No More Learning

A brief residence in Normandy gave
him a command of the French language.
His subsequent career was that of a tal-
ented and ambitious cleric in the Church
of England. It is significant that the bar,
not the pulpit, was his choice for a pro-
fession: it is easy to see that he would
have been successful in the former calling. In 1794 he became
curate of a remote parish on Salisbury Plains; and in 1796 went
to Edinburgh, where he officiated for five years at an Episcopal
chapel. It was during this Edinburgh residence that he formed
the intimacy with Brougham, Jeffrey, and other clever young liter-
ary men, which resulted in 1802 in the foundation of the Edin-
burgh Review, with Sydney Smith as chief editor. He contributed
seven articles to the first number, and kept up his connection
with the magazine as a contributor for a quarter of a century. The
position taken by this famous review was largely due to the impress
given to it by Sydney Smith. From Edinburgh he went to Lon-
don, and was a popular preacher there until 1806, when he was given
the Yorkshire living of Foston-le-Clay; in 1809 he received that of



## p. 13557 (#371) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13557
Heslington near York, where he remained until 1828. It was char-
acteristic of the man that he proved a faithful, hard-working coun-
try parson. In this year he received the appointment of canon of
Bristol, from which he was transferred to London, as resident canon
of St. Paul's, living in the capital for the rest of his days, and dying
there on February 22d, 1845. It has always been believed that had
he not been throughout a consistent and sturdy Whig, and hence
on the unpopular side, he would have died a bishop. For a dozen
years or more, in London, he was not only an intellectual force
but a social light, famous for his good-fellowship, a persona grata in
drawing-rooms. His fund of animal spirits was unfailing. The con-
junction of such intellectual powers with social gifts and graces is
rare indeed. Yet physically, he was bulky and ungraceful, his face
heavy and plain; and he was by no means a ladies' man in the usual
sense of that term.
The first characteristic publication of Sydney Smith was the 'Let-
ters on the Subject of the Catholics: To my Brother Abraham, who
Lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley' (1807-8); it was issued
anonymously, and had a decided influence in securing Roman Catho-
lic emancipation. The lectures on moral philosophy — delivered at
London, and attracting large and fashionable audiences in spite of the
abstruse nature of the subject — were not published till 1849, Jeffrey
being the editor. Sydney Smith's other published writings embraced
sermons, occasional discourses, and essays on political and social
themes. In 1856 appeared 'The Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith,'
with a biography and notes by E. A. Duyckinck. The memoir by
his daughter, Lady Holland, gives an idea of his trenchant table-talk;
and valuable material is contained in Stuart J. Reid's 'Life and
Times of Sydney Smith' (1884). Any one who takes the trouble to
read Sydney Smith's serious writings will see plainly that his wit
and satire were but light-arm weapons used for serious purposes and
in noble and enlightened causes. Macaulay remarked that he was
the greatest master of ridicule in England since Swift. Doubtless
this is true. But equally true is Sir Henry Holland's claim that "if
he had not been the greatest and most brilliant of wits, he would have
been the most remarkable man of his time for a sound and vigorous
understanding and great reasoning powers; and if he had not been
distinguished for these, he would have been the most eminent and
the purest writer of English. "


## p. 13558 (#372) ##########################################

13558
SYDNEY SMITH
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN
GREAT deal has been said of the original difference of ca-
A pacity between men and women; as if women were more
quick, and men more judicious,—as if women were more
remarkable for delicacy of association, and men for stronger pow-
ers of attention. All this, we confess, appears to us very fanci-
ful. That there is a difference in the understandings of the men
and the women we every day meet with, everybody, we sup-
pose, must perceive; but there is none surely which may not be
accounted for by the difference of circumstances in which they
have been placed, without referring to any conjectural difference
of original conformation of mind. As long as boys and girls
run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both
precisely alike. If you catch up one-half of these creatures, and
train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the
other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understand-
ings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations has called
this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go
into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in order to explain
so very simple a phenomenon.
There is in either sex a strong and permanent disposition to
appear agreeable to the other; and this is the fair answer to
those who are fond of supposing that a higher degree of knowl-
edge would make women rather the rivals than the companions
of men. Presupposing such a desire to please, it seems much
more probable that a common pursuit should be a fresh source
of interest than a cause of contention. Indeed, to suppose that
any mode of education can create a general jealousy and rivalry
between the sexes, is so very ridiculous that it requires only to
be stated in order to be refuted. The same desire of pleasing
secures all that delicacy and reserve which are of such inestima-
ble value to women. We are quite astonished, in hearing men
converse on such subjects, to find them attributing such beau-
tiful effects to ignorance. It would appear, from the tenor of
such objections, that ignorance had been the great civilizer of the
world. Women are delicate and refined, only because they are
ignorant; they manage their household, only because they are
ignorant; they attend to their children, only because they know
no better. Now, we must really confess we have all our lives
been so ignorant as not to know the value of ignorance. We


