A Thanksgiving for Plenty, and Warning against Avarice. A Sermon. By the Reverend ROBERT NARES, Archdeacon of Stafford, and Canon Residentiary of Lichfield. LEWIS London. 268 Alfonso, King of Castile. A Tragedy in Five Acts. By M. G. LEWIS LETTRES SUR L'ANGLETERRE 270 Lettres sur l'Angleterre. Par J. FIEVEE. 1802. 273 PERCIVAL An Account of the Island of Ceylon. By Robert Percival, Esq., of his Majesty's Nineteenth Regiment of Foot. London 277 WITTMAN Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, and Syria, &c., and into Egypt. By 287 EDGEWORTH Essay on Irish Bulls. By RICHARD LOVEL EDGEWORTH and MARIA 293 DR. WINTER BOTTOM An Account of Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone. To which is added, An Account of the present State of Medicine among them. By THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM, Physician to the Colony of Sierra Leone DE LA BROCQUIERE— The Travels of Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, First Esquire-Carver to INGRAM Causes of the Increase of Methodism and Dissension. By ROBERT REPLY TO A METHODIST'S STRICTURES Strictures on two Critiques in the Edinburgh Review, on the Subject of Methodism and Missions; with Remarks on the Influence of Reviews, in general, on Morals and Happiness. By JOHN STYLES. London: 1809 CELEBS IN SEARCH OF A WIFE Calebs in Search of a Wife: comprehending Observations on Domestic THE MADRAS DIFFICULTIES Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Dissensions at the Presidency of Madras, founded on Original Papers and Correspondence. London: 1810. Account of the Origin and Progress of the late Discontents of the Army on the Madras Establishment. London : 1810. Statement of Facts delivered to the Right Honourable Lord Minto. By Description of the Retreat, an Institution near York, for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends. Containing an Account of its Origin and Progress, the Modes of Treatment, and a Statement of Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, with a Statistical Account of that Kingdom, and Geographical Notices of other Parts of the 1. Letters to Earl Bathurst. By the Hon. H. GREY BENNET, M.P. 2. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of the Colony 1. Travels Through Part of the United States and Canada, in 1818 and 1819. By JOHN M. DUNCAN, A.B. Glasgow: 1823. 2. Letters from North America, written during a Tour in the United States and Canada. By ADAM HODGSON. London: 1824. 3. An Excursion through the United States and Canada, during the Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles, in the Years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824; with ori- ginal Instructions for the perfect Preservation of Birds, etc., for THE HE author and speaker, whose works, here reprinted, will retain a place in the British Classics, was born in the county of Essex, in the pleasant village of Woodford. June 3rd, 1771, was the date of his birth, and his life terminated on February 22nd, 1845. His father was an English gentleman, whose habits are described to have been eccentric; his mother was the daughter of a French emigrant; and he was the second of their four sons. The liveliness of his disposition may not have been foreign to the intermixture of the gayer spirit which runs, generally, in Gallic blood, with the usually more sluggish English temperament. He showed early promise; went to Winchester, and became captain of that school; was elected to a scholarship in New College, Oxford, and two years after, in 1792, took his degree of B.A. He also obtained a fellowship of £100 a-year, a fact of consequence to him, as he was by no means well off. His own predilections were for the law, but in obedience to his father's wishes he took orders, and secured a curacy at Nether-Avon, on Salisbury Plain. There he attracted the attention of a wealthy neighbour, Mr. Hicks Beach, M.P. for Cirencester, and became tutor to that gentleman's eldest son. He had previously acquired the French language in a tour through Normandy, and it had been his design to visit, with his pupil, a German University, but the distracted state of the Continent, owing to the French revolution, prevented this step. An abode in Edinburgh was substituted, and during a residence there of several years, Sydney Smith made many valuable and lasting friendships, and acquired some reputation as a preacher and humourist. In 1799, being then 28 years of age, he was married to Miss Pybus, an English lady, the daughter of a banker. At this period the Scottish metropolis could boast of no inconsiderable literary power, and the young clergyman became acquainted with Henry, afterwards Lord Brougham, Francis, afterwards Lord Jeffrey, Francis Horner and others, who subsequently acquired fame in science and 66 literature. At one of the meetings of these then comparatively unknown but talented young men, it was proposed to start a Review. One day," says the author of Peter Plymley's letters, "we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story, or flat, in Buccleugh Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should get up a review; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Edinburgh Review."