A short life of the author
The Reverend Sydney Smith (3 June 1771 – 22 February 1845) was an English clergyman, essayist, lecturer, and wit who was one of the most celebrated conversationalists and one of the most effective liberal polemicists of the early nineteenth century. He co-founded The Edinburgh Review — the most important literary and political periodical of the Romantic era — and used his pen and his pulpit to advocate for Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and the education of the poor.
The Edinburgh Review
In 1802, Smith, along with Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham, and Francis Horner, founded The Edinburgh Review, a quarterly journal that became the most influential periodical in Britain. The Review was unabashedly Whig (liberal) in its politics and vigorously independent in its literary judgments. It published essays by the most important writers and thinkers of the age, and its reviews could make or destroy reputations.
Smith contributed over a hundred articles to the Review between 1802 and 1827, covering an extraordinary range of subjects — criminal law reform, education, the condition of the Irish poor, game laws, the treatment of chimney sweeps, the suppression of Catholics, and the follies of aristocratic privilege. His articles combined passionate moral argument with devastating wit, making them among the most readable polemical essays in the English language.
Peter Plymley’s Letters (1807–1808)
Smith’s most famous political work is a series of anonymous letters arguing for Catholic emancipation — the removal of legal disabilities imposed on Roman Catholics in Britain and Ireland. The letters are masterpieces of satirical argument, ridiculing the fears and prejudices of the anti-Catholic establishment with a combination of reason, humour, and moral passion that proved highly influential. They were widely read and repeatedly reprinted.
The Wit
Smith’s conversational wit was legendary — he was considered the funniest man in England, and his remarks were collected and circulated as eagerly as Oscar Wilde’s would be a century later. He said of Macaulay: “He has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful.” On being asked to suggest a motto for the new Foundling Hospital: “If you wish, I would suggest Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate — Abandon all hope, ye who enter.” On a hot summer day: “Heat, ma’am! It was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.”
His witticisms were so numerous and so widely quoted that they became part of the common stock of English humour. Many bon mots attributed to later wits were actually Smith’s.
Lectures on Moral Philosophy
In 1804, Smith delivered a series of lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution in London. These lectures — later published as Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849, posthumous) — are notable for their clarity, their breadth of reference, and their humane, liberal outlook.
Clergyman
Smith was an Anglican clergyman throughout his career — he held the living of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire (where he was an energetic and beloved parish priest despite his urban temperament) and later became a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral. His sermons were as celebrated as his essays and his conversation.
Legacy
Smith is one of the most underappreciated figures in English literary history. His essays are as readable now as when they were written, and his advocacy for liberal causes — religious toleration, criminal law reform, the education of the poor — was not only morally admirable but practically effective. He helped create the climate of opinion that led to the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the Reform Act of 1832.
His contemporary Lord Holland said of him: “The Smiths are the salt of the earth.” Thomas Babington Macaulay called him “the greatest master of ridicule who has appeared among us since Swift.”
Collecting Smith
The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (1839–1840, three volumes) in first edition is the primary collectible. Peter Plymley’s Letters (1808) in early editions are scarce. Smith’s wit has been collected in numerous anthologies; the most authoritative is Selected Letters of Sydney Smith (edited by Nowell C. Smith, 1953).