## p. 13559 (#373) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13559
have always attributed the modesty and the refined manners of
women to their being well taught in moral and religious duty; to
the hazardous situation in which they are placed; to that perpetual
vigilance which it is their duty to exercise over thought, word,
and action; and to that cultivation of the mild virtues, which
those who cultivate the stern and magnanimous virtues expect at
their hands. After all, let it be remembered we are not saying
there are no objections to the diffusion of knowledge among the
female sex,—we would not hazard such a proposition respecting
anything; but we are saying that upon the whole, it is the best
method of employing time, and that there are fewer objections to
it than to any other method. There are perhaps fifty thousand
females in Great Britain who are exempted by circumstances
from all necessary labor: but every human being must do some-
thing with their existence; and the pursuit of knowledge is, upon
the whole, the most innocent, the most dignified, and the most
useful method of filling up that idleness of which there is al-
ways so large a portion in nations far advanced in civilization.
Let any man reflect, too, upon the solitary situation in which
women are placed; the ill treatment to which they are sometimes
exposed, and which they must endure in silence and without the
power of complaining: and he must feel convinced that the hap-
piness of a woman will be materially increased in proportion as
education has given to her the habit and the means of drawing
her resources from herself.
There are a few common phrases in circulation respecting the
duties of women, to which we wish to pay some degree of atten-
tion, because they are rather inimical to those opinions which we
have advanced on this subject. Indeed, independently of this,
there is nothing which requires more vigilance than the current
phrases of the day; of which there are always some resorted to
in every dispute, and from the sovereign authority of which it is
often vain to make any appeal. "The true theatre for a woman
is the sick-chamber;" "Nothing so honorable to a woman as
not to be spoken of at all. " These two phrases, the delight of
Noodledom, are grown into commonplaces upon the subject; and
are not unfrequently employed to extinguish that love of knowl-
edge in women which, in our humble opinion, it is of so much
importance to cherish. Nothing, certainly, is so ornamental and
delightful in women as the benevolent affections; but time can-
not be filled up, and life employed, with high and impassioned


## p. 13560 (#374) ##########################################

13560
SYDNEY SMITH
virtues. Some of these feelings are of rare occurrence, all of
short duration, or nature would sink under them. A scene of
distress and anguish is an occasion where the finest qualities of
the female mind may be displayed; but it is a monstrous ex-
aggeration to tell women that they are born only for scenes of
distress and anguish. Nurse father, mother, sister, and brother,
if they want it: it would be a violation of the plainest duties to
neglect them. But when we are talking of the common occupa-
tions of life, do not let us mistake the accidents for the occu-
pations; when we are arguing how the twenty-three hours of
the day are to be filled up, it is idle to tell us of those feel-
ings and agitations above the level of common existence, which
may employ the remaining hour. Compassion, and every other
virtue, are the great objects we all ought to have in view; but
no man (and no woman) can fill up the twenty-four hours by
acts of virtue. But one is a lawyer, and the other a plowman,
and the third a merchant; and then, acts of goodness, and inter-
vals of compassion and fine feeling, are scattered up and down
the common occupations of life. We know women are to be
compassionate; but they cannot be compassionate from eight
o'clock in the morning till twelve at night, and what are they
to do in the interval? This is the only question we have been
putting all along, and is all that can be meant by literary educa-
tion.
One of the greatest pleasures of life is conversation; and the
pleasures of conversation are of course enhanced by every increase
of knowledge: not that we should meet together to talk of alka-
lies and angles, or to add to our stock of history and philology —
though a little of these things is no bad ingredient in conver-
sation; but let the subject be what it may, there is always a
prodigious difference between the conversation of those who
have been well educated and of those who have not enjoyed this
advantage. Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of
illustration, quickness, vigor, fancy, words, images, and illustra-
tions; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of
trifling without being undignified and absurd. The subjects them-
selves may not be wanted, upon which the talents of an edu-
cated man have been exercised; but there is always a demand for
those talents which his education has rendered strong and quick.
Now, really, nothing can be further from our intention than to
say anything rude and unpleasant; but we must be excused for


## p. 13561 (#375) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13561
observing that it is not now a very common thing to be inter-
ested by the variety and extent of female knowledge, but it is a
very common thing to lament that the finest faculties in the
world have been confined to trifles utterly unworthy of their
richness and their strength.
The pursuit of knowledge is the most. innocent and inter-
esting occupation which can be given to the female sex; nor
can there be a better method of checking a spirit of dissipation
than by diffusing a taste for literature. The true way to attack
vice is by setting up something else against it. Give to women,
in early youth, something to acquire, of sufficient interest and
importance to command the application of their mature faculties,
and to excite their perseverance in future life; teach them that
happiness is to be derived from the acquisition of knowledge, as
well as the gratification of vanity; and you will raise up a much
more formidable barrier against dissipation than a host of invect-
ives and exhortations can supply.
It sometimes happens that an unfortunate man gets drunk
with very bad wine, not to gratify his palate but to forget his
cares: he does not set any value on what he receives, but on
account of what it excludes; it keeps out something worse than
itself. Now, though it were denied that the acquisition of serious
knowledge is of itself important to a woman, still it prevents a
taste for silly and pernicious works of imagination; it keeps away
the horrid trash of novels; and in lieu of that eagerness for
emotion and adventure which books of that sort inspire, promotes
a calm and steady temperament of mind.
A man who deserves such a piece of good fortune, may gen-
erally find an excellent companion for all vicissitudes of his life;
but it is not so easy to find a companion for his understanding,
who has similar pursuits with himself, or who can comprehend
the pleasure he derives from them. We really can see no reason
why it should not be otherwise; nor comprehend how the pleas-
ures of domestic life can be promoted by diminishing the num-
ber of subjects in which persons who are to spend their lives.
together take a common interest.
One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge is the
respect and importance which it communicates to old age. Men
rise in character often as they increase in years: they are vener-
able from what they have acquired, and pleasing from what they
can impart; if they outlive their faculties, the mere frame itself


