saba. The name
was taken out of the Psalms for the Fourteenth Day of the Month, and was
bestowed on her in obedience to her father's conviction that, where parents
were constrained to give their child so indistinctive a surname as Smith,
they ought to counterbalance it with a Christian name more original and
vivacious. Saba Smith became the wife of the eminent physician, Sir Henry
Holland, and died in 1866. The other children were--a boy, who was born and
died in 1803; Douglas, born in 1805, died in 1829; Emily, wife of Nathaniel
Hibbert, born in 1807, died in 1874; Wyndham, born in 1813, died in 1871.
[1] For this remarkable variant, _see_ Burke's Peerage, _Bowyer-
Smijth_, _Bart._
[2] (1739-1827.)
[3] William Howley (1766-1848).
[4] In 1819 Sydney Smith violated his own canon, thus: "But, after all, I
believe we shall all go--
"_ad veteris Nicolai tristia regna,
Pitt ubi combustum Dundasque videbimus omnes_."
[5] He became M.A. in 1796.
[6] (1765-1822.) Lees' Reader in Anatomy 1790, Regius Professor of Medicine
1801.
[7] It is curious that the date and place of Sydney Smith's ordination as
Deacon cannot be traced. He would naturally have been ordained at
Salisbury by John Douglas, Bishop of Sarum; but there is a gap in that
prelate's Register of Ordinations between 1791 and 1796. He may have
been ordained on Letters Dimissory in some other diocese. He was
raised to the Priesthood in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, on the
22nd of May 1796 by Edward Smallwell, Bishop of Oxford; being
described as Fellow of New College, and B.A.
For the foregoing facts I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. A.R.
Malden, Registrar of the Diocese of Salisbury, and Mr. J.A. Davenport,
Registrar of the Diocese of Oxford.
[8] Quoted by Mr. Stuart Reid.
[9] (1735-1811).
[10] (1745-1833.)
[11] (1734-1826.)
[12] "At the commencement of the nineteenth century, the Sunday-school had
become a part of the regular organization of almost every well-worked
parish. It was then a far more serious affair than it is now, for,
where there was no week-day school, it supplied secular as well as
religious instruction to the children. In fact, the Sunday-school took
up a considerable part of the day,"--J.H. OVERTON, _The English
Church in the Nineteenth Century_.
[13] Grandfather of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, M.P.
[14] James Gregory (1753-1821), Professor of Medicine.
[15] Joseph Black (1728-1799), Professor of Chemistry.
[16] (1757-1839.)
[17] (1777-1819). Son of the 10th Duke of Somerset.
[18] Henry Dundas (1742-1811), Lord Advocate, created Viscount Melville in
1802.