The following written against an old-fashioned gentleman, Mr. Brown, who objects to the improvements of the age, is interesting. It is amusing now to read an ironical defence of steam, intended to ridicule the pretensions of its advocates.
"Mr. Brown sneers at steam and growls at gas. I contend that the utility of constructing a coach which shall go by hot water, nearly as fast as two horses can draw it at a trifling additional expense, promises to be wonderfully useful. We go too fast, Sir, with horses; besides, horses eat oats, and farmers live by selling oats; if, therefore, by inconveniencing ourselves, and occasionally risking our lives, we can, however imperfectly, accomplish by steam what is now done by horses, we get rid of the whole race of oat-sowers, oat-sellers, oat-eaters, and oat-stealers, vulgarly called ostlers."
Sydney Smith especially aimed at pleasantry in his humour, there was no animosity in it, and generally no instruction. Mirth, pure and simple, was his object. Rogers observes "After Luttrell, you remembered what good things he said—after Smith how much you laughed."
In Moore's Diary we read "at a breakfast at Roger's, Smith, full of comicality and fancy, kept us all in roars of laughter." His wit was so turned, that it never wounded. When he took leave of Lord Dudley, the latter said, "You have been laughing at me constantly, Sydney, for the last seven years, and yet in all that time, you never said a thing to me that I wished unsaid."
It would be superfluous to give a collection of Smith's good sayings, but the following is characteristic of his style. When he heard of a small Scotchman going to marry a lady of large dimensions, he exclaimed,
"Going to marry her? you mean a part of her, he could not marry her all. It would be not bigamy but trigamy. There is enough of her to furnish wives for a whole parish. You might people a colony with her, or give an assembly with her, or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always providing there were frequent resting-places and you were in rude health. I was once rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got halfway, and gave up exhausted."
Smith's humour was nearly always of this continuous kind, "changing its shape and colour to many forms and hues." He wished to continue the merriment to the last, but such repetition weakened its force. His humour is better when he has some definite aim in view, as in his letters about America, where he lost his money. But we have not many specimens of it in his writings, the following is from "The Dun Cow:"—
"The immense importance of a pint of ale to a common man should never be overlooked, nor should a good-natured Justice forget that he is acting for Lilliputians, whose pains and pleasures lie in very narrow compass, and are but too apt to be treated with neglect and contempt by their superiors. About ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, perhaps, the first faint shadowy vision of a future pint of beer dawns on the fancy of the ploughman. Far, very far is it from being fully developed. Sometimes the idea is rejected; sometimes it is fostered. At one time he is almost fixed on the 'Red Horse,' but the blazing fire and sedulous kindness of the landlady of the 'Dun Cow' shake him, and his soul labours! Heavy is the ploughed land, dark, dreary, and wet the day. His purpose is at last fixed for beer! Threepence is put down for the vigour of the ale, and one penny for the stupefaction of tobacco, and these are the joys and holidays of millions, the greatest pleasure and relaxation which it is in the power of fortune to bestow."
Such kindly feelings as animated Sydney Smith were found more fully developed in Thomas Hood. He made his humour minister to philanthropy. The man who wrote the "Song of the Shirt" felt keenly for all the sufferings of the poor—he even favoured some of their unreasonable complaints. Thus he writes the "Address of the Laundresses to the Steam Washing Company," to show how much they are injured by such an institution. In a "Drop of Gin," he inveighs against this destructive stimulant.
"Gin! gin! a drop of gin!
What magnified monsters circle therein,
Bagged and stained with filth and mud,
Some plague-spotted, and some with blood."