## p. 13562 (#376) ##########################################

13562
SYDNEY SMITH
is respected for what it once contained. But women (such is
their unfortunate style of education) hazard everything upon one.
cast of the die: when youth is gone, all is gone. No human
creature gives his admiration for nothing: either the eye must
be charmed or the understanding gratified. A woman must talk
wisely or look well. . Every human being must put up with the
coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the
wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest commiseration for
decayed accomplishments; no man mourns over the fragments of
a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill,- they
are flowers destined to perish: but the decay of great talents is
always the subject of solemn pity; and even when their last
memorial is over, their ruins and vestiges are regarded with
pious affection.
There is no connection between the ignorance in which women
are kept, and the preservation of moral and religious principle;
and yet certainly there is, in the minds of some timid and re-
spectable persons, a vague, indefinite dread of knowledge, as if
it were capable of producing these effects. It might almost be
supposed, from the dread which the propagation of knowledge
has excited, that there was some great secret which was to be
kept in impenetrable obscurity; that all moral rules were a spe-
cies of delusion and imposture, the detection of which, by the
improvement of the understanding, would be attended with the
most fatal consequences to all, and particularly to women. If
we could possibly understand what these great secrets were, we
might perhaps be disposed to concur in their preservation; but
believing that all the salutary rules which are imposed on women
are the result of true wisdom, and productive of the greatest
happiness, we cannot understand how they are to become less
sensible of this truth in proportion as their power of discovering
truth in general is increased, and the habit of viewing questions.
with accuracy and comprehension established by education. There
are men, indeed, who are always exclaiming against every species
of power, because it is connected with danger: their dread of
abuses is o much stronger than their admiration of uses, that
they would cheerfully give up the use of fire, gunpowder, and
printing, to be freed from robbers, incendiaries, and libels. It
is true that every increase of knowledge may possibly render
depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength
of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on


## p. 13563 (#377) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13563
its application. But trust to the natural love of good where there
is no temptation to be bad,-it operates nowhere more forcibly
than in education. No man, whether he be tutor, guardian, or
friend, ever contents himself with infusing the mere ability to
acquire; but giving the power, he gives it with a taste for the
wise and rational exercise of that power: so that an educated
person is not only one with stronger and better faculties than
others, but with a more useful propensity, a disposition better
cultivated, and associations of a higher and more important class.
In short, and to recapitulate the main points upon which
we have insisted: Why the disproportion in knowledge between
the two sexes should be so great, when the inequality in natural
talents is so small; or why the understanding of women should
be lavished upon trifles, when nature has made it capable of bet-
ter and higher things, we profess ourselves not able to under-
stand. The affectation charged upon female knowledge is best
cured by making that knowledge more general; and the economy
devolved upon women is best secured by the ruin, disgrace, and
inconvenience which proceed from neglecting it. For the care
of children, nature has made a direct and powerful provision;
and the gentleness and elegance of women is the natural conse-
quence of that desire to please which is productive of the great-
est part of civilization and refinement, and which rests upon a
foundation too deep to be shaken by any such modifications in
education as we have proposed. If you educate women to attend
to dignified and important subjects, you are multiplying beyond
measure the chances of human improvement, by preparing and
medicating those early impressions which always come from the
mother, and which in a great majority of instances are quite
decisive of character and genius. Nor is it only in the business
of education that women would influence the destiny of man.
If women knew more, men must learn more; for ignorance
would then be shameful, and it would become the fashion to
be instructed. The instruction of women improves the stock of
national talents, and employs more minds for the instruction and
amusement of the world; it increases the pleasures of society,
by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a com-
mon interest; and makes marriage an intercourse of understand-
ing as well as of affection, by giving dignity and importance
to the female character. The education of women favors public
morals: it provides for every season of life, as well as for the
―


## p. 13564 (#378) ##########################################

13564
SYDNEY SMITH
brightest and the best; and leaves a woman, when she is stricken.
by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of everything
and neglected by all, but with the full power and the splendid
attractions of knowledge,—diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite
literature, and receiving the just homage of learned and accom-
plished men.
JOHN BULL'S CHARITY SUBSCRIPTIONS
THE
HE English are a calm, reflecting people; they will give time
and money when they are convinced; but they love dates,
names, and certificates. In the midst of the most heart-
rending narratives, Bull requires the day of the month, the year
of our Lord, the name of the parish, and the countersign of
three or four respectable householders. After these affecting
circumstances, he can no longer hold out; but gives way to the
kindness of his nature-puffs, blubbers, and subscribes.
WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS
"O⁰
UR Wise Ancestors" "The Wisdom of our Ancestors >>>
"The Wisdom of Ages" "Venerable Antiquity". - "Wis-
dom of Old Times. "— This mischievous and absurd fallacy
springs from the grossest perversion of the meaning of words.
Experience is certainly the mother of wisdom, and the old have
of course a greater experience than the young; but the question
is, Who are the old? and who are the young? Of individuals
living at the same period, the oldest has of course the greatest
experience; but among generations of men, the reverse of this is
true. Those who come first (our ancestors) are the young people,
and have the least experience. We have added to their experience
the experience of many centuries; and therefore, as far as expe-
rience goes, are wiser and more capable of forming an opinion
than they were. The real feeling should be, not, Can we be so
presumptuous as to put our opinions in opposition to those of our
ancestors? but, Can such young, ignorant, inexperienced persons
as our ancestors necessarily were, be expected to have understood
a subject as well as those who have seen so much more, lived so
much longer, and enjoyed the experience of so many centuries?
-
-


## p. 13565 (#379) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13565
All this cant, then, about our ancestors, is merely an abuse of
words, by transferring phrases true of contemporary men to suc-
ceeding ages.
Whereas (as we have before observed) of living
men the oldest has, cæteris paribus, the most experience; of gen-
erations the oldest has, cæteris paribus, the least experience. Our
ancestors, up to the Conquest, were children in arms; chubby
boys in the time of Edward the First; striplings under Elizabeth;
men in the reign of Queen Anne: and we only are the white-
bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are
prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can.
supply. We are not disputing with our ancestors the palm of
talent, in which they may or may not be our superiors; but the
palm of experience, in which it is utterly impossible they can be
our superiors. And yet, whenever the Chancellor comes forward
to protect some abuse, or to oppose some plan which has the
increase of human happiness for its object, his first appeal is
always to the wisdom of our ancestors; and he himself, and many
noble lords who vote with him, are to this hour persuaded that
all alterations and amendments on their devices are an unblushing
controversy between youthful temerity and mature experience!
and so in truth they are; only that much-loved magistrate mis-
takes the young for the old and the old for the young, and is
guilty of that very sin against experience which he attributes to
the lovers of innovation.
We cannot, of course, be supposed to maintain that our ances-
tors wanted wisdom, or that they were necessarily mistaken in
their institutions, because their means of information were more
limited than ours. But we do confidently maintain, that when
we find it expedient to change anything which our ancestors have
enacted, we are the experienced persons, and not they. The
quantity of talent is always varying in any great nation. To say
that we are more or less able than our ancestors, is an assertion
that requires to be explained. All the able men of all ages, who
have ever lived in England, probably possessed, if taken alto-
gether, more intellect than all the able men now in England
can boast of. But if authority must be resorted to rather than
reason, the question is, What was the wisdom of that single age
which enacted the law, compared with the wisdom of the age
which proposes to alter it? What are the eminent men of one
and the other period? If you say that our ancestors were wiser
than us, mention your date and year. If the splendor of names
is equal, are the circumstances the same? If the circumstances


