Sydney Smith Part 18

On questions of peace and war, Sydney Smith was always on the right side.[157] He saw as clearly as the most clamorous patriot that England was morally bound to defend her existence and her freedom. He exhorted her to rally all her forces and strive with agonies and energies against the anti-human ambition of Napoleon. And, when once the great deliverance was achieved, he turned again to the enjoyment and the glorification of Peace.--

"Let fools praise conquerors, and say the great Napoleon pulled down this kingdom and destroyed that army: we will thank G.o.d for a King[158] who has derived his quiet glory from the peace of his realm."

"The atrocities, and horrors, and disgusts of war have never been half enough insisted upon by the teachers of the people; but the worst of evils and the greatest of follies have been varnished over with specious names, and the gigantic robbers and murderers of the world have been holden up for imitation to the weak eyes of youth."

No wars, except the very few which we really required for national self-defence, could attract his sympathy. Wars of intervention in the affairs of other nations, even when undertaken for excellent objects, he regarded with profound mistrust.

When in 1823, the nascent liberties of Spain were threatened, he wrote:--

"I am afraid we shall go to war; I am sorry for it. I see every day in the world a thousand acts of oppression which I should like to resent, but I cannot afford to play the Quixote. Why are the English to be the sole vindicators of the human race?"

And again:--

"For G.o.d's sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I _must_ think a little of myself. I am sorry for the Spaniards--I am sorry for the Greeks--I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Bagdad is oppressed--I do not like the present state of the Delta--Thibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people?

The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy? We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid the consequence will be, that we shall cut each other's throats."

In 1830 he wrote to his friend Lady Holland about her son,[159] afterwards General Fox:--

"I am very glad to see Charles in the Guards. He will now remain at home; for I trust that there will be no more embarkation of the Guards while I live, and that a captain of the Guards will be as ignorant of the colour of blood as the rector of a parish. We have had important events enough within the last twenty years. May all remaining events be culinary, amorous, literary, or any thing but political!"

And so again, according to Lord Houghton, he said in later life:--

"I have spent enough and fought enough for other nations. I must think a little of myself. I want to sit under my own bramble and sloe-tree with my own great-coat and umbrella."

This is no fatty degeneration of the chivalrous spirit. It is merely the old doctrine of Non-intervention speaking in a lighter tone.

An account of a man's personal characteristics must contain some estimate of his aesthetic sense. This was not very strongly developed in Sydney Smith. He admired the beauties of a smiling landscape, such as he saw in the Vale of Taunton, and hated grimness and barrenness such as he remembered at Harrogate. "I thought it the most heaven-forgotten country under the sun when I saw it; there were only nine mangy fir-trees there, and even they all leaned away from it." He enjoyed bright colours and sweet scents, and had a pa.s.sion for light. His views of Art were primitive. We have seen that he preferred gas to Correggio. He admired West,[160] and did not admire Haydon.[161] He bought pictures for the better decoration of his drawing-room, and, when they did not please him, had them altered to suit his taste,--

"Look at that sea-piece, now; what would you desire more? It is true, the moon in the corner was rather dingy when I first bought it; so I had a new moon put in for half-a-crown, and now I consider it perfect."

This perhaps may be regarded as burlesque, and so may his sympathetic remark to the gushing connoisseur--

"I got into dreadful disgrace with him once, when, standing before a picture at Bowood, he exclaimed, turning to me, 'Immense breadth of light and shade!' I innocently said, 'Yes;--about an inch and a half.'

He gave me a look that ought to have killed me."

But his grat.i.tude to his young friend Lady Mary Bennet, who covered the walls of his Rectory with the sweet products of her pencil, is only too palpably sincere. It may perhaps be imputed to him for aesthetic virtue that he considered the national monuments in St. Paul's, with the sole exception of Dr. Johnson's, "a disgusting heap of trash." It is less satisfactory that he found the Prince Regent's "suite of golden rooms" at Carlton House "extremely magnificent."

To music he was more sympathetic, but even here his sympathies had their limitations. Music in the minor key made him melancholy, and had to be discontinued when he was in residence at St. Paul's;[162] and this was not his only musical prejudice.--

"Nothing can be more disgusting than an oratorio. How absurd to see five hundred people fiddling like madmen about the Israelites in the Red Sea!"

"Yesterday I heard Rubini and Grisi, Lablache and Tamburini. The opera, by Bellini, _I Puritani_, was dreadfully tiresome, and unintelligible in its plan. I hope it is the last opera I shall ever go to."

"_Semiramis_ would be to me pure misery. I love music very little. I hate acting. I have the worst opinion of Semiramis herself, and the whole thing seems to me so childish and so foolish that I cannot abide it. Moreover, it would be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St.

Paul's to go to the opera; and, where etiquette prevents me from doing things disagreeable to myself, I am a perfect martinet."

