Sydney Smith.
I return now to the clever English curate who was the first to propose the establishment of that great Northern Review, out of which Lord Jeffrey grew. Smith had written very much and well, and had cracked his jokes in a way to be heard by all the good people of Edinboro’. But he was poor, and his wife poor; he had his fortune to make; and plainly was not making it there, tutoring his one pupil. So, in 1804, he struck out for London, to carve his way to fortune. He knew few there; but his clever papers in the Review gave him introduction to Whig circles, and a social plant, which he never forfeited. Lord and Lady Holland greatly befriended him; and he early came to a place at the hospitable board of that famous Holland House—of whose green quietudes we have had glimpses, in connection with Addison, and in connection with Charles Fox—and whose mistress in the days we are now upon, showed immense liking for the brilliant and witty parson.
All this while, the Rev. Sydney was seeking preaching chances; but was eyed doubtfully by those who had pulpits in their gift. He was too independent—too witty—too radical—too hateful of religious conventionalisms—too Edinburgh Reviewish. Neither was he a great orator; rather scornful of explosive clap-trap or of noisy pulpit rhetoric; yet he had a resonant voice—earnest in every note and trill; often sparkling to his points in piquant, conversational way, but wanting quick-witted ones for their reception and comprehension. He lacked too, in a measure—what is another great resource for a preacher—the unction which comes of deep, sustained, devotional feeling, and a conviction of the unmatchable importance and efficacy of sacerdotal influences. I think there was no time in his life when he would not rather beguile a wayward soul by giving him a good, bright witticism to digest than by exhibit of the terrors of the Law. His Gospel—by preference—was an intellectual gospel; yet not one that reposed on creeds and formulas. His heart was large, and his tolerance full. He was a proud Churchman indeed, and loved to score dissenters; but delighted in the crack of his witticisms, more than he mourned over their apostasy. Among the “evening meetings” that he knew very much of, and specially relished, were those at his own little homestead, with closed blinds, and a few friends, and hot-water, and—lemons!
I do not at all mean to imply that he had habits of dissipation, or was ever guilty of vulgar excesses. Of all such he had a wholesome horror; but along with it, he had a strong and abiding fondness for what he counted the good things of life, and the bright things, and the play of wit, and the encounter of scholarly weapons.
One beautiful priestly quality, however, always shone in him: that was his kindliness for the poor and feeble—his sympathy with them—his working for their benefit; and though he trusted little in appeals to the mere emotional nature, yet in his charity sermons he drew such vivid pictures of the suffering poor folk who had come under his eye, as to put half his auditors in tears.
His preaching in London at this early period was for the most part at an out-of-the-way chapel, in connection with a Foundling Hospital; but he gave a series of Philosophic Lectures at the Royal Institution—never reckoned by himself with his good work—which were besieged by people who came to enjoy his witty sayings. In a few years, however, he secured a valuable church gift in Yorkshire, where he built a rectory—the ugliest and “honest-est house” in the county—and entertained London and Scottish friends there, and grew to enjoy—much as he could—the trees, flowers, and lawns which he planted, and with which he coquetted, though only in a half-hearted way. His supreme love was for cities and crowds; he counting the country at its best only a kind of “healthy grave”; flowers, turf, birds are very well in their way, he says, but not worth an hour of the rational conversation only to be had where a million are gathered in one spot.[33]
And he does at last come to the million—getting, after his Whig friends came into power, and after the Reform revolution was over, the royal appointment to a canonry in connection with St. Paul’s Cathedral.[34]
He also has the gift of a new country “living” in Somersetshire, where he passes his later summer in another delightfully equipped home; and between these two church holdings, and certain legacies conveniently falling due, he has a large income at command, and enjoys it, and makes the poor of his parishes enjoy it too.
He has taken a lusty hand in that passage of the Reform bill (1832), and while its success seemed still to be threatened by the sullen opposition of the House of Lords, he made that famous witty comparison in which he likened the popular interest in Reform to a great storm and tide which had set in from the Atlantic, and the opposition of the Lords, to the efforts of Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, and—
“who was seen at the door of her house with mops and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest.”
And this happy and droll comparison was met with a great roar of laughter and of applause that ran all over England. The same tactics of witty ridicule belonged also to his attacks upon Tractarianism and Puseyism, which made stir in his latter days. Indeed, his bump of veneration was very small; and his drollery creeps into his letters as into his speech. He writes of a visit to Edinboro’:
“My old friends were glad to see me; some were turned Methodists, some had lost their teeth, some had grown very fat, some were dying, and, alas! many were dead. But the world is a coarse enough place; so I talked away, comforted some, praised others, kissed some old ladies, and passed a very riotous week.”[35]
He writes to Moore, the poet:
“Dear Moore: I have a breakfast of philosophers at ten, punctually, to-morrow—‘muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction.’ Will you come?”
When Mrs. Smith is ailing at her new home in Somersetshire he says:
“Mrs. S—— has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take something every hour, and pass the mixture between us.”
One part of his suffering comes of hay fever, as to which he says:
“Light, dust, contradiction—the sight of a dissenter—anything sets me sneezing; and if I begin sneezing at twelve, I don’t leave off till two, and am heard distinctly in Taunton (when the wind sets that way), a distance of six miles.”
This does not show quite so large a reserve and continence of speech as we naturally look for in the clerical profession; but this, and other such do, I think, set the Rev. Sydney Smith before us, with his witty proclivities, and his unreserve, and his spirit of frolic, as no citations from his moral and intellectual philosophy could ever do. And I easily figure to myself this portly, well-preserved gentleman of St. Paul’s, fighting the weaknesses of the gout with a gold-headed cane, and picking his way of an afternoon along the pavements of Piccadilly, with eye as bright as a bird’s, and beak as sharp as a bird’s—regaling himself with the thought of the dinner for which he is booked, and of the brilliant talkers he is to encounter, with the old parry and thrust, at Rogers’s rooms, or under the noble ceiling of Holland House.