## p. 13566 (#380) ##########################################

13566
SYDNEY SMITH
are the same, we have a superiority of experience, of which the
difference between the two periods is the measure.
It is necessary to insist upon this; for upon sacks of wool,
and on benches forensic, sit grave men, and agricolous persons
in the Commons, crying out, "Ancestors, Ancestors! hodie non!
Saxons, Danes, save us! Fiddlefrig, help us! Howel, Ethel-
wolf, protect us! " Any cover for nonsense-any veil for trash
-any pretext for repelling the innovations of conscience and of
duty!
LATIN VERSES
THA
HAT vast advantages, then, may be derived from classical
learning, there can be no doubt. The advantages which
are derived from classical learning by the English manner
of teaching, involve another and a very different question; and
we will venture to say that there never was a more complete
instance in any country of such extravagant and overacted attach-
ment to any branch of knowledge, as that which obtains in this
country with regard to classical knowledge. A young English-
man goes to school at six or seven years old; and he remains in
a course of education till twenty-three or twenty-four years of
age. In all that time, his sole and exclusive occupation is learn-
ing Latin and Greek: he has scarcely a notion that there is any
other kind of excellence; and the great system of facts with
which he is the most perfectly acquainted are the intrigues of
the heathen gods: with whom Pan slept? - with whom Jupiter?
-whom Apollo ravished? These facts the English youth get
by heart the moment they quit the nursery; and are most sedu-
lously and industriously instructed in them till the best and most
active part of life is passed away. Now, this long career of
classical learning we may, if we please, denominate a foundation;
but it is a foundation so far above-ground, that there is abso-
lutely no room to put anything upon it. If you occupy a man
with one thing till he is twenty-four years of age, you have
exhausted all his leisure time: he is called into the world, and
compelled to act; or is surrounded with pleasures, and thinks and
reads no more. If you have neglected to put other things in
him, they will never get in afterward; if you have fed him.
only with words, he will remain a narrow and limited being to
the end of his existence.


## p. 13567 (#381) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13567
The bias given to men's minds is so strong, that it is no
uncommon thing to meet with Englishmen, whom, but for their
gray hairs and wrinkles, we might easily mistake for schoolboys.
Their talk is of Latin verses; and it is quite clear, if men's ages
are to be dated from the state of their mental progress, that
such men are eighteen years of age, and not a day older. Their
minds have been so completely possessed by exaggerated notions
of classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great
school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness.
Attend, too, to the public feelings; look to all the terms of
applause. A learned man! a scholar! a man of erudition! Upon
whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are they
given to men acquainted with the science of government? thor-
oughly masters of the geographical and commercial relations of
Europe? to men who know the properties of bodies, and their
action upon each other? No; this is not learning: it is chem-
istry or political economy-not learning. The distinguishing
abstract term, the epithet of "scholar," is reserved for him who
writes on the Eolic reduplication, and is familiar with the Syl-
burgian method of arranging defectives in and μ. The pict-
ure from which a young Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of
knowledge, draws his beau idéal of human nature-his top and
consummation of man's powers-is a knowledge of the Greek
language. His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent;
but to conjugate, decline, and derive. The situations of imagi-
nary glory which he draws for himself are the detection of an
anapæst in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case
which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti
failed to observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet
the greatest chemist, or the greatest mechanician, or the most
profound political economist, of his time, in company with the
greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between
them ever come across his mind? would he ever dream that
such men as Adam Smith or Lavoisier were equal in dignity of
understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley and Heyne?
We are inclined to think that the feeling excited would be a
good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the
praises of the great King of Prussia, who entertained consider-
able doubt whether the King, with all his victories, knew how to
conjugate a Greek verb in μ.
Another misfortune of classical learning as taught in Eng-
land is, that scholars have come, in process of time and from


## p. 13568 (#382) ##########################################

13568
SYDNEY SMITH
the effects of association, to love the instrument better than the
end; not the luxury which the difficulty incloses, but the diffi-
culty; not the filbert, but the shell; not what may be read in
Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who has
mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, as he who
displays his knowledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is
conveyed. The glory is to show I am a scholar.
The good
sense and ingenuity I may gain by my acquaintance with ancient
authors is matter of opinion; but if I bestow an immensity of
pains upon a point of accent or quantity, this is something posi
tive; I establish my pretensions to the name of a scholar, and
gain the credit of learning while I sacrifice all its utility.
Another evil in the present system of classical education is
the extraordinary perfection which is aimed at in teaching those
languages; a needless perfection; an accuracy which is sought
for in nothing else. There are few boys who remain to the age
of eighteen or nineteen at a public school, without making above
ten thousand Latin verses,- a greater number than is contained
in the Æneid; and after he has made this quantity of verses in
a dead language, unless the poet should happen to be a very
weak man indeed, he never makes another as long as he lives.
It may be urged, and it is urged, that this is of use in teaching
the delicacies of the language. No doubt it is of use for this
purpose, if we put out of view the immense time and trouble
sacrificed in gaining these little delicacies. It would be of use
that we should go on till fifty years of age making Latin verses,
if the price of a whole life were not too much to pay for it.
We effect our object; but we do it at the price of something
greater than our object. And whence comes it that the expendi-
ture of life and labor is totally put out of the calculation, when
Latin and Greek are to be attained? In every other occupation,
the question is fairly stated between the attainment and the
time employed in the pursuit: but in classical learning, it seems
to be sufficient if the least possible good is gained by the great-
est possible exertion; if the end is anything, and the means
everything. It is of some importance to speak and write French,
and innumerable delicacies would be gained by writing ten thou-
sand French verses; but it makes no part of our education to
write French poetry. It is of some importance that there should
be good botanists; but no botanist can repeat by heart the names
of all the plants in the known world: nor is any astronomer
acquainted with the appellation and magnitude of every star in


