no means sure that even the solitary confinement of the curacy was time wasted in the long run. Clever and lively companions would have afforded useful instruction for the critic and capital practice for the controversialist; but, as regards the development of his thinking powers, commend us to the lonely meditations of Salisbury Plain.

The Memoir is singularly meagre of information during his five years' sojourn in Edinburgh; and the earliest letter in the selection bears the date of 1801, the fourth year after his arrival there. He was in the thirty-first year of his age when this Review was projected. Are we to infer that so active-minded a man, with his laudable aspirations for distinction and his fertility of resource, was content to let his faculties lie fallow during so protracted an interval, or that he found a satisfactory occupation for them in reading with his pupils, or in metaphysical discussions with his friends? An incident told in connexion with his marriage, which took place some time in 1799, rather adds to the mystery, as proving that the spur of straitened means was amongst his other stimulants to extraordinary exertion. Lady Holland tells us that it was lucky her mother, whose maiden name was Pybus, had some fortune, since her father's only tangible and appreciable contribution towards their future ménage were six small silver teaspoons, which, from much wear, had become the ghosts of their former selves. One day, in the madness of his joy, he came running into the room and flung these into her lap, saying, "There, Kate, you lucky girl, I give you all my fortune." fortune." In a letter written long after he had left Edinburgh, he exclaims, "When shall I see Scotland again? Never shall I forget the happy days passed there, amidst odious smells, barbarous sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and most enlightened and cultivated understandings."

He did not take the less kindly to the Scotch on account of their alleged insensibility to humour. "It requires," he used to say, "a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding." Charles Lamb stoutly maintained the same doctrine, and we fear that an attempt on our part to dispute it will meet with no better success than the essay of the Edgeworths on Irish Bulls, written to prove that the Irish make no more bulls than other nations, and proving incontestably that they make more than all the other nations of Europe put together. Yet the imputation of insensibility to humour is a curious one to be fixed indelibly on the countrymen of Burns, Walter Scott, Galt, Lockhart, John Wilson, and Peter Robertson. One of our "raws" he was

especially fond of rubbing. "Their temper," he writes, "stands anything but an attack on their climate; even the enlightened mind of Jeffrey cannot shake off the illusion that myrtles flourish on Craig Crook. In vain I have represented to him that they are of the genus Carduus, and pointed out their prickly peculiarities. He sticks to his myrtle illusions, and treats my attacks with as much contempt as if I had been a wild visionary, who had never breathed his caller air, nor lived and suffered under the rigour of his climate, nor spent five years in discussing metaphysics and medicine in that garret of the earth that handle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur."

The motto which he proposed for this Journal, and his account of its origin, are too familiar to need repetition. He states that the project emanated from him, and that he edited the first Number. This statement has never been contradicted, and is true in the qualified sense in which he meant it to be understood. He had the principal voice in the selection and arrangement of the articles; but according to the

detailed account of the transaction supplied by Lord Jeffrey to Mr. Robert Chambers in 1846, there was no editor, in the modern acceptation of the office, for the first three Numbers. "As many of us as could be got to attend used to meet in a dingy room of Willison's printing-office, in Craig's Court, where the proofs of our own articles were read over and remarked upon, and attempts were made to sit in judgment on the few manuscripts which were then afforded by strangers. But we had seldom patience to go through with these; it was found necessary to have a responsible editor, and the office was pressed upon me. Smith was by far the most timid of the confederacy, and believed that unless our incognito was strictly maintained we could not go on a day; and this was his object for making us hold our dark divans at Willison's office, to which he insisted on our repairing singly, and by back approaches, or by different lanes!"

Now that the fame of the band, at least of its leading members, rests upon an imperishable basis, such precautions may well seem superfluous; but, without embarking into the wide question of anonymous writing, we may suggest that Sydney had reason on his side. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. The only mode of insuring a fair trial was to remain shrouded in mystery at starting; and if anything could have checked the success of the enterprise, it would have been a notification to the public that a set of briefless barristers, unemployed doctors, embryo statesmen, and mute inglorious orators, with the aid of an excurate, were about to electrify the republic of letters and inaugurate a new era in criticism.

Editorial identity differs widely from personal, and, after the lapse of more than half a century, will be found to resemble that of Sir John Cutler's stockings, which was preserved by a succession of renewals.

Sydney Smith's Life could not be written or discussed without revelations which, at an earlier period, might have been indiscreet and egotistical. We therefore make no apology for the foregoing details, nor for quoting the following account of the phenomena which accompanied the birth of this Review:-"It is impossible," remarks Lord Cockburn, "for those who did not live at the time and in the heart of the scene to feel, or almost to understand, the impression made by the new luminary, or the anxieties with which its motions were observed. It was an entire and instant change of everything that the public had been accustomed to in that sort of composition. The old periodical opiates were extinguished at once."

It is also a fact worth noticing, that the first Number, although an apology was offered in the preface for the length of some of the articles, contained twentynine, of which seven were from the pen of Sydney Smith one of these occupying rather less than a page. It professes to be a review of the "Anniversary Sermon of the Royal Humane Society," by W. Langford, D. D., and runs thus:

"An accident, which happened to the gentleman engaged in reviewing this Sermon, proves, in the most striking manner, the importance of this Charity for restoring to life persons in whom the vital power is suspended. He was discovered with Dr. Langford's Discourse lying open before him, in a state of the most profound sleep; from which he could not, by any means, be awakened for a great length of time. By attending, however, to the rules prescribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, applying hot flannels, and carefully removing the Discourse itself to a great distance, the critic was restored to his disconsolate brothers.

"The only account he could give of himself was, that he remembers reading on, regularly, till he came to the following pathetic description of a drowned tradesman; beyond which, he recollects nothing. [Here follows an extract.]

This

extract will suffice for the style of the Sermon. The Charity itself is beyond all praise."

This is curious, both as a specimen of Sydney Smith's early manner, and as illustrating the contrast which such a style of criticism must have presented to what Lord Cockburn disrespectfully terms the "old periodical opiates."

Of course the principal contributors were speedily recognised, and had a mark set against their names by the dispensers of public honours and emoluments. Their position has been thus vividly portrayed by their clerical associate: "From the beginning of the century to the death of Lord Liverpool was an awful period for those who had the misfortune to entertain liberal opinions, and who were too honest to sell them for the ermine of the judge or the lawn of the prelate; a long and hopeless career in your profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, the sarcastic leer of the genuine political rogue,- prebendaries, deans, and bishops made over your head, -reverend renegades advanced to the highest dignities of the Church for helping to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestant Dissenters, and no more chance of a Whig administration than of a thaw in Zembla, these were the penalties exacted for liberality of opinion at that period; and not only was there no pay, but there were many stripes.

to

To set on foot such a journal in such times, contribute towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused,— and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think to be extremely fortunate."

Amongst the subjects which he discussed with a peculiar view to political or social amelioration, were Catholic Emancipation; Popular, Professional, and