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In the year 1797, the period, I believe, at which my father arrived in Edinburgh with his pupil, Mr. Beach, that city was rich in talent, full of men who have acted important parts whilst they lived, and many of whom have left names that will live after them:—Jeffrey, Horner, Playfair, Walter Scott, Dugald Stewart, Brougham, Allen, Brown, Murray, Leyden, Lord Webb Seymour, Lord Woodhouselee,* Alison, Sir James Hall, and many others.
Society at that time in Edinburgh was upon the most easy and agreeable footing; the Scotch were neither rich nor ashamed of being poor, and there was not that struggle for display which so much diminishes the charm of London society, and has, with the increase of wealth, now crept into that of Edinburgh.
* Father of the historian Mr. Peter Tytler. |
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Into this soil, then, so congenial to his mind and tastes, my father was
transplanted; and, though a perfect stranger, the kindness with which he was received is
best shown by the strong attachment he ever retained for his Scotch friends, though far
removed from them in after life, and by the pleasure with which he always looked back to
this period, which he often refers to in his letters. In one of them he exclaims,
“When shall I see Scotland again? Never shall I forget the happy days passed
there, amidst odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and most
enlightened and cultivated understandings!” I believe he kept up, with hardly
any exception, the friendships then formed, and I heard an incident yesterday which, trifle
as it was, showed such affection for my father’s memory that it quite touched me. One
evening my father was at his old friend Lord
Woodhouselee’s country-house, near Edinburgh, when a violent storm of
wind arose, and shook the windows so as to annoy everybody present and prevent
conversation. “Why do you not stop them?” mild my father; “give
me a knife, a screw, and a
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Though truly loving them, his quick sense of the ludicrous made him derive
great amusement from the little foibles and peculiarities of the Scotch; and often has he
made them laugh by his descriptions of things which struck his English eye. “It
requires,” he used to say, “a surgical operation to get a joke well
into a Scotch understanding. Their only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of
this electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the
name of wut, is so infinitely distressing to people of good
taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals. They are so imbued with
metaphysics that they even make love metaphysically; I overheard a young lady of my
acquaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim, in a sudden pause of the music,
‘What you say, my Lord, is very true of love in the aibstract, but—’ here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously,
and the rest was lost. No nation has so large a stock of benevolence of heart: if you
meet with an accident, half Edinburgh immediately flocks to your door to
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The reigning bore at this time in Edinburgh was ——; his favourite subject, the North Pole. It mattered not how far south you began, you found yourself transported to the north pole before you could take breath; no one escaped him. My father declared he should invent a slip button. Jeffrey fled from him as from the plague, when possible; but one day his arch-tormentor met him in a narrow lane, and began instantly on the north pole. Jeffrey, in despair and out of all patience, darted past him, exclaiming, “D— the north pole!”* My father met him shortly after, boiling with indignation at Jeffrey’s contempt of the north pole. “Oh, my dear fellow,” said my father, “never mind; no one minds what Jeffrey says, you know; he is a privileged person; he respects nothing, absolutely nothing. Why, you will scarcely believe it, but it is not more than a week ago that I heard him speak disrespectfully of the equator!”
My father tells of his first acquaintance with Horner, who was at that time among the most conspicuous young men in “that energetic and unfragrant city.” “My desire to know him proceeded first of all from being cautioned against him by some excellent and
* I see this anecdote in Mr. Moore’s Memoirs attributed to Leslie, but I have so often heard it told as applying to a very different person, that I think he was mistaken. |
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After two years’ residence in Edinburgh he returned to England, to
marry Miss Pybus, to whom he had
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Thus deprived of the only relation capable of affording her protection and assistance, it was lucky that Miss Pybus had some fortune, for my father’s only contribution towards their future menage (save his own talents and character) were six small silver teaspoons, which, from much wear, had become the ghosts of their former selves. One day, in the madness of his joy, he came running into the room and flung these into her lap, saying, “There, Kate, you lucky girl, I give you all my fortune!”
Upon this small portion (which my father’s first step was to secure in the strictest manner to his wife and children, though Mrs. Pybus, who had perfect confidence in him, had thought it would have been better to leave a portion of it unsettled in case of need,) and the six silver spoons, they determined to return to Edinburgh and set up housekeeping.
“One of our early difficulties,” said my mother,
“was, how we should buy the necessary plate and
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Mr. Beach presented my father, soon after, with a thousand pounds for his care of his eldest son, which he put into the Stocks, and in which consisted his whole worldly wealth. And here I must introduce a little trait, which, though trifling in itself, yet, considering his circumstances, deserves to be mentioned.
He had made the acquaintance, during his residence in Edinburgh, of a family
consisting of a lady (one of the most beautiful specimens of old-age I have ever met) and
four daughters, who seemed to live for no other object than this mother. He accidentally
discovered that this interesting old lady was suddenly involved in pecuniary difficulties.
