Sydney Smith (3 June 1771 – 22 February 1845) was an English writer and Anglican clergyman, mainly famous for his wit. Besides his energetic parochial work, he was known for his writing and philosophy, founding the Edinburgh Review, lecturing at the Royal Institution and his rhyming salad dressing recipe.
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Early life and education
Born in Woodford, Essex, England, Smith was the son of merchant Robert Smith (1739–1827) and Maria Olier (1750–1801), who suffered from epilepsy. His father, described as "a man of restless ingenuity and activity ... very clever, odd by nature, but still more odd by design", "bought, altered, spoiled and sold", at various times, 19 different estates in England.
Smith himself attributed much of his own lively personality to his French blood, his maternal grandfather having been a French Protestant refugee (a Huguenot) named Olier. He was the second of four brothers and one sister, all remarkable for their talents. Two of the brothers, Robert Percy (known as "Bobus") and Cecil, were sent to Eton College, but he was sent with the youngest to Winchester College, where he rose to be captain of the school. He and his brother so distinguished themselves that their school-fellows signed a round robin "refusing to try for the college prizes if the Smiths were allowed to contend for them any more".
In 1789, Smith became a scholar of New College, Oxford; he received a fellowship after two years' residence, took his degree in 1792 and obtained his Master of Arts degree in 1796.
Career
Smith planned to read for the bar, but his father disagreed and he was reluctantly compelled to take holy orders. He was ordained at Oxford in 1796 and became curate of the village of Netheravon, near Amesbury on Salisbury Plain. Smith did much for the inhabitants; providing the means for the rudiments of education and thus making better things possible. The squire of the parish, Michael Hicks-Beach, invited the new curate to dine and thrilled to find such a man there engaged him as tutor to his eldest son. It was arranged that they should go to the University of Jena in Germany, but war prevented them and "in stress of politics" said Smith, "we put into Edinburgh" in 1798. While his pupil attended lectures, Smith studied moral philosophy under Dugald Stewart as well as medicine and chemistry. He also preached in the Episcopal chapel, attracting large audiences.
In 1800, Smith published his first book, Six Sermons, preached in Charlotte Street Chapel, Edinburgh, and in the same year married, against the wishes of her friends, Catharine Amelia Pybus. They settled at 46 George Street, Edinburgh, where Smith made numerous friends, among them the future Edinburgh Reviewers. Towards the end of his five years' residence in Edinburgh, in a house in Buccleuch Place, the elevated residence of the then Francis Jeffrey, Smith proposed the setting up of a review. "I was appointed editor", he says in the preface to the collection of his contributions, "and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number (October 1802) of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I proposed for the Review was Tenui musam meditamur avena.—'We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.' But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto✱ from Publilius Syrus, of whom, none of us, I am sure, had ever read a single line." He continued to write for the Review for the next quarter of a century, and his brilliant articles were a main element in its success.
Smith left Edinburgh for good in 1803, and settled in London, where he rapidly became known as a preacher, a lecturer and a society figure. His success as a preacher was such that there was often not standing-room in Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair, where he was morning preacher. He was also "alternate evening preacher" at the Foundling Hospital, and preached at the Berkeley Chapel and the Fitzroy Chapel, now St Saviour's Church, Fitzroy Square. He lectured on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution for three seasons, from 1804 to 1806; and treated his subject with such vigour and liveliness that the London world crowded to Albemarle Street to hear him. His views were seen as radical but are now thought of as progressive and far-sighted, being in favour of the education of women, the abolition of slavery and the teaching of practical subjects rather than the classics. His lectures were original and entertaining, but he threw them in the fire when they had served their purpose—providing the money for furnishing his house. His wife rescued the charred manuscripts and published them in 1849 as Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy.
Low spirits
Smith stated that he suffered from "low spirits" and advised others on how best to manage the condition.
Legacy
Smith's reputation among his contemporaries as a humourist and wit grew to such an extent that a number of the observations which are now attributed to him may be of doubtful provenance. Lord Houghton recorded that he never, except once, knew Smith to make a jest of any religious subject, "and then he immediately withdrew his words, and seemed ashamed that he had uttered them". To be set against that encomium is one of Smith's best-known lines, to the effect that his friend Henry Luttrell's idea of heaven was eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.
No English writer's opinions on early American literature had more impact than Smith's. He referred to himself as a "sincere friend of America," but this sentiment is both supported and denied by his many publications. For instance, American writer and critic John Neal dubbed his 1820 question in the Edinburgh Review, "In the four-quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" as "insolent" and said he would "furnish a pretty good answer" by traveling to England in 1823, where he became the first American published in any British literary journal.
Long after his death, he was often quoted in English literary life and was remembered by homemakers in the United States through his rhyming recipe for salad dressing which starts:
Jane Austen expert Margaret C. Sullivan speculates in an essay that the character Henry Tilney, the romantic interest of the protagonist Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1803), may have been based on Smith.
The memory and achievements of Smith are perpetuated by the Sydney Smith Association, a registered charity which aims (among other things) to republish online as many of his writings as possible.