## p. 13569 (#383) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13569
the map of the heavens. The only department of human knowl-
edge in which there can be no excess, no arithmetic, no balance
of profit and loss, is classical learning.
The prodigious honor in which Latin verses are held at public
schools is surely the most absurd of all absurd distinctions. You
rest all reputation upon doing that which is a natural gift, and
which no labor can attain. If a lad won't learn the words of
a language, his degradation in the school is a very natural pun-
ishment for his disobedience or his indolence; but it would be as
reasonable to expect that all boys should be witty, or beautiful,
as that they should be poets. In either case, it would be to
make an accidental, unattainable, and not a very important gift
of nature, the only, or the principal, test of merit. This is the
reason why boys who make a very considerable figure at school
so very often make no figure in the world; and why other lads,
who are passed over without notice, turn out to be valuable,
important men. The test established in the world is widely
different from that established in a place which is presumed to
be a preparation for the world; and the head of a public school,
who is a perfect miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself
shrink into absolute insignificance, because he has nothing else to
command respect or regard but a talent for fugitive poetry in a
dead language.
The present state of classical education cultivates the imagi-
nation a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great
deal too little; and trains up many young men in a style of
elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which
nature has endowed them. It may be said there are profound
investigations, and subjects quite powerful enough for any under-
standing, to be met with in classical literature. So there are:
but no man likes to add the difficulties of a language to the diffi-
culties of a subject; and to study metaphysics, morals, and poli-
tics in Greek, when the Greek alone is study enough without
them. In all foreign languages, the most popular works are
works of imagination. Even in the French language, which we
know so well, for one serious work which has any currency in
this country, we have twenty which are mere works of imagina-
tion. This is still more true in classical literature, because what
their poets and orators have left us is of infinitely greater value
than the remains of their philosophy: for as society advances,
men think more accurately and deeply, and imagine more tamely;
works of reasoning advance, and works of fancy decay. So that
XXIII-849


## p. 13570 (#384) ##########################################

13570
SYDNEY SMITH
the matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or
twenty-four years of age is a man principally conversant with
works of imagination. His feelings are quick, his fancy lively,
and his taste good. Talents for speculation and original inquiry
he has none; nor has he formed the invaluable habit of push-
ing things up to their first principles, or of collecting dry and
unamusing facts as the materials of reasoning. All the solid and
masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without cul-
tivation; he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man
whose boldness and originality call upon him to defend his opin-
ions and prove his assertions.
MRS. SIDDONS
I
NEVER go to tragedies: my heart is too soft. There is too
much real misery in life. But what a face she had! The
gods do not bestow such a face as Mrs. Siddons's on the stage
more than once in a century. I knew her very well, and she
had the good taste to laugh heartily at my jokes; she was an
excellent person, but she was not remarkable out of her profes-
sion, and never got out of tragedy even in common life. She
used to stab the potatoes; and said, "Boy, give me a knife! "
as she would have said, "Give me the dagger! "
DOGS
N°
.
I DON'T like dogs: I always expect them to go mad. A
lady asked me once for a motto for her dog Spot. I
proposed, "Out, damned Spot! " but she did not think it
sentimental enough. You remember the story of the French
marquise, who, when her pet lap-dog bit a piece out of her foot-
man's leg, exclaimed, "Ah, poor little beast! I hope it won't
make him sick. " I called one day on Mrs.
and her lap-
dog flew at my leg and bit it. After pitying her dog, like the
French marquise, she did all she could to comfort me by assur-
ing me the dog was a Dissenter, and hated the Church, and
was brought up in a Tory family. But whether the bite came
from madness or Dissent, I knew myself too well to neglect it;
and went on the instant to a surgeon and had it cut out, making
a mem. on the way to enter that house no more.


## p. 13571 (#385) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13571
HAND-SHAKING
ON
MEETING a young lady who had just entered the garden,
and shaking hands with her, "I must," he said, "give you
a lesson in shaking hands, I see. There is nothing more
characteristic than shakes of the hand. I have classified them.
Lister, when he was here, illustrated some of them. Ask Mrs.
Sydney to show you his sketches of them when you go in.
There is the high official,-the body erect, and a rapid, short
shake, near the chin. There is the mortmain,-the flat hand in-
troduced into your palm, and hardly conscious of its contiguity.
The digital,- one finger held out, much used by the high clergy.
There is the shakus rusticus, where your hand is seized in
an iron grasp, betokening rude health, warm heart, and distance
from the Metropolis; but producing a strong sense of relief on
your part when you find your hand released and your fingers
unbroken. The next to this is the retentive shake,—one which,
beginning with vigor, pauses as it were to take breath, but with-
out relinquishing its prey, and before you are aware begins
again, till you feel anxious as to the result, and have no shake
left in you.
There are other varieties, but this is enough for
one lesson. ”
SMALL MEN
AN
ARGUMENT arose, in which my father observed how many
of the most eminent men of the world had been diminutive
in person; and after naming several among the ancients,
he added, "Why, look there, at Jeffrey; and there is my little
friend
who has not body enough to cover his mind decently
with, his intellect is improperly exposed. "
MACAULAY
T
TAKE Macaulay out of literature and society, and put him
in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician
out of London during a pestilence.
"Oh yes! we both talk a great deal; but I don't believe
Macaulay ever did hear my voice," he exclaimed laughing.
"Sometimes when I have told a good story, I have thought to


