A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1841
Sydney Smith to Harriet Grote, 14 September 1841
Sidmouth, Sept. 14th, 1841.
Dear Mrs. Grote,
We are come here for a few days; it is very lovely, ![]()
| MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | 453 |
![]()
and very stupid. Your excursion to Brittany will be very
pleasant, but not for the reasons you give. I have no idolatry for Madame de Sévigné; she had merely a fine
epistolary style. There is not a page of Madame de
Staël where there is not more thought, and very often, thoughts
as just as they are new.
I am drawing up a short account of the late Francis
Horner, which Leonard Horner is to insert in a Memoir he is about to publish of
his brother: I read it to Mrs. Sydney, who was much pleased with it, and I
think you will not dislike it. I wish you had known Horner.
There is a report that the curates are about to strike,
that they have mobbed several rectors, and that a body of bishops’
chaplains are coming down by the railroad to disperse them. Thank God, the
heats are passed away; I was completely exhausted, gave up locomotion, and
poured cold water on my head.
You do not say, but I presume you leave England the
beginning of October. I will endeavour to look as much like the Apollo Belvidere as a corpulent Canon can do, when you
return.
Your sincere friend,
Sydney Smith.
Marie de Sévigné (1626-1696)
French woman of letters; the manner of her correspondence was imitated throughout the
eighteenth century.
Germaine de Staël (1766-1817)
French woman of letters; author of the novel
Corinne, ou L'Italie
(1807) and
De l'Allemagne (1811); banned from Paris by Napoleon, she
spent her later years living in Germany, Britain, and Switzerland.
