Concerning the Review, I think the whole number exceedingly good. Playfair’s article is very much liked, and does not
owe its success to its attack upon a bishop against whom everybody sympathizes, but has genuine
merit. Were I to criticize it at all, I should say it was rather Doric.
Brougham’s is most able, and the censure amply
merited. Locke’s ‘Tennant’ I should
suspect to be very green and crude, though I have not yet read much of it.
These are all the articles of which I have heard any opinion, or which I have
noticed. There are several Scotticisms in Playfair’s
review. I like —— very much, without caring about meeting him. I think his
subjects of charcoal and chalk are very inferior ones, and that there is a good
deal of bad taste in him, though that is in some degree atoned for by his
propensity to the good and the liberal. I have no alloy to mingle in my
approbation of Playfair. Brown is an impracticable, excellent creature. Of —— I can
really form no tolerable opinion: contrasting him with
his high character; his ordinary nullity, with his occasional specimens of
extraordinary penetration, fine taste, and comprehensive observation, I am
puzzled to silence: he is a man whom I cannot make out.
Brougham impresses me more and more with a notion of
his ta-
| MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | 27 |
