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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1838
Sydney Smith to Lady Grey, September 1838
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
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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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Combe Florey, September, 1838.
My dear Lady Grey,

I hope you are all well and safe at Howick. I have never stirred an inch from this place since I came from town,—six weeks since: an incredible time to remain
MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.413
at one place. This absence of locomotion has however been somewhat secured by a fit of the gout, from which I am just recovered; and which, under the old regime, and before the reign of colchicum, would have laid me up for ten weeks instead of ten days. I know you will quote against me Sir Oracle Hammick; but to him I oppose Sir Oracles Halford, Holland, Chambers, and Warren.

Have you, or has Lord Grey, been among the wise men at Newcastle? Headlam asked me to go; but, though I can endure small follies and absurdities, the nonsense of these meetings is too intense for my advanced years and delicate frame. One of the Bills for which I have been fighting so long has passed; and I have the satisfaction of seeing that every point to which I objected has been altered; so that I have not mingled in the affray for nothing.

Pray tell me about yourself, and whether you are tolerably well; but how can you be well, when you have so many children and so many anxieties afloat? How does dear Georgiana do?—that honest and transparent girl; so natural, so cheerful, so true! A moral flower, whom I always think of, when I sketch in my mind a garden of human creatures.

Read Dr. Spry’s ‘Account of India,’ and believe, if you can, (I do,) that within one hundred and fifty miles of Calcutta, there is a nation of cannibals living in trees. It is an amusing book. Read, also, Macaulay’s Papers upon Indian Education, and the Administration of Justice in India; but I hardly think you care about India.

We have never been a single day without company, principally blue-stocking ladies, whose society Lord
414MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
Grey so much likes. Believe me, dear Lady Grey, your affectionate friend,

Sydney Smith.