## p. 13572 (#386) ##########################################

13572
SYDNEY SMITH
myself, Poor Macaulay! he will be very sorry some day to have
missed hearing that. "
I always prophesied his greatness from the first moment I saw
him, then a very young and unknown man on the Northern Cir-
cuit. There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as
well as great; he is like a book in breeches.
Yes, I agree, he is certainly more agreeable since his return
from India. His enemies might have said before (though I never
did so) that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional
flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
But what is far better and more important than all this is, that
I believe Macaulay to be incorruptible. You might lay ribbons,
stars, garters, wealth, title, before him in vain. He has an hon-
est genuine love of his country, and the world could not bribe
him to neglect her interests.
SPECIE AND SPECIES
ST
YDNEY SMITH, preaching a charity sermon, frequently repeated
the assertion that of all nations, Englishmen were most dis-
tinguished for generosity and the love of their species. The
collection happened to be inferior to his expectations, and he said
that he had evidently made a great mistake, and that his expres
sion should have been that they were distinguished for the love
of their specie.
ANIEL
DAN
trousers.
DANIEL WEBSTER
WEBSTER struck me much like a steam-engine in
REVIEW OF THE NOVEL (GRANBY'
HE main question as to a novel is, Did it amuse? Were you
Tsurprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven
for ten, and twelve for eleven? were you too late to dress?
and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces
these effects, it is good; if it does not,-story, language, love,
scandal itself, cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it


## p. 13573 (#387) ##########################################

SYDNEY SMITH
13573
must do that, or it does nothing. Now, 'Granby '* seems to
us to answer this test extremely well: it produces unpunctuality,
makes the reader too late for dinner, impatient of contradiction,
and inattentive, even if a bishop is making an observation, or
a gentleman lately from the Pyramids or the Upper Cataracts is
let loose upon the drawing-room. The objection indeed to these
compositions, when they are well done, is, that it is impossible to
do anything or perform any human duty while we are engaged
in them. Who can read Mr. Hallam's 'Middle Ages,' or extract
the root of an impossible quantity, or draw up a bond, when he
is in the middle of Mr. Trebeck and Lady Charlotte Duncan ?
How can the boy's lesson be heard, about the Jove-nourished
Achilles, or his six miserable verses upon Dido be corrected, when
Henry Granby and Mr. Courtenay are both making love to Miss
Jermyn ? Common life palls in the middle of these artificial
scenes. All is emotion when the book is open; all dull, flat, and
feeble, when it is shut.
-
Granby, a young man of no profession, living with an old
uncle in the country, falls in love with Miss Jermyn, and Miss
Jermyn with him; but Sir Thomas and Lady Jermyn, as the
young gentleman is not rich, having discovered by long living in
the world, and patient observation of its ways, that young people
are commonly Malthus-proof and have children, and that young
and old must eat, very naturally do what they can to discourage
the union. The young people, however, both go to town; meet
at balls; flutter, blush, look and cannot speak; speak and cannot
look; suspect, misinterpret, are sad and mad, peevish and jealous,
fond and foolish: but the passion, after all, seems less near to
its accomplishment at the end of the season than the beginning.
The uncle of Granby, however, dies, and leaves to his nephew a
statement, accompanied with the requisite proofs, that Mr. Tyrrel,
the supposed son of Lord Malton, is illegitimate, and that he,
Granby, is the heir to Lord Malton's fortune. The second vol-
ume is now far advanced, and it is time for Lord Malton to die.
Accordingly Mr. Lister very judiciously dispatches him; Granby
inherits the estate; his virtues (for what shows off virtue like
land? ) are discovered by the Jermyns; and they marry in the
last act.
*Granby,' a novel by Thomas Henry Lister, noticed by Sydney Smith in
the Edinburgh Review of February 1826.


## p. 13574 (#388) ##########################################

13574
SYDNEY SMITH
Upon this slender story, the author has succeeded in making
a very agreeable and interesting novel: and he has succeeded,
we think, chiefly by the very easy and natural picture of man-
ners as they really exist among the upper classes; by the de-
scription of new characters, judiciously drawn and faithfully
preserved; and by the introduction of many striking and well-
managed incidents. And we are particularly struck throughout
the whole with the discretion and good sense of the author. He
is never nimious; there is nothing in excess: there is a good deal
of fancy and a great deal of spirit at work, but a directing and
superintending judgment rarely quits him.
Tremendous is the power of a novelist!
If four or five men
are in a room, and show a disposition to break the peace, no
human magistrate (not even Mr. Justice Bayley) could do more
than bind them over to keep the peace, and commit them if they
refused. But the writer of the novel stands with a pen in his
hand, and can run any of them through the body,- can knock
down any one individual and keep the others upon their legs;
or like the last scene in the first tragedy written by a young
man of genius, can put them all to death. Now, an author
possessing such extraordinary privileges should not have allowed
Mr. Tyrrel to strike Granby. This is ill managed; particularly
as Granby does not return the blow, or turn him out of the
house. Nobody should suffer his hero to have a black eye, or to
be pulled by the nose. The Iliad would never have come down
to these times if Agamemnon had given Achilles a box on
the ear. We should have trembled for the Eneid if any Tyr-
ian nobleman had kicked the pious Eneas in the fourth book.
Æneas may have deserved it; but he could not have founded the
Roman Empire after so distressing an accident.


