t least, or perhaps even turkeys,
are necessary;" and scores more with references to which I find the
fly-leaves of my copy of the letters covered. If any one wants to see
how much solid there is with all this froth, let him turn to the
passages showing the unconquerable manliness, fairness, and good sense
with which Sydney treated the unhappy subject of Queen Caroline, out of
which his friends were so ready to make political capital; or to the
admirable epistle in which he takes seriously, and blunts once for all,
the points of certain foolish witticisms as to the readiness with which
he, a man about town, had taken to catechisms and cabbages in an almost
uninhabited part of the despised country. In conversation he would seem
sometimes to have a little, a very little, "forced the note." The Quaker
baby, and the lady "with whom you might give an assembly or populate a
parish," are instances in point. But he never does this in his letters.
I take particular pleasure in the following passage written to Miss
Georgiana Harcourt within two years of his death: "What a charming
existence! To live in the midst of holy people; to know that nothing
profane can approach you; to be certain that a Dissenter can no more be
found in the Palace than a snake can exist in Ireland, or ripe fruit in
Scotland! To have your society strong, and undiluted by the laity; to
bid adieu to human learning; to feast on the Canons and revel in the
Thirty-Nine Articles! Happy Georgiana!" Now if Sydney had been what some
foolish people think him, merely a scoffer, there would be no fun in
this; it would be as impertinent and in as bad taste as the stale jokes
of the eighteenth century about Christianity. But he was much else.

Of course, however, no rational man will contend that in estimating
Sydney Smith's place in the general memory, his deliberate literary
work, or at least that portion of it which he chose to present on
reflection, acknowledged and endorsed, can be overlooked. His _Life_
contains (what is infinitely desirable in all such Lives and by no means
always or often furnished) a complete list of his contributions to the
_Edinburgh Review_, and his works contain most of them. To these have to
be added the pamphlets, of which the chief and incomparably the best
are, at intervals of thirty years, _Peter Plymley_ and the _Letters to
Archdeacon Singleton_, together with sermons, speeches, and other
miscellaneous matter. The whole, except the thi