In 1807–8 appeared anonymously Sydney Smith’s Letters on the Subject of the Catholics to my brother Abraham who lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley.

Abraham is said to be a “kind of holy vegetable” and to be a type of people who were exclaiming:—“For God’s sake, don’t think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland! . . . They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner to what we do!”

Sydney points out (in his character of Peter Plymley) that the “Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of his religion!”

He refers to Perceval in the following passage: “What remains to be done is obvious to every human being—but to the man who, instead of being a Methodist preacher, is, for the ruin of Troy, and the misery of good old Priam and his sons, become a legislator and a politician.” Sydney continues: “I say, I fear he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interests of his country: and then you tell me he is faithful to Mrs Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals!”

Finally Peter warns his brother:—“Mrs Abraham Plymley, my sister, will be led away captive by an amorous Gaul; and Joel Plymley, your first born, will be a French drummer.”

I regret that I have not space to quote more from these admirable Letters, which are full of good things. On 14th July 1807, he writes to Lady Holland [186]:—“Mr Allen has mentioned to me the letters of a Mr Plymley, which I have obtained from the adjacent market-town, and read with some entertainment. My conjecture lies between three persons—Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir Arthur Pigott, or Mr Horner, for the name is evidently fictitious.” I presume that Pigott was an eminently serious person to match the other supposed authors.

Jeffrey, 20th Feb. 1808.—“Your Catholic article of the last Review is, I perceive, printed separately. I am very glad of it: it is excellent, and universally allowed to be so. I envy you your sense, your style, and the good temper with which you attack prejudices that drive me almost to the limits of insanity.”

He writes to Lady Holland in an early but undated letter (ii., p. 39) that he has let his house at Thames Ditton very well, and sold to the tenant his wine and poultry!—“I attribute my success in these matters to having read half a volume of Adam Smith early in the summer, and to hints that have dropped from Horner, in his playful moods, upon the subject of sale and barter.”

Lord Holland, 1st Nov. 1809.—Speaking of his project of publishing a pamphlet to be called Common Sense for 1810, he concludes: “But what use is there in all this, or in anything else? Omnes ibimus ad Diabolum et Buonoparte nos conquerabit, et dabit Hollandium Domum ad unum corporalium suorum, et ponet ad mortem Joannem Allenium.”

Lady Holland, June 1810.—“You have done an excellent deed in securing a seat for poor Mackintosh, in whose praise I most cordially concur. He is a very great, and a very delightful man, and with a few bad qualities added to his character, would have acted a most conspicuous part in life.”

Lady Holland, 17th Jan. 1813.—There had been meetings on the Catholic question, and he says:—“I shall certainly give my solitary voice in favour of religious liberty, and shall probably be tossed in a blanket for my pains.”

John Allen, 24th Jan. 1813.—“My fancy is my own: I may see as many crosiers in the clouds as I please; but when I sit down seriously to consider what I shall do upon important occasions, I must presume myself rector of Foston for life.”

John Murray [of Edinburgh], 12th July 1813.—“My situation is as follows:—I am engaged in agriculture without the slightest knowledge of the art; I am building a house without an architect, and educating a son without patience. . . . My new mansion springs up apace, and then I shall really have a pretty place to receive you in, and a pleasant country to show you.”

Lady Holland, 17th Sept. 1813.—“Few events are of so little consequence as the fecundity of a clergyman’s wife; still your kind dispositions justify me in letting you know that Mrs Sydney and her new-born son are both extremely well.”

John Allen, 13th Jan. 1814.—Of Lord Holland, Sydney writes:—“I wish he would leave off wine entirely, after the manner of the Sharpe and Rogers school. He is never guilty of excess; but there is a certain respectable and dangerous plenitude, not quite conducive to that state of health which all his friends most wish to Lord Holland.”

Jeffrey, Mar. 1814.—“Pray remember me, dear Jeffrey, and say a good word for me if I die first. I shall say many for you in the contrary event.”

Lady Holland, 25th June 1814.—“I liked London better than ever I liked it before, and simply, I believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London is stupefaction and inflammation. It is not the love of wine, but thoughtlessness and unconscious imitation.”

Jeffrey, 1814.—“I like my new house very much; . . . but the expense of it will keep me a very poor man, a close prisoner here for my life, and render the education of my children a difficult exertion for me. My situation is one of great solitude, but I preserve myself in a state of cheerfulness and tolerable content, and have a propensity to amuse myself with trifles.”

F. Horner, 1816.—Referring to Dugald Stewart’s Preliminary Dissertations, Sydney says:—“I was amazingly pleased with his comparison of the Universities to enormous hulks confined with mooring-chains, everything flowing and progressing around them. Nothing can be more happy.”

Lady Holland, 31st July 1817.—“It is very curious to consider in what manner Horner gained, in so extraordinary a degree, the affections of such a number of persons of both sexes—all ages, parties, and ranks in society; for he was not remarkably good-tempered nor particularly lively and agreeable; and an inflexible politician on the unpopular side. The causes are, his high character for probity, honour, and talents; his fine countenance; the benevolent interest he took in the concerns of all his friends; his simple and gentlemanlike manners; his untimely death.”