## p. 13575 (#389) ##########################################

13575
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
(1721-1771)
BY PITTS DUFFIELD
MOLLETT is probably one of the least "literary" of the names
that live in English literature. For a long time, it is true,
the critics took him over-seriously. The people who first
had the task of writing his biography and estimating his genius set
the example. There is an edition of his works in 1797, twenty-six
years after his death, in which Dr. John Moore, before beginning the
life of his subject, feels obliged to expend
himself upon 'A View of the Commence-
ment and Progress of Romance. ' It is a dis-
sertation which the eighteenth-century folks
would have called "learned and ingenious. "
It begins with a "contrast between the
manners of the Greeks and Romans and
those of the Goths," examines the condition
of knight-errantry in the Middle Age, pos-
tulates Prince Arthur and Charlemagne as
the two original heroes of romance, touches
upon the troubadours, Dante, Cervantes, and
concludes with the products of Tobias Smol-
lett. Subsequent writers, continuing the in-
quiries thus set on foot, have tried, though
in vain, to ascribe to him some special contribution to letters, or some
special importance in the evolution of the English novel. The fact
is, that Smollett himself would have been the first to jeer at these
attempts to deal scientifically with him. He might have exclaimed,
as he makes some one do in Humphrey Clinker,' that he would
as soon expect "to see the use of trunk-hose and buttered ale"
deriving itself from the feudal system. Altogether, it is not hard to
find reasons why his popularity survives most genuinely among peo-
ple whose interests are uncritical and unliterary.
For one thing, he is nothing if not typical of the English writers.
who, without the genius which invents or the subtler genius which
makes old matter new, succeed nevertheless by the sheer force of
their British vigor in gaining a place by their more laborious broth-
In all Smollett's novels, where there is little anyway that is not
ers.

SMOLLETT


## p. 13576 (#390) ##########################################

13576
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
external in its aspects and observations, one finds nothing which has
not its origin in the actual experiences of his own life. Born in 1721
in Dalquhurn, in Dumbartonshire, of a good family but of a younger
son, he was dependent all his life on what he could earn himself;
and believing himself to be of a literary taste, he set out, after some
education and an apprenticeship to a surgeon in Glasgow, upon the
high-road to London. His tragedy, with which he had armed him-
self,The Regicide,' a story drawn from the powerful romance of
Scottish history, but treated in the hopeless pseudo-classic manner,-
came to nothing; and in 1741 he got an appointment as surgeon's
mate on one of the ships of the expedition to Carthagena.
It was
on this voyage that he met Miss Anne Lascelles, a reputed Jamaica
heiress, whose name he characteristically converted into Nancy Las-
sells. Next, after unsuccessful attempts at practice in London and in
Bath, he cooked up some of his adventures in 'Roderick Random,'
and for the first time was fairly successful. 'Peregrine Pickle,'
'Ferdinand, Count Fathom,' a translation of 'Don Quixote,' the edit-
orship of the Critical Review, his 'History of England,' 'Sir Laun-
celot Greaves,' and occasional poems and satires, were some of the
means by which he sought subsistence. In the mean time he had
traveled for his health in France and Italy; in 1771, soon after fin-
ishing Humphrey Clinker,' he died at Leghorn; and is celebrated
there, and on the banks of the Leven in Scotland, by monuments
with ponderous Latin epitaphs. One of the epitaphs is on the
theme of genius unappreciated; and the life on the whole was indeed
not happy. Macaulay is not much too rhetorical when he says Smol-
lett was most of the time "surrounded by printers' devils and fam-
ished scribblers. "
It is from such company and such adventures - the same, be it
noted, which are supposed to be valuable in the modern reporter's
stock in trade- that Smollett gets his distinguishing characteristic:
a fund of coarse but lively humor. Dr. John Moore says somewhat
mildly that "in the ardor of his satirical and humorous chase, Dr.
Smollett sometimes leaves delicacy too far behind. " The frankest
and healthiest way to state the question is to say that it is not a
question of delicacy at all. A certain coarseness of fibre in the
English, often their strength and not always their reproach, was first
touched upon fearlessly by the shrewd and observant Hawthorne.
What many brave or useful or wise men in many ages have sel-
dom been completely without, can hardly be condemned in Smollett
because with him it is undisguised. He had not the grace of the
French, the specious pathos of Sterne, or the deliberate euphemism
of the mawkish modern drama, to conceal the primal instincts of his
nature. People have called Smollett foul; but this, in certain moods,


## p. 13577 (#391) ##########################################

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
13577
may seem as wide of the mark as to call him simply indelicate.
'The Adventures of an Atom' are mentioned with a shudder when it
is necessary to mention them at all, yet they are scarcely worse than
the occasional conversation of very reputable medical students in all
times. It may be questioned, finally, whether it is any hurt to a lan-
guage to have nothing but specifically vulgar names for vulgar things,
and so escape the deification of lubricity to which less robust nations
commit themselves. Vigorous and outspoken, irreverent, and some-]
times too high-tempered, Smollett is a pervading exemplar of the
British humorist. He has indeed the scorn of affectation, which, in
spite of his exclusion from any evolutionary scheme of things, may
be regarded as one distinguishing trait of the modern funny man.
His attitude toward the Venus de Medici and the Pantheon in Rome
- which, in the case of the Venus at any rate, is after all not so very
discordant with modern æsthetic appreciation-may be said, half in
earnest, to stand for the kind of thing Mark Twain and others have
done in our own day. "The Pantheon," he declares, "after all that
has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the top;" and
the world of connoisseurs was in arms at once. Sterne satirized him
as the "learned Smelfungus, who set out with the spleen and the
jaundice. " But whether it was the jaundice or the spleen, the people
who read Smollett- who are rarely the people who read only for
the name of the thing. are just the ones to like him for being thor-
oughly, if a bit brutally, honest. People who read him to study him,
moreover, may remember with advantage that it is just this direct
and unaffected habit of expression that gives him his hold on life.
Editions of his works have been numerous and handy; and many a
reader who would yawn over more delicate tales, however seductive,
finds himself diverted by his pages. "Since Granville was turned
out," he says,
"there has been no minister in this nation worth the
meal that whitened his periwig. " That is the way to say things for
the average man, bent less on the speculations of art than on hearty
sense. The coarseness, or the foulness, which people condemn in
him, is perhaps the same at bottom with the instinct that makes his
style to-day still readable and vigorous.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Sir Walter Scott-both interest-
ing critics have made what later critics call the mistake of crediting
Smollett with the gift of invention. Lady Mary was perhaps the
more excusable, since the extraordinary variety of incident in his
novels could not have been known to her to be transcripts from the
man's life. The language and the characters of British seamen and
surgeons' apprentices - the idiosyncrasies of Commodore Trunnion,
Pipes, Hatchway, and the famous Tom Bowling-had in the eigh-
teenth century a novelty which must have seemed more than mere
―――
-