Regretting how little he had to offer, he entreated she would not refuse the loan of a
hundred pounds out of his little store; it was accepted with the same kind feeling with
which it was offered. I never heard the circumstance till
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Another instance of his generosity at that time was in behalf of Mr. Leyden, who, born a poor shepherd-boy in Teviotdale, had become so remarkable by his learning, that an effort was made by subscription to enable him to attend the College classes in Edinburgh, where he made the most astonishing progress in almost every branch of knowledge taught there. Having obtained, through Mr. Dundas, an appointment to India, he was quite unable to accomplish his outfit. Sir Walter Scott and my father, and a few others, were chiefly instrumental in effecting it, the latter contributing £40 out of his very small means. Mr. Leyden afterwards died in India.
About this period Lord Holland, with whom my father had been slightly acquainted, wrote to ask if he could recommend any clever young medical man to accompany him to Spain, where he was going. My father had the pleasure of recommending his friend Mr. Allen, whose high character and talents were so valued at Holland House, that he never after left it, but remained there even after Lord Holland’s death, and died loved, honoured, and respected by the whole of Lord Holland’s family.
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As the time approached for the birth of his child, he constantly expressed his wish, first, that it might be a daughter, and secondly, that she might be born with one eye, that he might never lose her. The daughter came in due time, according to his wish, but, unfortunately, with two eyes; however, in spite of this unpropitious circumstance, she was very graciously received, and the nurse, to her horror, during five minutes’ absence, found he had stolen her from the nursery a few hours after she was born, to introduce her in triumph to Jeffrey and the future Edinburgh Reviewers.
Being now in possession of a daughter with two eyes, it became necessary to give her a name; and nobody would believe the meditations, the consultations, and the discussions he held on this important point. At last he determined to invent one, and Saba was the result.
About the period in which he was engaged in settling this important domestic point, he was likewise employed in arranging with Messrs. Jeffrey, Brougham, Murray, and his other friends, the preliminaries of that periodical which, under the name of the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ has grown into such importance, has produced such useful results, and has bestowed on its chief contributors a European reputation.
He must state its origin and results:—“Towards the end of my
residence in Edinburgh, Brougham, Jeffrey, and myself happened to meet in the eighth or
ninth story or flat in Buccleugh Place, the then
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* A distinguished periodical, speaking of the Edinburgh Review, says:—“The world will long look to this as to the opening of an important era in English literary history, for then, so to say, was founded an empire of criticism, wider in its objects, more vigorous in its provisions, more perfect in its administrative machinery, than any of the dynasty which had flourished in the eighteenth century. The cause of tolerance without licentiousness, and philanthropy without cant, was substantially aided by its exertions and the attention they commanded. If the good done thereby should be apportioned out, a large share would fall to the Rev. Sydney Smith.” |
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To estimate justly my father’s moral courage in projecting and contributing to such a Review, not only the personal risk to which those who expressed liberal opinions were exposed (of which nothing gives a more vivid impression than the third volume of Mr. Fox’s letters, just published), should be taken into consideration, but his profession, and the corrupt state of that profession at this period. As this is a subject of which I am quite incompetent to speak, I shall quote a short passage from a remarkable article on Church Parties in the Edinburgh Review, which gives a very striking description of it. “The thermometer of the Church of England sank to its lowest point in the first thirty years of George III. Unbelieving bishops, and a slothful clergy, had succeeded in driving from the Church the faith and zeal of Methodism which Wesley had
* “In a scarcity which occurred little more than twenty years ago, every judge (except the Chancellor and Sergeant Runnington), when they charged the Grand Jury, attributed the scarcity to the combinations of the farmers. Such doctrines would not now be tolerated in the mouth of a school-boy.” |
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The Dean of St. Paul’s and others have spoken of the remarkable increase in vigour of style and boldness of illustration in my father’s writings as he advanced in years; but I have seldom seen it noticed, except in a very clever sketch of him written by some friend soon after his death, that he had no youth in his writings; no period of those crude, extravagant theoretical opinions, with which the French Revolution had infected society to a degree of which we can hardly now form any estimate; though it is alluded to in almost every publication of the times.
A letter from Mr. Montagu to
Mr. Mackintosh, given in the Life of his father Sir James Mackintosh, describes
this vividly. “At this time, the wild opinions which prevailed at the commencement
of the French Revolution misled most of us who were not as wise as your father, and he
did not wholly escape their fascinating influence. The prevalent doctrines were, that
man was so benevolent as to wish only the happiness of his fellow-creatures, so
intellectual as to
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“Yet in the midst of this“ (continues the writer to whom I have alluded) “Sydney Smith showed, from the outset, a singular union of courage and good sense, without a tincture of the extravagance by which, in so many young men of ability, they were at that time accompanied. He did not hesitate to embrace and avow a sound principle, however obnoxious; but neither enthusiasm or party spirit could carry him a hair’s-breadth beyond what his judgment approved.”
