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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1811
Sydney Smith to Jane Apreece [afterwards Davy], 29 December 1811
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Author's Preface
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Index
Editor’s Preface
Letters 1801
Letters 1802
Letters 1803
Letters 1804
Letters 1805
Letters 1806
Letters 1807
Letters 1808
Letters 1809
Letters 1810
Letters 1811
Letters 1812
Letters 1813
Letters 1814
Letters 1815
Letters 1816
Letters 1817
Letters 1818
Letters 1819
Letters 1820
Letters 1821
Letters 1822
Letters 1823
Letters 1824
Letters 1825
Letters 1826
Letters 1827
Letters 1828
Letters 1829
Letters 1830
Letters 1831
Letters 1832
Letters 1833
Letters 1834
Letters 1835
Letters 1836
Letters 1837
Letters 1838
Letters 1839
Letters 1840
Letters 1841
Letters 1842
Letters 1843
Letters 1844
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Heslington, Dec. 29th, 1811.
My dear Mrs. Apreece,

I am very much flattered by your recollection of me, and by your obliging letter. I have been following the plough. My talk has been of oxen, and I have gloried in the goad.

* Afterwards Lady Davy.

92 MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

Your letter operated as a charm. I remembered that there were better things than these;—that there was a Metropolis; that there were wits, chemists, poets, splendid feasts, and captivating women. Why remind a Yorkshire resident clergyman of these things, and put him to recollect human beings at Rome, when he is fattening beasts at Ephesus?

The Edinburgh Review is just come out,—long and dull, as usual; to these bad results and effects I have contributed, in a review of Wyvill’s ‘Papers on Toleration.’

I shall be in London in March. Pray remain single, and marry nobody (let him be whom he may); you will be annihilated the moment you do, and, instead of an alkali or an acid, become a neutral salt. You may very likely be happier yourself, but you will be lost to your male friends.

My brother is a capital personage; full of sense, genius, dignity, virtue, and wit.

God bless you, dear Mrs. Apreece! Kind love from all here.

S. S.

P.S.—That rogue Jeffrey will have the whip-hand of me for a month; but I will annihilate him when I come up, if he gives himself airs, and affects to patronize me. Mind and cultivate Whishaw, and Dumont, and Tennant.