3468 SYDNEY SMITH (1771-1845) YDNEY SMITH was celebrated in his generation as an orator, wit, clergyman, essayist, and philosopher, with an incidental reputation as a book reviewer, at a time when, as he himself has suggested, book reviewers did not necessarily "prejudice» themselves by acquiring in advance a knowledge of the books they were writing about. His table-talk and his humor in conversation seem to have been almost, if not quite, unrivaled in the history of English "wits," but his essays, as a rule, are far from demonstrating the humor which would be expected from his reputation. They are often characterized, however, by brilliant flashes of wit which, when the reader is least expecting it, illuminate whole pages of logic. And again they develop from what had been apparently the deepest seriousness into the most striking and effective irony. Sydney Smith was born at Woodford, England, June 3d, 1771. After beginning life as a curate in a small village on Salisbury Plain, he spent several years in Edinburgh where he helped to found the Edinburgh Review, of which he became the first editor. He lectured on moral philosophy, at the Royal Institution of London, from 1804 to 1808. In 1809 he became rector of a Yorkshire parish, where it is said there had been no clergyman before him for a century. After remaining there for twenty years be became prebend of Bristol, and in 1831 canon of St. Paul's. He died in London, February 22d, 1845. His "Plymley Letters" advocating Catholic emancipation were published in 1807 and 1808, and in 1839 his contributions to the Edinburgh Review were collected and republished. These essays, which include his best works, are generally printed in the same volume with his speeches, which include what is perhaps the most celebrated political speech of the nineteenth century,- that in which he compared Tory opposition to reform to the attempt of Mrs. Partington of Sidmouth to mop the Atlantic out of her front door during the great flood at that place in 1824. |