SYDNEY SMITH
Silt,—As an enthusiastic Sydneyite, I can sym- pathise with Mr. Peter Quenncll's hyperbole in his review of Selected Letters of Sydney Stnith—'Only two men are on record as hav- ing resented and disliked him.' But there were others:
T. J. Hogg (who evidently met Sydney in his Yorkshire days) writes in his biography of
Shelly, published 1858, . . one soon grew weary of the noisy, impudent, shallow, clerical jester, Sidney [sic] Smith.' This is a mild sample extracted from two full paragraphs of invective.
And an extract from Henrietta Litchfield's Emma Darwin : A Century of Family Letters.
published 1915. Fanny Allen, on a visit to Mrs.
Sydney Smith after her husband's death, writes to her niece, Elizabeth Wedgewood: Mrs. Sydney Smith . . gives me all her husband's papers and correspondence to look over and read. . . . There is a very curious scene between Ld. Melbourne and Sydney in which the former cuts a poor figure after a most outrageous outbreak and breach of good manners, in which Ld. M. says to him in a crowded assembly, 'Sydney, you always talk d—d nonsense, and when you write you are worse.' Sydney's letter on the following morning is excellent and v. severe, which makes Lord M. wince. We tried to make it up afterwards but in vain. Can some Sydnean scholar elucidate the row with 'Lord M.'? I can find no letter to
him in the Nowell Smith's larger collection.—
Yours faithfully,
T. D. M. MARTIN
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