* It appeared in October, 1802, he having contributed no less than seven articles. Two years later, he took up his residence in London. For the next two years he remained without any preferment in the Church, but preached at the Foundling Hospital, and Berkeley and Fitzroy Chapels, gaining considerable success in these pulpits. He also, during the seasons of 1804, 1805, and 1806, delivered three courses of lectures on " Belles Lettres," and "Moral Philosophy," at the Royal Institution. These, like his sermons, brought large fashionable audiences around him, who praised his matter and his wit; but in afterlife, whimsically alluding to his ignorance of the subjects he treated, he characterized these lectures as a species of "literary imposture." All this time he was constantly writing for The Edinburgh, and at Holland House and other mansions, principally Whig, he was a frequent and a welcome guest, delighting everybody with his brilliant conversational powers and rich humour. When his friends attained power in 1806, Lord Erskine presented him to the rectory of Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire, worth about £500 a-year, but for the first year or two of his incumbency he discharged his parish duties by means of a curate. In 1807 appeared, anonymously, "Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, by Peter Plymley." These had an immense circulation at the time, and are very characteristic of the author, sound sense being everywhere noticeable amidst the irony and pleasantries with which they abound. His efforts in the cause of justice to Catholics, thus early commenced, were never relaxed until Catholic Emancipation was carried. Two volumes of sermons were published a couple of years afterwards, and he now removed to Heslington, a village near York, where he was permitted by his diocesan to reside for a few years, as he hoped to exchange Foston-le-Clay for some more desirable parish. Unable to succeed in this wish, he resolutely turned his thoughts towards Foston, the forlorn situation of which he set forth by stating that it was twelve miles from a lemon." Here he constructed a parsonage which, for ugliness and comfort, had not its equal in the county. In 1814, he removed hither with his family, and remained there for fourteen years, counteracting what might have been to him, as one of the darlings of society, the tedium of exile, by literary work, preaching, lecturing, doctoring, gossipping, and ministering to his parishioners with a zeal which won him all their affections. Before his time, a long period had elapsed since the parishioners had listened to a resident incumbent in their parish church, and in reference to this absence he 66 * Lord Brougham denies the correctness of this account. writes, "When I began to thump the cushion of my pulpit, on first coming to Foston, as is my wont when I preach, the accumulated dust of 150 years made such a cloud that for some minutes I lost sight of my congregation." He was cheered by the visits of such friends as Mackintosh, Jeffrey, and Romilly; and the solitude never appeared to affect the flow of his animal spirits; indeed it has well been doubted whether any rural clergyman ever lived a more happy, rational, or useful life than Sydney Smith. Foston-le-Clay lost him at last; he was appointed by Lord Lyndhurst to a stall in Bristol Cathedral, and received the rectorship of Combe Florey, near Taunton. Three years later, he became one of the Canons Residentiary of St. Paul's Cathedral, and henceforth devoted himself to the discharge of his official duties, but did not cease his literary labour. He wrote, however, nothing for The Edinburgh after 1827. The neglect of the state of Pennsylvania to pay the interest on her bonds, he condemned in indignant and forcible terms, in his "Petition to Congress" and "Letters on American Debts." He left in manuscript an account of English misrule in Ireland, which Lord Macaulay advised his widow not to publish. To the last of his life his humour attended him, and under the last regimen of his physician he expressed his longing for even the wing of a roasted butterfly." 66 Sydney Smith has been variously criticised, but some of his writings have survived, and will survive, both the exaggerated praise of too friendly reviewers, and the faint approval of his opponents. It is amusing and instructive to compare, at this day, a few of the contrasting criticisms. The Quarterly Review, May 1809, in reviewing his sermons, says of his doctrine: "It is of a degraded kind; and after a very attentive consideration of these volumes, we are compelled to say that the author appears to belong to the Socinian school. It is possible he may not be aware of the real nature of his own principles. He is obviously unacquainted with his profession, and the time may come when better and more regular studies than London has permitted, will force this conviction upon him. Our opinion of him is lower than we had expected. Indeed, we were well aware that there was something false and meretricious in the sort of celebrity which he has attained; something which a wise man would never have allowed himself to acquire; or, having acquired, would have been in haste to throw away. He seems incapable of a regular or extended train of reasoning. He works up his paragraphs in a brisk and epigrammatic manner, careless how they agree with each other. Amidst an apparent copiousness, we are surprised at detecting such poverty of thought; and this want of original power is ill-compensated by the liveliness with which he would disguise it." And so on, in the same strain. The London Monthly Review, on the other hand, says: "Mr. Smith possesses a command of words, and he is a spirited and sensible declaimer." |