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.

Equally unfair, and equally insensible to all the appeals of religious
fervour, is the article on Indian Missions, for which, fifty years after,
Archbishop Tait found it hard to forgive him.[133] Here again the
artificial quaintness of religious phrase and thought gave him the
necessary material for his fun. As he had found delight in the proper names
of Methodist ministers--Shufflebottom and Ringletub[134]--so he delighted
in lampooning "Ram Boshoo," and "Buxoo a brother," and "the Catechist of
Collesigrapatuam." The saintly and scholarly Carey[135] ought to have been
safe from his attacks, but the Baptist Missionary Society rather invited
ridicule.--

"Brother Carey, while very sea-sick, and leaning over the ship to
relieve his stomach from that very oppressive complaint, said his mind
was even then filled with consolation in contemplating the wonderful
goodness of God."

And Brother Carey's own journal was calculated to raise a smile.--

"_1793. June 30. Lord's-day_. A pleasant and profitable day: our
congregation composed of ten persons."

"_July 7_. Another pleasant and profitable Lord's-day: our
congregation increased with one. Had much sweet enjoyment with God."

"_1794. Jan, 26. Lord's-day_. Found much pleasure in reading Edwards's
_Sermon on the Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners_."

"_April 6_. Had some sweetness to-day, especially in reading Edwards's
Sermon."

"_.1796. Feb. 6_. I am now in my study; and oh, it is a sweet place,
because of the presence of God with the vilest of men. It is at the
top of the house; I have but one window in it."

In reply to Jeffrey, who as Editor of the _Edinburgh Review_ rebuked his
contributor for "levity of quotations," Sydney Smith wrote in 1808:--

"I do not understand what you mean