About this time Sydney suggested to Jeffrey and Brougham the foundation of a Liberal Quarterly—in those days a contradiction in terms—which was named the Edinburgh Review after the town of its birth. Sydney proposed as a motto, “Tenui Musam meditamur avena,” i.e., “We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal,” but this was too near the truth to be admitted. [178b]
Throughout his life literature was combined with vigorous activity as a clergyman. Speaking of two or three “random sermons” which he “discharged” in London, he says he believed that the congregation thought him mad. “The clerk was as pale as death in helping me off with my gown, for fear I should bite him.”
He made many friends in London. Among these he specially valued Lord and Lady Holland, with whom he often stayed. They agreed in gaiety, humour, and political opinions. And it must be remembered that a Liberal parson was a rare bird in those days. Dugald Stewart (i., p. 127) said of Sydney Smith’s preaching, “Those original and unexpected ideas gave me a thrilling sensation of sublimity never before awakened by any other oratory.” But his most celebrated triumph was a charity sermon which actually moved old Lady C. (Cork?) to borrow a sovereign to put in the plate.
Sydney lectured on Moral Philosophy at the Royal Institution. Many years afterwards, in 1843, he wrote to Whewell: “My lectures are gone to the dogs, and are utterly forgotten. I knew nothing of moral philosophy, but I was thoroughly aware that I wanted £200 to furnish my house. The success, however, was prodigious; all Albemarle Street blocked with carriages, and such an uproar as I never remembered to have been excited by any other literary impostor.”
Leonard Horner wrote: “Nobody else, to be sure, could have executed such an undertaking. For who could make such a mixture of odd paradox, quaint
fun, manly sense, Liberal opinions, and striking language?”
He used, like Charles Lamb, to give weekly suppers. Sir James Mackintosh brought to one of these parties “a raw Scotch cousin, an ensign in a Highland regiment. On hearing the name of his host he . . . said in an audible whisper, ‘Is that the great Sir Sudney?’” Mackintosh gave a hint to Sydney, who “performed the part of the hero of Acre to perfection,” to the “torture of the other guests, who were bursting with suppressed laughter.” A few days later Sydney and his wife met Mackintosh and the wonderful cousin in the street, to whom Sydney introduced his wife. The Scotch youth didna’ ken the great Sir Sudney was married. “Why, no,” said Sir James, “. . . not exactly married; only an Egyptian slave. . . . Fatima—you know—you understand.” Mrs Smith was long known as Fatima.
With regard to Sydney’s talk, his daughter speaks of “the multitude of unexpected images which sprang up in his mind, and succeeded each other with a rapidity that hardly allowed his hearers to follow him, but left them panting and exhausted with laughter, to cry out for mercy.” When he met Mrs Siddons for the first time she “seemed determined to resist him, and preserve her tragic dignity,” but finally she fell into such a “paroxysm of laughter . . . that it made quite a scene, and all the company were alarmed.”
In 1807 Sydney’s first Letter from Peter Plymley to his brother Abraham appeared. It was on the Irish
Catholic question, and made a great sensation—Government trying to discover the author, etc. Lord Murray said, “After Pascal’s Letters, it is the most instructive piece of wisdom in the form of irony ever written, and had the most important and lasting effects.”