A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1819
Sydney Smith to Lady Grey, [25? January] 1819
Opposition seems to get stronger and stronger every day.
The most sanguine think the Ministry will be
176 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | |
beaten; the
least so, that Vansittart and the Doctor will be thrown overboard.
I have read Rogers; there are some very good descriptions,—the Mother and
Child, Mr. Fox at St. Ann’s Hill, and several more.
The beginning of the verses
on Paestum are very good too. I am going to dine with the Miss Berrys today, where I am in high favour,
and am reckoned a wit.
Very bad accounts of Lord
Erskine,—very ill and languid from the attack, though out of
danger.
I am glad to hear from Sir
Charles Monck, that rents begin to be paid again in
Northumberland; I thought the practice had been lost altogether.
Mary Berry (1763-1852)
Of Twickenham, the elder sister of her companion Agnes Berry (1764-1852); she was a
diarist and one of Horace Walpole's primary correspondents.
Thomas Erskine, first baron Erskine (1750-1823)
Scottish barrister who was a Whig MP for Portsmouth (1783-84, 1790-1806); after defending
the political radicals Hardy, Tooke, and Thelwall in 1794 he was lord chancellor in the
short-lived Grenville-Fox administration (1806-07).
Sir Charles Miles Lambert Monck, sixth baronet (1779-1867)
The son of Sir William Middleton, fifth baronet (1738-1795); educated at Rugby, he was MP
for Northumberland (1812-20) and the designer of his admired house and garden at Belsay
Hall. Sydney Smith described him as “quick, shrewd, original, well-informed,
eccentric, paradoxical, and contradictory.”
Nicholas Vansittart, first Baron Bexley (1766-1851)
Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he was a Pittite MP for Hastings (1796-1802), Old
Sarum (1802-12), East Grinstead (1812), and Harwich (1812-23); he was Chancellor of the
exchequer (1812-23).