Sydney Smith

end 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

, 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

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 marri

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 contrast

chester. In one of the liveliest passages

ocked me down with the chess-board for checkmating him-and now he is attempting to take away m

ut to me) "a command performance." The big boy liked chess, so the little boy had to play it: the big boy disliked being check

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 obedie

wenty 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 suf

s 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 in

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 o

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 t

ch Greek and Latin are taught in Public Schools. He thought that schoolmasters encouraged their pupils to "love the instrument better than the end

an 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 l

should be taught by the use of literal and interlinear translations; but "a literal translation, or any translation, of a school-book is

, and the boy "was suffocated with the nonsense of grammarians, overwhelmed with every species of difficulty disproportio

ntives? 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

h Sydney Smith was a reformer fifty years b

Latin verses-a greater number than is contained in the Aeneid; and, after he has made this quantity of verses in a de

all to keep grammar-schools in little country-towns; and a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and liberality the honour and

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

uch 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

is 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 sh

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

e 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 Uni

d more reasonable course of

tical truth, forming and putting down theories, and indulging in all the boldness of yout

undue predominance of c

at the Public S

seful 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 be

rriculum of Oxford by opening the door to Politi

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? Noth

reference to the newly-

s at O

y else was out of Oxford, and if it is making serious efforts to recover from the degradation int

ag

ry honourable to the University to have made such an experiment. The improvement upon the old pla

d not mellow with age. As late as 1831 he wrote of

in return. If men had made no more progress in the common arts of life than they have in education, we

n a lady sent her son

I do, that the only consequences of a University educ

s 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 determi

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 lif

ts 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,

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

ewell Sermon to the people of Netheravon. Preaching from P

ose 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 i

e longer than he was obliged, and the "happy resurrection" for which he had hoped came

uld get there, Germany became the seat of war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. The prin

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 Walt

d 4 of nitric acid. A violent ebullition ensued. Nitrous oether, as I suppos'd, was genera

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 Edinbu

eeing my audience nod app

ag

e of an exquisite address to Virtue, beginning 'O Virtue!

y's preaching attracted some of the keenest minds in Edinburgh. It was fresh, practical, pungent; and, though rich in

was soon followed by a second and enlarged edition. This book of sermons is dedicated to Lord Webb Seymour[17]-"because I kn

eaching, a wider variety of topics, and a more direct bearing on pract

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 su

ry," "The Poor Magdalen," "The Causes of Republican Opinions," "The Effect of Christianity on Manners," an

his sermon on

and His Son of Mercy and Love, is the prayer of

ermon on "Christia

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 o

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 with

stem of principles injurious to the public happiness, whether they be sanctioned by the voice of the many, or whether they be not; and may t

as 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

s. 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 st

s 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 H

ariant, see Burke's Peera

1739-

m Howley (

d his own canon, thus: "But, aft

Nicolai tr

tum Dundasque v

came M.A.

er in Anatomy 1790, Regius

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 r

ts I am indebted to t

e Diocese of Salisbury,

f the Dioce

by Mr. St

1735-

(1745

(1734

ish. 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 instruc

of Sir Michael

(1753-1821), Prof

(1728-1799), Profe

(1757

Son of the 10th

11), Lord Advocate, create