A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1813
Sydney Smith to John Archibald Murray, 18 August 1813
August 18th, 1813.
Dear Murray,
It is my serious intention to lend such aid as I can lend
to the Review, in Jeffrey’s absence. To render this
intention useful, I hope he has left somebody who will look after the temporal
concerns of the Review, and return an answer to those questions which a distant
contributor must necessarily put. It was my intention to review Ferrier’s ‘Theory of Apparitions;’ but it is such
a null, frivolous book, that it is impossible to take any notice of it. I
request therefore the choice of these subjects:—Milne’s Controversy with Marsh, Pouqueville’s ‘Travels in the Morea,’ Broughton’s ‘Letters from a Mahratta Camp,’ or
Sir J. Porter’s ‘Account of the last Russian
Campaign.’ I should prefer the first and the last. Pray let me
know whether I may do them, or obtain, if you will be so good, an immediate
answer for me from those with whom the power rests. I will take the first
opportunity of returning Ferrier’s ‘Apparitions’ to Constable.
My brother and all
his family are with me.
I am sorry to hear of the loss of your old friend; such
losses are seldom or never repaired; a friend
110 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | |
made at a
middle period of life is never like a friend made at its beginning. I am sure a
run in the country in England would do you good. It is the misfortune of
Edinburgh men, that they see no fools and common persons (I mean, of clever men
in Edinburgh); I could put you on a salutary course of this sort of society.
Ever most sincerely yours,
Thomas Duer Broughton (1778-1835)
Educated at Eton, he was a military officer in India, writer, and honorary secretary of
the Royal Asiatic Society. The surgeon and writer Samuel Daniel Broughton was his younger
brother.
Archibald Constable (1774-1827)
Edinburgh bookseller who published the
Edinburgh Review and works
of Sir Walter Scott; he went bankrupt in 1826.
John Ferriar (1761-1815)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was a Manchester physician and friend of Walter
Scott and Richard Heber; he published
Illustrations of Sterne
(1798).
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850)
Scottish barrister, Whig MP, and co-founder and editor of the
Edinburgh
Review (1802-29). As a reviewer he was the implacable foe of the Lake School of
poetry.
Isaac Milner (1750-1820)
He was professor of natural philosophy at Cambridge (1783-92), FRS, president of Queen's
College (1788-1820), dean of Carlisle (1791), vice-chancellor (1792, 1809) and a friend of
William Wilberforce.
Sir Robert Ker Porter [Reynold Steinkirk] (1777-1842)
English painter and writer, brother of the novelists Jane and Anna Maria Porter; after
marrying a Russian princess he pursued a career as a diplomat. He contributed to the
Literary Gazette.
François Pouqueville (1770-1838)
Napoleon's general consul at the court of Ali Pasha; the author of
Voyage en Grèce, 5 vols, (1820-1822).
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.