## p. 13578 (#392) ##########################################

13578
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
reproductions. Thackeray, though he did abundant justice to Smol-
lett's humor, discerned that he depended less on invention than on
copying. The point now is that he had the resources to copy from,
and instinctively drew upon them. In this again he may have fore-
shadowed a modern method of procedure, which travels about the
earth in search of literary capital. In Smollett are found many of
the types which have since been elaborated in special departments
of fiction. His sea people, of course, may have had their prototypes
in the drama and in some of the older romances; but Smollett goes
further in carefully reproducing their talk, and the scenes and inci-
dents of their lives. Similarly, though unconsciously, his medical
episodes and similitudes may be forerunners of the medico-literary
and psycho-physical novels which find vogue in our own days. Wini-
fred Jenkins, also, in Humphrey Clinker,' is one of the most laugh-
able of the Malaprop breed; and her bad spelling, though it has been
often imitated, has rarely been improved on. So that if Smollett
cannot have been a force in evolution, he may at least have had a
few germs, whether of good or evil.
It is to be remembered lastly, whatever strictures may be passed
on his life and writings, that his valedictory was becoming. The
Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' is remarkable for the transforma-
tion and chastening which overspread his method and his manner.
That his vicissitudes troubled him, and sharpened his temper, may
be excused in the fact that when all was done he looked beneficently
on the world, and was willing to amuse it without making it laugh
over-loudly or cruelly. If his literary reputation suffers by what
the exigencies of his times and fortunes compelled him to do, he
lived through them to retrieve it. The style of 'Humphrey Clinker'
is easy and familiar, and the epistolary form in it more than usually
adapted to the desultory manner in which the narrative goes forward.
Here the critics are willing to admit that Smollett created charac-
ters over and above mere types, and put himself for once in a line
with Sterne and Fielding. Tabitha Bramble, Matthew Bramble, and
Lismahago, are really charming additions to the galleries of English
portraiture. Smollett is unusually hard to represent by a limited.
number of excerpts; his range is too wide to be surely represented
by less than a variety of his pages. Yet if one selection were to be
made, it should in justice to him be taken from the book in which
the worker has lived through the years of drudgery to become at
last, for once anyway, the artist.
Like his great contemporary Fielding, the author of 'Humphrey
Clinker' was born to the lot of literary hack. His case has many
resemblances to the literary workers of these days,-the days of in-
numerable hacks. He had in more ways than one the instincts, the


## p. 13579 (#393) ##########################################

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
13579
The jour-
temper, and the method of the modern newspaper man.
nalist who travels about confessedly to get material differs not essen-
tially from the writer who uses what fortuitous travel has brought
him. A ready humor, quick wit, and real though acrid sympathy,
are other details of the analogy. The sequel is only too apt to be a
story of dull routine and ultimate mediocrity. In the obscurity of
hackdom it must be, in some essence at least, a fine nature that
will not relax its efforts to do well what it has to do, and ends by
doing it better than ever. Smollett was, throughout his twenty-five
years of work, a conscientiously careful employer of the English
language. Perhaps, therefore, a point of view more grateful to him
and more adequately estimating him, would be not that which com-
pares him disadvantageously on the same level with Richardson,
Fielding, and Sterne; but that which credits him with having raised
himself from lower regions to a place near them.
Pits Duffica
A NAVAL SURGEON'S EXAMINATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
From Roderick Random>
MR.
R. JACKSON'S exordium did not at all contribute to the recov-
ery of my spirits, but on the contrary, reduced me to
such a situation that I was scarce able to stand: which
being perceived by a plump gentleman who sat opposite to
me with a skull before him, he said Mr. Snarler was too severe
upon the young man; and turning towards me, told me I need
not be afraid, for nobody would do me any harm; then bidding
me take time to recollect myself, he examined me touching the
operation of the trepan, and was very well satisfied with my
answers.
The next person who questioned me was a wag, who began
by asking if I had ever seen an amputation performed; and I
replying in the affirmative, he shook his head and said, “What!
upon a dead subject, I suppose? If," continued he, "during an
engagement at sea, a man should be brought to you with his
head shot off, how would you behave? " After some hesitation,
I owned such a case had never come under my observation, nei-
ther did I remember to have seen any method of cure proposed


## p. 13580 (#394) ##########################################

13580
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT
for such an accident in any of the systems of surgery I had
perused. Whether it was owing to the simplicity of my answer
or the archness of the question, I know not; but every mem-
ber of the board deigned to smile except Mr. Snarler, who seemed
to have very little of the animal risible in his constitution.
The facetious member, encouraged by the success of his last
joke, went on thus: "Suppose you was called to a patient of
a plethoric habit who had been bruised by a fall, what would
you do? »
I answered, "I would
would bleed him immediately. '
«< What," said he, "before you had tied up his arm? " But this
stroke of wit not answering his expectation, he desired me to
advance to the gentleman who sat next him, and who, with a
pert air, asked what method of cure I would follow in wounds of
the intestines. I repeated the method of cure as it is prescribed
by the best chirurgical writers; which he heard to an end, and
then said with a supercilious smile, "So you think by such a
treatment the patient might recover? " I told him I saw nothing
to make me think otherwise. "That may be," resumed he; "I
won't answer for your foresight: but did you ever know a case
of this kind succeed?