A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1819
Sydney Smith to Francis Jeffrey, [26 January] 1819
Saville-row, June, 1819.
My dear Jeffrey,
This number of the Review is much liked, in spite of the nonsense I have contributed;
particularly, I think, Mackintosh’s
paper on Universal
Suffrage.
The Opposition expect to muster strong. Tierney, who is always the reverse of
sanguine, talks of one hundred and eighty or two hundred.
Rogers’s poem is just out. The
Hollands speak very highly of it. Crabbe is coming out with a poem of twelve thousand lines, for
which, and the copy of his other works, Murray is to give him three thousand pounds,—a sum which
Crabbe has heard mentioned before, but of which he can
form no very accurate numerical notion. All sums beyond a hundred pounds must
be to him mere indistinct vision—clouds and darkness.
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MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. |
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Lord Byron’s satires, brought over by Lord Lauderdale, are sent back for mitigation down to the
standard law level. Murray is afraid of
his ears. Lord John Russell is coming out
with the Memoirs of Lord Russell,
and Miss Berry with those of Lady Russell.
Ever, my dear friend, yours most truly,
Sydney Smith.
Mary Berry (1763-1852)
Of Twickenham, the elder sister of her companion Agnes Berry (1764-1852); she was a
diarist and one of Horace Walpole's primary correspondents.
George Crabbe (1754-1832)
English poet renowned for his couplet verse and gloomy depictions of country persons and
places; author of the
The Village (1783),
The
Parish Register (1807),
The Borough (1810), and
Tales of the Hall (1819).
Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)
Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in
Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and
MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).
James Maitland, eighth earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839)
Scottish peer allied with Charles James Fox; he was author of
An
Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, and into the Means and causes of
its Increase (1804) and other works on political economy.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
John Russell, first earl Russell (1792-1878)
English statesman, son of John Russell sixth duke of Bedford (1766-1839); he was author
of
Essay on the English Constitution (1821) and
Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe (1824) and was Prime Minister (1865-66).
George Tierney (1761-1830)
Whig MP and opposition leader whose political pragmatism made him suspect in the eyes of
his party; he fought a bloodless duel with Pitt in 1798. He is the “Friend of Humanity” in
Canning and Frere's “The Needy Knife-Grinder.”
George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Don Juan. (London: 1819-1824). A burlesque poem in ottava rima published in installments: Cantos I and II published in
1819, III, IV and V in 1821, VI, VII, and VIII in 1823, IX, X, and XI in 1823, XII, XIII,
and XIV in 1823, and XV and XVI in 1824.
