A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1810
Sydney Smith to Lady Holland, 5 December 1810
December 5th, 1810.
My dear Lady Holland,
I have understood that Sir
James Mackintosh is about to return, of which I am very glad. I
shall like him less than I did, when I thought Philowsophee to be of much greater consequence than I now do; but I
shall still like him very much.
Bobus is upon the eve of his return, and
I rather think we shall see him in the spring.
Lord Holland is quite right to get a stock
of eatable sheep; but such sheep are not exclusively the product of Scotland,
but of every half-starved, ill-cultivated country; and are only emphatically
called Scotch, to signify ill-fed; as one says Roman, to signify brave. They
may be bought in Wales, in any quantity; and every November, at Helmsley, in
Yorkshire: the mut-
78 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | |
ton you ate at my house was from thence.
Helmsley is two hundred and twenty miles from London.
I am, my dear Lady
Holland, yours sincerely,
Elizabeth Fox, Lady Holland [née Vassall] (1771 c.-1845)
In 1797 married Henry Richard Fox, Lord Holland, following her divorce from Sir Godfrey
Webster; as mistress of Holland House she became a pillar of Whig society.
Henry Richard Fox, third baron Holland (1773-1840)
Whig politician and literary patron; Holland House was for many years the meeting place
for reform-minded politicians and writers. He also published translations from the Spanish
and Italian;
Memoirs of the Whig Party was published in 1852.
Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)
Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in
Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and
MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).
Robert Percy Smith [Bobus Smith] (1770-1845)
The elder brother of Sydney Smith; John Hookham Frere, George Canning, and Henry Fox he
wrote for the
Microcosm at Eton; he was afterwards a judge in India
and MP.