After a Musical Festival at York he writes to Lady Holland:--

"I did not go once. Music for such a length of time (unless under sentence of a jury) I will not submit to. What pleasure is there in pleasure, if quant.i.ty is not attended to, as well as quality? I know nothing more agreeable than a dinner at Holland House; but it must not begin at ten in the morning, and last till six. I should be incapable for the last four hours of laughing at Lord Holland's jokes, eating Raffaelle's cakes, or repelling Mr. Allen's[163] attack upon the Church."

Yet, in spite of these limitations, he took lessons on the piano, and often warbled in the domestic circle. In 1843 he writes--"I am learning to sing some of Moore's songs, which I think I shall do to great perfection," His daughter says, with filial piety, that, when he had once learnt a song, he sang it very correctly, and, "having a really fine voice, often _encored himself_." A lady who visited him at Combe Florey corroborates this account, saying that after dinner he said to his wife, "I crave for Music, Mrs. Smith. Music! Music!" and sang, "with his rich sweet voice, _A Few Gay Soarings Yet_." In old age he said;--

"If I were to begin life again, I would devote much time to music. All musical people seem to me happy; it is the most engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished pa.s.sion."

When we turn from the aesthetic to the literary faculty, we find it a good deal better developed. That he was a sound scholar in the sense of being able to read the standard cla.s.sics with facility and enjoyment we know from his own statements. In the early days of the _Edinburgh Review_ he perceived and extolled the fine scholarship of Monk[164] and Blomfield[165]

and Maltby.[166] The fact that Marsh[167] was a man of learning mitigated the severity of the attack on "Persecuting Bishops." His glowing tribute to the accomplishments of Sir James Mackintosh is qualified by the remark that "the Greek language has never crossed the Tweed in any great force." In brief, be understood and respected cla.s.sical scholarship. He was keenly interested in English literature, and kept abreast of what was produced in France; but German he seems to have regarded as a kind of joke, and Italian he only mentions as part of a young lady's education.

In 1819 he wrote to his son at Westminster:--

"For the English poets, I will let you off at present with Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Shakespeare; and remember, always in books, keep the best company. Don't read a line of Ovid till you have mastered Virgil; nor a line of Thomson till you have exhausted Pope; nor of Ma.s.singer, till you are familiar with Shakespeare."

He thought Locke "a fine, satisfactory sort of a fellow, but very long-winded"; considered Horace Walpole's "the best wit ever published in the shape of letters"; and dismissed Madame de Sevigne as "very much over-praised." Of Montaigne he says--"He thinks aloud, that is his great merit, but does not think remarkably well. Mankind has improved in thinking and writing since that period."

It was, of course, part of his regular occupation to deal with new books in the _Edinburgh_; and, apart from these formal reviews, his letters are full of curious comments. In 1814 he declines to read the _Edinburgh's_ criticism of Wordsworth, because "the subject is to me so very uninteresting." In the same year he writes:--

"I think very highly of _Waverley_, and was inclined to suspect, in reading it, that it was written by Miss Scott of Ancrum."

In 1818 he wrote about _The Heart of Midlothian_:--

"I think it excellent--quite as good as any of his novels, excepting that in which Claverhouse is introduced, and of which I forget the name.... He repeats his characters, but it seems they will bear repet.i.tion. Who can read the novel without laughing and crying twenty times?"

In 1820:--

"Have you read _Ivanhoe_? It is the least dull, and the most easily read through, of all Scott's novels; but there are many more powerful."

Later in the same year:--

"I have just read _The Abbot_; it is far above common novels, but of very inferior execution to his others, and hardly worth reading. He has exhausted the subject of Scotland, and worn out the few characters that the early periods of Scotch history could supply him with. Meg Merrilies appears afresh in every novel."

In 1821:--

"_The Pirate_ is certainly one of the least fortunate of Sir Walter's productions. It seems now that he cannot write without Meg Merrilies and Dominie Sampson. One other such novel, and there's an end; but who can last for ever? who ever lasted so long?"

In 1823:--

"_Peveril_ is a moderate production, between his best and his worst; rather agreeable than not."

His judgment on _The Bride of Lammermoor_ is indeed deplorable. He thought it like Scott's previous work, but "laboured in an inferior way, and more careless, with many repet.i.tions of himself. Caleb is overdone.... The catastrophe is shocking and disgusting."[168]

Incidentally we find him praising Lister's _Granby_, and Hope's _Anastasius_. He early discovered and consistently admired Macaulay, though he drew the line at the _Lays of Ancient Rome_, on the ground that he "abhorred all Grecian and Roman subjects." It is curious to note the number and variety of new books which he more or less commends, and which are now equally and completely forgotten. As we come nearer our own times, however, we find an important conversion. In 1838 he writes:--

"_Nickleby_ is very good. I stood out against Mr. d.i.c.kens as long as I could, but he has conquered me."

In 1843 he writes to d.i.c.kens:--

"Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable--quite first-rate painting, such as no one but yourself can execute. Chuffey is admirable. I never read a finer piece of writing."

And, when d.i.c.kens asks him to dinner, he replies:--