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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1810
Sydney Smith to Lady Holland, [July] 1810
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Author's Preface
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Index
Editor’s Preface
Letters 1801
Letters 1802
Letters 1803
Letters 1804
Letters 1805
Letters 1806
Letters 1807
Letters 1808
Letters 1809
Letters 1810
Letters 1811
Letters 1812
Letters 1813
Letters 1814
Letters 1815
Letters 1816
Letters 1817
Letters 1818
Letters 1819
Letters 1820
Letters 1821
Letters 1822
Letters 1823
Letters 1824
Letters 1825
Letters 1826
Letters 1827
Letters 1828
Letters 1829
Letters 1830
Letters 1831
Letters 1832
Letters 1833
Letters 1834
Letters 1835
Letters 1836
Letters 1837
Letters 1838
Letters 1839
Letters 1840
Letters 1841
Letters 1842
Letters 1843
Letters 1844
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June, 1810.
My dear Lady Holland,

I am truly glad that Tierney is better from those nitrous baths. Can so much nitrous acid get into the human frame without producing some moral and intellectual effect as well as physical? If you watch, I think you will find changes. You have done an excellent deed in securing a seat for poor Mackintosh, in whose praise I most cordially concur. He is very great, and a very delightful man, and, with a few bad qualities added to his character, would have acted a most conspicuous part in life. Yet, after all, he is rather academic than forensic. A professorship at Hertford is well imagined, and if he can keep clear of
74MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
contusions at the annual peltings, all will be well. The season for lapidating the professors is now at hand; keep him quiet at Holland House till all is over.*

If I could envy any man for successful ill-nature, I should envy Lord Byron for his skill in satirical nomenclature.

Nothing can exceed the evils of this spring. All agricultural operations are at least a month behindhand. The earth, that ought to be as hard as a biscuit, is as soft as dough. We live here in great seclusion;—happily and comfortably. My life is cut up into little patches. I am schoolmaster, farmer, doctor, parson, justice, etc. etc.

I hope you have read, or are reading, Mr. Stewart’s book, and are far gone in the philosophy of mind; a science, as he repeatedly tells us, still in its infancy: I propose, myself, to wait till it comes to years of discretion. I hear Lord Holland has taken a load of fishing-tackle with him. This is a science which appears to me to be still in its infancy.

Do not let Allen stay too long at home; it will give him a turn for the domestic virtues, and spoil him.

We are all well, and unite, my dear Lady Holland, in the kindest regards to you and the noble fisherman.

Sydney Smith.