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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1835
Sydney Smith to Richard Sharp, [4 February] 1835
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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Stratford-place, 1835.
My dear Sharpe,

It is impossible to say whether Caesar Sutton or
MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.365
Pompey Abercrombie* will get the better; a civil war is expected: on looking into my own mind, I find an utter inability of fighting for either party.

—— is better, and having lost his disease, has also lost his topics of conversation; has no heart to talk about, and is silent from want of suffering.

I have seen the new House of Parliament: the House of Commons is very good, much better than the old one; the Lords’ house is shabby. Government are going on vigorously with the Church Bill; it will be an infinitely more savage bill than the Whigs would have ventured to introduce. The Whigs mean to start Abercrombie against the Speaker. All the planets and comets mean to stop, and look on at the first meeting of Parliament. The Radicals allow 260 to the Tories, who claim 290:—from 7 to 5 are given to the Stanley party. Read Inglis’s Travels in Ireland. Bold, shrewd, and sensible, he is accused of judging more rapidly than any man in six weeks’ time is entitled to do; but then he merely states what he saw. I met him, he seemed like his book. Young Mackintosh is going on with his father’s Life. He sent me a tour on the Rhine, by his father; but I thought it differed very little from other tours on the Rhine, and so I think he will not publish it. You will be glad to hear that —— is doing very well: he is civil to the counsel, does not interrupt, and converses with the other judges as if they had the elements of law and sense. India was offered to Sir James Kemp before it was offered to Lord Haytesbury; Kemp refused it on account of a wound in his heel, a vulnerable point (as we know) in heroes. I hear a good account of your cough, and

* In allusion to the contest about the Speaker.

366MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
a bad one of your breathing; pray take care of yourself. Rogers might be mistaken for a wrestler at the Olympic games; Luttrell is confined by the leg; Whishaw is waiting to see which side he is to pooh-pooh! I heartily wish, my dear Sharpe, that physicians may do you as much good as they have done me.

Sydney Smith.

You have met, I hear, with an agreeable clergyman: the existence of such a being has been hitherto denied by the naturalists; measure him, and put down on paper what he eats.