"This put me at my ease for my few remaining years. After buying into
the Consols and the Reduced, I read Seneca On the Contempt of
Wealth. What intolerable nonsense!
"I have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and have borne it
as well, I believe, as most people, but I can safely say that I have
been happier every guinea I have gained."
His novel opulence did not paralyse his pen. In 1839 he published a vehement attack upon the Ballot, from which he foresaw no better results than the enfranchisement of every one, including women, universal corruption, systematic lying, and a victory for the "lower order of voters" over their "betters." Of the great advocate of the Ballot, George Grote,[131] he says—"Mr. Grote knows the relative values of gold and silver; but by what moral rate of exchange is he able to tell us the relative values of Liberty and Truth?"
The paper on the Ballot was included in a collection of reprints, mainly from the Edinburgh Review, which he published in 1839. The book sold so well that in 1840 he published an enlarged edition. The articles reprinted from the Edinburgh amount to sixty-five, and a memorandum by his daughter shows that twelve more were omitted from the reproduction, "probably because their subjects are already treated of in the extracted articles, or because they applied only to the period in which they were written," The complete list will be found in Appendix A.
In the preface to these collected pieces, which are styled The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, the author said, after recounting the circumstances under which the Edinburgh Review was founded:—
"To set on foot such a Journal in such times, to contribute towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused, and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think to be extremely fortunate. Strange and ludicrous are the changes in human affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and the well-paid Whigs are riding in chariots: with many faces, however, looking out of the windows (including that of our Prime Minister[132]), which I never remember to have seen in the days of the poverty and depression of Whiggism. Liberality is now a lucrative business. Whoever has any institution to destroy, may consider himself as a Commissioner, and his fortune as made; and, to my utter and never-ending astonishment, I, an old Edinburgh Reviewer, find myself fighting, in the year 1839, against the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, for the existence of the National Church."
Some of the reprinted articles would be fairly ranked in the present day under the derogatory title of "Pot-boilers"; but others are among the most effective and entertaining pieces which the author ever penned. Some of these must be specified. There is the extraordinarily amusing, but quite unjust, attack on Methodism, under which convenient heading are grouped "the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the Evangelical clergymen of the Church of England." The fun in this article is chiefly gleaned from the pages of the Evangelical Magazine and the Methodist Magazine. Here we have the affecting story of the young man who swore, and was stung by a bee "on the tip of the unruly member," "one of the meanest of creatures" being thus employed "to reprove the bold transgressor." Not less moving are the reflections of the religious observer who saw a man driving clumsily in a gig.—"'What (I said to myself) if a single untoward circumstance should happen! Should the horse take fright, or the wheel on either side get entangled, or the gig upset,—in either case what can preserve them? And should a morning so fair and promising bring on evil before night,—should death on his pale horse appear,—what follows?' My mind shuddered at the images I had raised."
Very curious too is the case of the people who, desiring to go by sea to Margate, found the cabin occupied by a "mixed multitude who spoke almost all languages but that of Canaan"; and started a weekly hoy on which "no profane conversation was allowed." The advertisements are as quaint as the correspondence.—
"'Wanted, a man of serious character, who can shave.'
'Wanted, a serious young woman, as servant of all work.'
'Wants a place, a young man who has brewed in a serious family.'"
On these eccentricities of mistaken devotion, Sydney pounces with delighted malice; and his jokes, acrid as they are, seem to be the vehicles of a real conviction. He honestly believed that "enthusiasm" in religion tended to hysteria and insanity; that it sapped plain morality; and turned the simple poor into "active and mysterious fools." Something, he thought, "in the way of ridicule," might be done towards checking Methodism, and to that task he addressed himself with hearty goodwill.