He seems to have discerned, in the first blush of youth, that true liberty
was never in such danger of destruction as when seized by the rude hands of her intemperate
and unenlightened worshipers; and that true religion was never in such peril of being
brought into ridicule and contempt, as when disfigured by the indiscreet zeal of ignorance
and fanaticism. These convictions will, I think, be seen to pervade all his works, and even
his correspondence,—to have been the great incentives under which he laboured to open the
eyes of our rulers, under which he endeavoured to promote reforms at their legitimate
source, and to ward off those horrors which the long neglect of reform had so recently
produced in France. Speaking
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I shall leave my father to paint the fate of those who ventured to maintain such opinions at the period of which I am speaking.
“From the beginning of the century (about which time the Review began), to the death of Lord Liverpool, was an awful period for those who ventured to maintain liberal opinions; and who were too honest to sell them for the ermine of the judge, or the lawn of the prelate. A long and hopeless career in your profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, the sarcastic leer of the genuine political rogue; prebendaries, deans, bishops made over your head; reverend renegades advanced to the highest dignities of the Church, for helping to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestant Dissenters; and no more chance of a Whig administration than of a thaw in Zembla. These were the penalties exacted for liberality of opinion at that period, and not only was there no pay, but there were many stripes.”
“It is always considered a piece of impertinence in England if a
man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all on important
subjects; and in addition he was sure to be assailed with all the Billingsgate of the
French Revolution,—Jacobin, leveller, atheist, Socinian, incendiary, regicide, were the
gentlest appellations used; and any man who breathed a syllable against the senseless
bigotry of the two
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My father speaks of himself as having a passionate love of common justice and common sense. He says, speaking of justice, “Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion, safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest emanation from the Gospel, it is the greatest attribute of God. It is that centre round which human motives and passions turn; and justice, sitting on high, sees genius, and power, and wealth, and birth revolving round her throne, and teaches their paths, and marks
* He says, on this subject, in his speech on the Reform Bill: “Look at the gigantic Brougham, sworn in at twelve, and before six o’clock has a bill on the table abolishing the abuses of a court which has been the curse of England for centuries. For twenty-five long years did Lord Eldon sit in the court, surrounded with misery and sorrow, which he never held up a finger to alleviate. The widow and the orphan cried to him as vainly as the town-crier cries when he offers a small reward for a full purse; the bankrupt of the court became the lunatic of the court; estates mouldered away and mansions fell down, but the fees came in and all was well; but in an instant the iron mace of Brougham shivered to atoms this house of fraud and of delay.” |
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Entering life then with these feelings, we shall, I think, best find their fruits by following the efforts of his pen through the greater part of his life in the Edinburgh Review. I have been told that I ought to give some analysis of them here; but they are now before the public in such various forms, are so well known, and, after various trials, I find them so much injured by any attempt to condense them, that I shall make his friend, Lord Monteagle, speak for me (as he states in a few lines what it would have cost me many pages to tell), and shall merely content myself with shortly enumerating what were the subjects that occupied my father’s thoughts and employed his pen during so large a portion of his life; a pen which, I think I may venture to assert, was never sullied by private passion or private interest, never degraded by an impure or unworthy motive, and, with all its unexampled powers of sarcasm, never wounding but for the public good.
Lord Monteagle says: “Looking at all he did, and the way in which he did it, it must be an inexpressible pleasure to all who knew, valued, and loved him, to observe that there was scarcely one question in which the moral, the intellectual, social, or even physical well-being of his fellow-men were concerned, to the advancement of which he has not endeavoured to contribute.”
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Some of his earliest efforts seem to have been directed to subjects more immediately belonging to his profession, such as the use and abuse of the pulpit for political subjects, and the very inefficient state of pulpit eloquence. He touches on clerical reforms; he endeavours to protect the curates and inferior clergy, and to restrain the increasing power of the bishops, or rather to define those powers by laws, not leaving them dependent on the caprice of individual character or prejudice, as they then were. Toleration, from every motive, private, political, and religious, he inculcates on all occasions and in every form; and, as connected with and mainly depending on this, no subject more earnestly or frequently occupied his thoughts than the state of Ireland.
