Auden about Sydney Smith

The Selected Writings
of Sydney Smith
Edited and with an Introduction
by W. H. Auden
(Pendleburys, the bookshop in the hills)
no copyright infringement intended

Sydney Smith was born in 1771, two years after the invention of Watt's steam engine and one year after Goldsmith's Deserted Village, that vivid description of the effects of land enclosure. It was still dangerous to walk through the streets of London after dark, there were no waterproof hats, no braces, no calomel, no quinine, no clubs, no saving banks, the government was completely in the hands of great landowners, and, in the best society, the third of the gentlemen were always drunk. He died in 1845, which was also the year in which Engels' State of the Working Class in England was published and Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the Romantic Movement had all occurred, there was gaslight in houses, there were railways through the country, the Victorian proprieties were firmly established (Bowdler's Shakespeare appeared in 1818) and public opinion had forced Parliament to soften the rigors of pure laisser-faire (the First Factory Act was passed in 1833).


(Auden)

(Sydney Smith)

Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
source: William E Burton, Cyclopedia of Wit and Humor 1858
(wikimedia)
no copyright infringement intended

He is a very clever fellow, but he will never be a bishop (George III)

A more profligate parson I never met (George IV)

I sat next to Sydney Smith, who was delightful--I don't remember a more agreeable party (Benjamin Disraeli)

He drew such a ludicrous caricature…that Sir James Mackintosh rolled on the floor in fits of laughter (Lord John Russel)

Sydney at breakfast made me actually cry with laughing. I was obliged to start up from the table (Thomas Moore)

The only wit on record, whom brilliant social success had done nothing to spoil or harden (Henry Fothergill Chorley)

One of the funniest writers in the English language (Alberto Manguel)


Anglican clergyman, great wit and writer. Unanimously admired for his brilliant smartness (however too smart to advance very far within the social hierarchy, as King George III famously said). I have just ordered on the web a selection from his works, in a volume edited by W.H.Auden. It should come to me sometime in June. Till then I'll try to read a book by Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey), where one of the personages was seemingly inspired after Smith. I will come back to that.

• Auden about Sydney Smith

(A Life in Books)