Lady Mary Bennett (n.d., but late in 1817).—“The few words I said of Mrs Fry . . . were these:—‘To see that holy woman in the midst of wretched prisoners,—to see them calling earnestly upon God, soothed by her voice, animated by her look, clinging to the hem of her garment, and worshipping her as the only human being who has ever loved them . . . or spoken to them of God!—this is the sight which breaks down the pageantry of the world,—which tells us that the short hour of life is passing away, and that we must prepare by some good deeds to meet God; that it is time to give, to pray, to comfort—to go, like this blessed woman, and do the work of our heavenly Saviour, Jesus, among the guilty, among the broken-hearted, and the sick; and to labour in the deepest and darkest wretchedness of life!’”

Lady Davy, n.d.—“Luttrell, before I taught him better, imagined muffins grew!”

Jeffrey, 7th Aug. 1819.—There was universal complaint of the dullness of the Edinburgh Review, and Sydney writes: “Too much, I admit, would not do of my style; but the proportion in which it exists enlivens the Review, if you appeal to the whole public, and not to the eight or ten grave Scotchmen with whom you live.”

Lord Holland, 11th June 1820.—“You gave me great pleasure by what you said to the Chancellor of my honesty and independence. I sincerely believe I shall deserve the character at your hands as long as I live.”

Mrs Meynell, 1820.—“The usual establishment for an eldest landed baby is, two wet nurses, two ditto dry, two aunts, two physicians, two apothecaries; three female friends of the family, unmarried, advanced in life; and often in the nursery, one clergyman, six flatterers, and a grandpapa! Less than this would not be decent.”

Mrs Meynell, 11th Nov. 1821.—“My pretensions to do well with the world are three-fold:—First, I am fond of talking nonsense; secondly, I am civil; thirdly, I am brief. I may be flattering myself; but if I am not, it is not easy to get very wrong with these habits.”

John Murray [of Edinburgh], 29th Nov. 1821.—“How little you understand young Wedgwood! If he appears to love waltzing, it is only to catch fresh figures for cream-jugs. Depend upon it, he will have Jeffrey and you upon some of his vessels, and you will enjoy an argillaceous immortality.”

This probably refers to Josiah, the grandson of the great potter.

Lady Mary Bennett, 1st Nov. 1822.—“Write to me immediately: I feel it necessary to my constitution.”

Lady Holland, 1st Oct. 1823.—“I think you mistake Bond’s character in supposing he could be influenced by partridges. He is a man of a very independent mind, with whom pheasants at least, or perhaps turkeys, are necessary.”

Lady Holland, 19th Oct. 1823.—“All duchesses seem agreeable to clergymen; but she would really be a very clever, agreeable woman, if she were married to a neighbouring vicar; and I should often call upon her.” (Apparently the Duchess of Bedford.)

Mrs Sydney, 7th May 1826.—“My two reviews are very much read, and praised here for their fun; I read them the other night, and they made me laugh a good deal.”

Mrs Sydney, n.d.—In a French diligence was “a sensible man, with that propensity which the French have for explaining things which do not require explanation. He explained to me, for instance, what he did when he found coffee too strong; he put water in it!”

Lady Holland, 6th Nov. 1827.—“Jeffrey has been here with his adjectives, who always travel with him. His throat is giving way; so much wine goes down it, so many million words leap over it, how can it rest? Pray make him a judge; he is a truly great man, and is very heedless of his own interests.”

Lord Holland, July 1828.—“I hear with great concern of your protracted illness. I would bear the pain for you for a fortnight if I were allowed to roar, for I cannot bear pain in silence and dignity. . . . God bless you, dear Lord Holland! There is nobody in the world has a greater affection for you than I have, or who hears with greater pain of your illness.”

Lady Holland, Dec. 1828.—“I not only was never better, but never half so well: indeed I find I have been very ill all my life, without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a ploughboy. . . . If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. . . . My understanding is improved, and I comprehend Political Economy. I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it: I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore and depress me.”

Lady Holland, July 1831.—“I thank God heartily for my comfortable situation in my old age,—above my deserts, and beyond my former hopes.”

Mrs Meynell, Sept. 1831.—“I am just stepping into the carriage to be installed by the Bishop. . . . It is, I believe, a very good thing, and puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing—never did anything shabby to procure preferment. These are pleasing recollections.”

(It was a Prebendal Stall at St Paul’s, given to him by Lord Grey.)

Countess of Morley, 1831.—“I went to court, and, horrible to relate! with strings to my shoes instead of buckles—not from Jacobinism, but ignorance. I saw two or three Tory Lords look at me with dismay.”

The Clerk of the Closet spoke to Sydney, who had to gather his sacerdotal petticoats about him “like a lady conscious of thick ankles.”

R. Sharpe, 1835.—“You have met, I hear, with an agreeable clergyman: the existence of such a being has been hitherto denied by the naturalists; measure him, and put down on paper what he eats.”