Education, as existing in this country in every class and in both sexes,
claimed his attention. The injurious effects of Methodism and fanaticism on true religion
in this country; the infinite importance of correcting vice in such a manner as should not
produce hatred to virtue; the danger of religious wars, or of the total loss of our Indian
possessions from the injudicious attempts at conversion by men totally unfitted for so
important a work; the injuries we were inflicting on some of our finest colonies by bad
governors and worse laws,—all these he describes and deprecates. He found in the cell of
the lunatic chains, darkness, terror, cruelty, everything that unrestrained power and human
passions could add of horror to that heaviest of God’s afflictions, and he brought
into
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At a time when the greater part of the Bench, as well as the Bar, with some
noble exceptions, were opposed strongly to any change in our criminal procedure, he looked
with horror at the scenes he witnessed in our courts of law, and the judicial murders that
he felt must often occur under such a system; and he pleaded the cause of the poor
unprotected prisoner in language so earnest and so forcible, that it may, I hope, entitle
him to share with his great friends, Sir S. Romilly
and Sir J. Mackintosh, the merit of having aided in
that great work of mercy
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Though living in the midst of large landed proprietors, all zealous in the preservation of their game, the cruelty, injustice, and increasing severity of the Game-laws,* and their oppressive and demoralizing effects on the poor, frequently occupied his attention and excited his most earnest opposition. The perplexing, but, as he says, most trite of subjects, the Poor-laws, occupied his thoughts; though, I fear, with as little result as has generally been produced by all the thought that has been expended on this most difficult question.
“Thinking (as he says) the United States the most magnificent picture of human happiness,” and feeling the importance of the great political experiments that were going on there, he endeavoured to bring forward and attract public attention to both their merits and defects, urging America not to abuse the advantages she possessed, inciting Europe to profit by the example she set, and concluding by warning her, in a well-known passage, against a taste for military glory.
These, I think, were amongst the most important subjects he treated of; but there were many others of a lighter character, which he handled always with the same objects in view—to promote truth and expose evil. He leads us amusingly through the wanderings of Waterton; he unmasks the mischievous sophistry
* In the course of the preceding year no fewer than 12,000 persons were committed for offences against the Game-laws. |
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I am anxious, in this sketch, not to be thought to attribute an undue share
of influence to my father’s efforts for the public good. It is often difficult to say
who gave the death-blow to an abuse; and my father’s blows, all will admit, were no
light ones where they fell; yet he was but one of the many wise men who have used their
talents for the benefit of their fellow-creatures, and many of them have devoted more time
and attention to these objects than my father was enabled to do. But I think he has one
peculiarity above almost any writer of his day,—that of attracting public
attention; he was born for a teacher of the people, and, as
Lord Ashburton says in his striking address to
schoolmasters, “I wish to familiarize to the youngest amongst you this important
truth, that no know-
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He was a sort of rough-rider of a subject; sometimes originating, but more frequently taking up what others had for years been stating humbly, or timidly, or obscurely, or lengthily, or imperfectly, or dully, to the world; extracting at once its essence, unveiling the motives of his opponents, and placing his case clearly, concisely, simply, eloquently, boldly, brightly before the public eye. Thus the subject became read, thought of, discussed, and often acted upon by thousands of persons, dispersed over various parts of the world. This cannot have been without powerful influence on the opinions and conduct of society.
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The peculiar talent possessed by my father is well described in a sketch by a personal friend of considerable talent, printed at the time of his death.
“In fact, he had read much, and always with the sincerest desire to arrive at truth; and if he lacked that quality of intellect which is capable of imparting original views on profound subjects, no man was ever more successful in possessing himself of the results of other men’s thoughts, and in diffusing them in a form suited to the apprehension of ordinary readers. A distinguished scholar now living, writing of Sydney Smith to a friend in 1840, observes:—‘Ridicule seems to me to be admirably fitted to confound fools and to destroy their prejudices. It is not needed in order to recommend truth to wise men, and indeed, from its generally dealing in exaggeration and slight misrepresentation, is likely to offend them. It is his mastery of ridicule which renders Sydney Smith so powerful as a diffuser of ideas, for in order to diffuse widely it is necessary to be able to address fools. His powers as a diffuser, as compared with the powers of a great inventor, who was latterly altogether wanting in the diffusing power, are well shown in his article on Bentham’s Book of Fallacies; indeed, as a diffuser of the good ideas of other men, I do not know whether he ever had an equal.’
“When the imaginative faculty was in question, however, Sydney Smith was creative and original enough, God
knows. When in good spirits, the exuberance of his fancy showed itself in the most
fan-
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In another sketch of my father’s writings I have met with this passage, which I think so just that I shall insert it.
“Few men could write with his disregard of common forms, and his perfect expression of individual peculiarities, without falling into coarseness or buffoonery; the writings of Sydney are free from all vulgarities usual to the familiar writer. The great peculiarity of his works is their singular blending of the beautiful with the ludicrous, and this is the source of his refinement; he is keen and personal, almost fierce and merciless, in his attacks on public abuses; he has no check on his humour from authority or conventional forms, and yet he very rarely violates good taste; there is much good-humour in him in spite of his severity: it would be difficult to point out the source of this power of fascination, but it strikes us as being different from anything else we have ever seen.”
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