His honors in his profession of advocate grew, and he came by courtesy to the title of Lord Jeffrey—(not to be confounded with that other murderous Lord Jeffreys, who was judicial hangman for James II.). He is in Parliament too; never an orator properly; but what he says, always clean cut, sensible, picturesque, flowing smoothly—but rather over the surface of things than into their depths. Accomplished is the word to apply to him; accomplished largely and variously, and with all his accomplishments perfectly in hand.
Those two hundred papers which he wrote in the Edinburgh Review are of the widest range—charmingly and piquantly written. Yet they do not hold place among great and popular essays; not with Macaulay, or Mackintosh, or Carlyle, or even Hazlitt. He was French in his literary aptitudes and qualities; never heavy; touching things, as we have said, with a feather’s point, yet touching them none the less surely.
Could he have written a book to live? His friends all thought it, and urged him thereto. He thought not. There would be great toil, he said, and mortification at the end; so he lies buried, where we leave him, under a great tumulus of most happy Review writing.
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]