h Review' was an efficient organ of progress, it was not
from any ardent faith in progress entertained by its chief conductor.

It is a relief to turn from Jeffrey to Sydney Smith. The highest epithet
applicable to Jeffrey is 'clever,' to which we may prefix some modest
intensitive. He is a brilliant, versatile, and at bottom liberal and
kindly man of the world; but he never gets fairly beyond the border-line
which irrevocably separates lively talent from original power. There are
dozens of writers who could turn out work on the same pattern and about
equally good. Smith, on the other hand, stamps all his work with his
peculiar characteristics. It is original and unmistakable; and in a
certain department--not, of course, a very high one--he has almost
unique merits. I do not think that the 'Plymley Letters' can be
surpassed by anything in the language as specimens of the terse,
effective treatment of a great subject in language suitable for popular
readers. Of course they have no pretence to the keen polish of Junius,
or the weight of thought of Burke, or the rhetorical splendours of
Milton; but their humour, freshness, and spirit are inimitable. The
'Drapier Letters,' to which they have often been compared, were more
effective at the moment; but no fair critic can deny, I think, that
Sydney Smith's performance is now more interesting than Swift's.

The comparison between the Dean and the Canon is an obvious one, and has
often been made. There is a likeness in the external history of the two
clergymen who both sought for preferment through politics, and were
both, even by friends, felt to have sinned against professional
proprieties, and were put off with scanty rewards in consequence. Both,
too, were masters of a vigorous style, and original humourists. But the
likeness does not go very deep. Swift had the most powerful intellect
and the strongest passion as undeniably as Smith had the sweetest
nature. The admirable good-humour with which Smith accepted his position
and devoted himself to honest work in an obscure country parish, is the
strongest contrast with Swift's misanthropical seclusion; and nothing
can be less like than Smith's admirable domestic history and the
mysterious love affairs with Stella and Vanessa. Smith's character
reminds us more closely of Fuller, whose peculiar humour is much of the
same stamp; and who, falling upon hard times, and therefore tinged by a
more melancholy sentiment, yet showed the s