Sir Wilmot Horton, 1835.—“No book has appeared for a long time more agreeable than the Life of Mackintosh; it is full of important judgments on important men, books, and things.” Elsewhere he speaks of travelling one hundred and fifty miles in his carriage, with a green parrot and the Life of Mackintosh.

Mrs ---, 7th Sept. 1835.—“I send you a list of all the papers written by me in the Edinburgh Review. Catch me, if you can, in any one illiberal sentiment, or in any opinion which I have need to recant; and that after twenty years scribbling upon all subjects.”

Countess Grey, 20th Oct. 1835 (Paris).—“I shall not easily forget a matelote at the Rochers de Cancale, an almond tart at Montreuil, or a poulet À la Tartare at Grignon’s. These are impressions which no changes in future life can obliterate.”

Miss G. Harcourt, 1838.—“I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.”

Sir George Philips, about Sept. 1838.—“Nickleby is very good. I stood out against Mr Dickens as long as I could, but he has conquered me.”

Mrs Meynell, Oct. 1839.—“I feel for --- about her son at Oxford; knowing as I do, that the only consequences of a University education are, the growth of vice and the waste of money.”

Lady Holland, 28th Dec. 1839.—“I have written against --- one of the cleverest pamphlets I ever read, which I think would cover --- and him with ridicule. At least it made me laugh very much in reading it; and there I stood, with the printer’s devil and the real devil close to me; and then I said, ‘After all, this is very funny, and very well written, but it will give great pain to people who have been very kind and good to me through life.’” Finally Sydney threw it into the fire.

Mrs Meynell, June 1840.—“A Canon at the opera! Where have you lived? In what habitations of the heathen? I thank you, shuddering; and am ever your unseducible friend.”

Countess Grey, 29th Nov. 1840.—“You never say a word of yourself, dear Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism. When I am ill, I mention it to all my friends and relations, to the lord lieutenant of the county, the justices, the bishop, the churchwardens, the booksellers and editors of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.”

Lady Ashburton, 1841.—“Still I can preach a little; and I wish you had witnessed, the other day at St Paul’s, my incredible boldness in attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade.”

R. Murchison, 26th Dec. 1841.—“Immediately before my window there are twelve large oranges on one tree.” He adds that they are not LinnÆan orange-trees but bay-trees with oranges tied on.

Lady Davy, 11th Sept. 1842.—“I have not yet discovered of what I am to die, but I rather believe I shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites.”

Lady Grey, 19th Sept. 1842.—“I tire of Combe Florey after two months, and sigh for a change, even for the worse. This disposition in me is hereditary; my father lived, within my recollection, in nineteen different places.”

Lady Holland, 6th Nov. 1842.—Asked by her to go to opera, he replies: “It would be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St Paul’s to go to an opera; and where etiquette prevents me from doing things disagreeable to myself, I am a perfect martinet.”

Countess Grey, 21st Dec. 1842.—“I am quite delighted with the railroad. I came down in the public carriages without any fatigue. . . . Distance is abolished—scratch that out of the catalogue of human evils.”

C. Dickens, 6th Jan. 1843.—“You have been so used to these sort of impertinences that I believe you will excuse me for saying how very much I am pleased with the first numbers of your new work. Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable—quite first-rate painting, such as no one but yourself can execute.”

“P.S.—Chuffey is admirable. I never read a finer piece of writing; it is deeply pathetic and affecting.”

Miss G. Harcourt, 29th March 1843.—“My dear G---

The pain in my knee
Would not suffer me
To drink your bohea.
I can laugh and talk
But I cannot walk;
And I thought His Grace would stare,
If I put my leg on a chair.
And to give the knee its former power,
It must be fomented for half an hour;
And in this very disagreeable state
If I had come at all, I should have been too late.”

John Murray, 4th June 1843.—“My youngest brother died suddenly, leaving behind him £100,000 and no will. A third of this therefore fell to my share, and puts me at my ease for my few remaining years.”

Mrs Grote, 17th July 1843.—“I met Brunel at the Archbishop’s and found him a very lively and intelligent man. He said that when he coughed up the piece of gold, the two surgeons, the apothecary, and physician all joined hands, and danced round the room for ten minutes, without taking the least notice of his convulsed and half-strangled state. I admire this very much.”

“I much doubt if I have ever gained £1500 by my literary labours in the course of my life” (31st Aug. 1843).

C. Dickens, 21st Feb. 1844,—“Many thanks for the ‘Christmas Carol,’ which I shall immediately proceed upon, in preference to six American pamphlets . . . all promising immediate payment!”

Countess Grey, 11th Oct. 1844.—“See what rural life is:—

“Combe Florey Gazette.

“Mr Smith’s large red cow is expected to calve this week.

“Mr Gibbs has bought Mr Smith’s lame mare.

“It rained yesterday, and, a correspondent observes is not unlikely to rain to-day.

“Mr Smith is better.

“Mrs Smith is indisposed.

“A nest of black magpies was found near the village yesterday.”

Sydney Smith died 22nd February 1845.