conventional forms; and yet he very rarely violates good taste. There is much good nature in him, in spite of his severity. His quick perception of what is laughable modifies his sensibility to what is detestable. He cannot be grave for ten minutes, though on the gravest of subjects. His indignation and invective are almost ever followed by some jesting allusion or grotesque conceit. He draws down upon the object of his censure both scorn and laughter; and makes even abuse palatable by clothing it in phrases or images which charm by their beauty or wit. When he writes on government and laws, he seems to detect deformity and deceit by an inner sense of harmony and proportion. He cannot lash the most criminal violations of humanity and rectitude, he cannot cut and thrust at the most monstrous pretensions of power, without considering the enormity a folly to be jeered at, as well as a crime to be denounced. So is it with his benevolent and religious feelings. His philanthropy expresses itself as often in jokes, in sly touches of humor, in broad gushings of fun and caricature, as in pathos and expressions of sympathy. And yet, the sentiment of beauty, amid all the humor, denunciation, and extravagance, is constantly preserved, and prevents him from falling into buffoonery or harsh vituperation. It would be difficult to point out the source of his power of fascination in this respect; but it strikes us, on the first reading, as being different from any thing else we have ever seen.

The collection of Sydney Smith's works which is now before us is principally made up of papers contributed to the Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders, and the first editor. This celebrated journal, the great enemy of the garreteers, was projected in a garret. Few literary enterprises have had a more humble commencement. Smith says in his preface, that Jeffrey, Murray, and himself," one day, happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buccleugh Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed, that we should set up a Review; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I proposed for the Review was,

"Tenui musam meditamur avenâ ":

"We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal."

But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus, of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever read a single line."

His contributions to the Review are scattered over its pages from 1802 to 1828. They are on a variety of topics, Ireland, Catholic Claims, the Church, Sermons, Bishops, Prisons, Botany Bay, Poor Laws, Education, Missions, Methodists, Game Laws, Travels, America, and Miscellaneous Literature. All these subjects he has treated in his own way, from his own point of view, and each is illustrative of his character. Every thing he touches he makes agreeable. No one should skip any articles from a fear of the dulness suggested by the name. Politics and political economy are the themes which he discusses perhaps with the most ability, the most severity, and the most brilliancy. We would call particular attention to the short reviews published in the earlier numbers of the Edinburgh, particularly to those on political sermons. The sharp, terse diction, the lively temperament, the quick perception, the brisk, tingling wit, the rich humor, at times so demure and sly, and at others so broad and unreined, these qualities strike us as much in the productions of Smith's youth, as in those of his maturity and old age. The charge of infidelity brought against the Review, for which Lord Jeffrey was made responsible, was owing, probably, more to Smith's ridicule of clerical fanaticisms, fopperies, affectations, and servilities, than to any other cause. Though a clergyman of the established church, no man was less hampered by a veneration for its ministers. During the period in which he wrote, preferment depended so much more on politics than piety, and the church was disgraced by so many clergymen willing to barter their souls for bishoprics, that we think his conduct was not only free from the charge of infidelity, but that it was justified by the circumstances. A curate, or a bishop, who lends his name to the defence of abuses, corruption, and intolerance, of all those errors and crimes which Christianity abhors, and does this from selfish considerations, to please a dominant power in the state, is worthy of the lash both of satire and invective; and if the punishment be inflicted by a member of the same church which is disgraced by the culprit, there is a clear gain to its honor. Such a course takes from infidels their strongest practical argument, the only

argument that has any effect upon large bodies of people. Every triumph of irreligion has been gained by dexterously confounding the priests of the gospel with the doctrines and precepts of the gospel; and when the former have been false to their faith, the requisitions of their faith have been weapons with which scoffers have attacked both church and clergy. Though the articles to which we have referred may displease many worthy men, we can find nothing, either in them, or in other portions of these volumes, to justify the foolish and malignant charge of infidelity, originally brought by placemen and political jobbers whose knavery he had exposed, and afterwards repeated by better men, who were ignorant of what they stigmatized.

The following extract shows with what shrewdness, honesty, courage, and independence he wrote about doctors of divinity and the affairs of the church. He says, (in 1802,) that the great object of modern sermons is to hazard nothing; their characteristic is decent debility.

"Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart, that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more ludicrous than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervor of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried by the ardor of his mind; and so affected by a preconcerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed farther? The prejudices of the English nation have proceeded a good deal from their hatred to the French; and because that country is the native soil of elegance, animation, and grace, a certain patriotic solidity and loyal awkwardness have become the characteristics of this; so that an adventurous preacher is afraid of violating the ancient tranquillity of the pulpit, and the audience are commonly apt to consider the man who tires them less than usual as a trifler or a charlatan."

In an article on Dr. Rennel, he ridicules some fooleries in the forgotten writings of that clergyman, and puts the reverend gentleman into the class, numerous at that time, of "bad heads bawling for the restoration of exploded errors and past infatuation." The doctor had called the age, among other terms of reproach, a foppish age; and Smith asks, if there is not a class of fops as vain and shallow as any of

their fraternity in Bond Street,-"a class of fops not usually designated by that epithet-men clothed in profound black, with large canes, and strange amorphous hats-of big speech and imperative presence-talkers about Plato great affecters of senility - despisers of women, and all the graces of lifefierce foes to common sense - abusive of the living, and approving no one who has not been dead at least a century." On being accused of intolerance for some passages in one of his articles, Smith replies, "They complain of intolerance; a weasel might as well complain of intolerance, when he is throttled for sucking eggs." In arguing against the horror of some Christians at the thought of indulging even in innocent pleasures, he speaks of them as "always trembling at the idea of being entertained, and thinking no Christian safe who is not dull."

In his judgments of books, our author is sometimes as pert and insulting as his real good humor will allow. No critic is more felicitous or expeditious in the task of demolishing a dunce. The affectations of authors he detects by intuition, and makes them immeasurably ridiculous. In a happy epithet, or a fine combination of few words, he often does the work of pages. He is ever racy and pointed, if not always correct, in his critical opinions. His mode of reviewing is like that which is practised in the ordinary conversation of gentlemen. A man who gives his opinion of a new publication at a dinner table, or to a friend whom he meets in the street, does not express himself as he would, if he were reviewing the book in a periodical. The "dignity of letters " would be observable in the latter. Smith is the same in print as in speech, the same man in the Edinburgh Review that he is at his own fireside. This kind of criticism is what poor authors dread. Puffs in the newspapers are no offset to scorn in the markets. Many a scribbler has been destroyed by an after-dinner jest, kindly reported verbatim to him by a literary friend, after having been patted into selfcomplacency by the praise of magazines. An author, before he indulges the pleasing contemplation of being popular, should endeavour to know what is said of his works, as well as what is written of them. Smith's style of reviewing gives him accurate information on the former point, though at a great expense to his self-importance.

With all his levity and trifling, our author is generally just

and fair in criticism. Macaulay exceeds him in the overpowering declamation with which he crushes and grinds to atoms the pretenders in literature and politics; but his exceeding severity sometimes excites commiseration for the offender; while Smith generally carries the reader along with him, even to the limits of caricature. When he dissects or cuffs a description of writers whom he includes under the general term of Noodles, he often seems to sink the person in the thing, and to treat of the genus rather than the individual. If we can conceive of a pleasant, jovial, experimental philosopher, pinning a beetle to the table, and deducing from his structure and contortions the general laws to which they may be referred, we may obtain some notion of the treatment which Noodle suffers, when it is his fortune to fall into the hands of Sydney Smith. For any particular person of the class he has no enmity, but thinking that the class itself is pernicious in its follies, bigotries, and absurdities, he torments one of them as warning to the rest. It was a sad day for Grub Street, when the critical offices of judge, jury, and executioner were all combined in one man of wit, and the sentences of the court expressed in ludicrous images and cutting jests. On the whole, if fools must be whipped, no humane and intelligent person would object to Sydney Smith as the wielder of the rod, - being pretty certain, that the punishment would be inflicted with as much mercy as, under the circumstances, ought to be expected.

The notice of Dr. Parr contains the best criticism on the English of that celebrated linguist we have ever seen. The objection, that he never appears to forget himself, "or to be hurried by his subject into obvious language," is applicable to many other men whose trust is not in things but sentences. A foolish alarmist, named Bowles, wrote a furious pamphlet in 1802, which Smith describes as being "written in the genuine spirit of the Windham and Pitt school; though Mr. Bowles cannot be called a servile copyist of either of these gentlemen, as he has rejected the logic of the one, and the eloquence of the other, and imitated them only in their headstrong violence and exaggerated abuse." An abstract of a play by Monk Lewis concludes in this wise: "Orsino stabs his own son, at the moment the king is in his son's power; falls down, from the wounds he has received in battle; and dies in the usual dramatic style, repeating twenty-two hex