referment,
for he held for some years (on the then not discredited understanding of
resignation when one of the Howards was ready for it) the neighbouring
and valuable living of Londesborough. Then the death of an aunt put an
end to his monetary anxieties, which for years had been considerable, by
the legacy of a small but sufficient fortune. And at last, when he was
approaching sixty, the good things of the Church, which he never
affected to despise, came in earnest. The Tory Chancellor Lyndhurst gave
him a stall at Bristol, which carried with it a small Devonshire living,
and soon afterwards he was able to exchange Foston (which he had greatly
improved), for Combe Florey near Taunton. When his friend Lord Grey
became Prime Minister, the stall at Bristol was exchanged for a much
more valuable one at St. Paul's; Halberton, the Devonshire vicarage, and
Combe Florey still remaining his. These made up an ecclesiastical
revenue not far short of three thousand a year, which Sydney enjoyed for
the last fifteen years of his life. He never got anything more, and it
is certain that for a time he was very sore at not being made a bishop,
or at least offered a bishopric. Lord Holland had rather rashly
explained the whole difficulty years before, by reporting a conversation
of his with Lord Grenville, in which they had hoped that when the Whigs
came into power they would be more grateful to Sydney than the Tories
had been to Swift. Sydney's acuteness must have made him wince at the
omen. For my part I do not see why either Harley or Grey should have
hesitated, as far as any scruples of their own went. But I think any
fair-minded person must admit the possibility of a scruple, though he
may not share it, about the effect of seeing either the _Tale of a Tub_
or _Peter Plymley's Letters_, with "By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop
of----" on the title-page. The people who would have been shocked might
in each case have been fools: there is nothing that I at least can see,
in either book, inconsistent with sound religion and churchmanship. But
they would have been honest fools, and of such a Prime Minister has to
take heed. So Amen Corner (or rather, for he did not live there, certain
streets near Grosvenor Square) in London, and Combe Florey in the
country, were Sydney Smith's abodes till his death. In the former he
gave his breakfasts and dinners in the season, being further enabled to
do so by his share (some thirty thousand pounds) of h