"You want nothing to be a great lawyer, and nothing to be a great speaker, but a deeper voice-slower and more simple utterance-more humility of face and neck-and a greater contempt for esprit than men who have so much in general attain to."

The great event of Sydney Smith's first residence in London was his introduction at Holland House; in that “ gilded room which furnished," as he said, "the best and most agreeable society in the world," his happiest hours were passed. John Allen, whom Smith had introduced to Lord Holland, was the peer's librarian and friend. Mackintosh, who Sydney Smith thought only wanted a few bad qualities to get on in the world, Rogers, Luttrell, Sheridan, Byron, were among the "suns" that shone where Addison had suffered and studied.

Between Lord Holland and Sydney Smith the most cordial friendship existed; and the eccentric and fascinating Lady Holland was his constant correspondent. Of this able woman it was said by Talleyrand: "Elle est toute assertion; mais quand on demande la preuve c'est là son sécret." Of Lord Holland, the keen diplomatist observed: "C'est la bienveillance même, mais la bienveillance la plus perturbatrice, qu'on ait jamais vue."

Lord Holland did not commit the error ascribed by Rogers, in his Recollections, to Marlay, Bishop of Waterford, who, when poor, with an income of only £400 a year, used to give the best dinners possible; but, when made a bishop, enlarged his table, and lost his fame-had no more good companythere was an end of his enjoyment: he had lords and ladies to his table-foolish people-foolish men-and foolish womenand there was an end of him and us. "Lord Holland selected his lords and ladies, not for their rank, but for their peculiar merits or acquirements." Then even Lady Holland's oddities were amusing. When she wanted to get rid of a fop, she used to say, "I beg your pardon, but I wish you would sit a little farther off; there is something on your handkerchief which I don't quite like." Or when a poor man happened to stand, after the fashion of the lords of creation, with his back to the chimney-piece, she would cry out, "Have the goodness, sir, to stir the fire."

Lord Holland never asked any one to dinner ("not even me," says Rogers, "whom he had known so long") without asking Lady Holland. One day, shortly before his lordship's death, Rogers was coming out from Holland House when he met him. "Well, do you return to dinner?" I answered, 'No, I have not been invited."" The precaution, in fact, was necessary, for Lord Holland was so good-natured and hospita

446

PREACHER AT THE "FOUNDLING."

ble that he would have had a crowd daily at his table had he been left to himself.

The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unrivaled dinners, and the subsequent evenings in the "gilded chamber." Lady Holland, to whom Holland House was left for her lifetime, declined to live there. With Holland House, the mingling of aristocracy with talent; the blending ranks by force of intellect; the assembling, not only of all the celebrity that Europe could boast, but of all that could enhance private enjoyment, has ceased. London, the most intelligent of capitals, possesses not one single great house in which pomp and wealth are made subsidiary to the true luxury of intellectual conversation.

On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness began, these lines were written by him, and found after his death on his dressing-table:

"Nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey,
Sufficient for my fame;

If those who know me best shall say
I tarnished neither name."

Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but discriminative character. "There was never (among other things he says) a better heart, or one more purified from all the bad passions-more abounding in charity and compassion-or which seemed to be so created as a refuge to the helpless and oppressed."

Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited; £50 a year as evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital was esteemed as a great help by him. The writer of this memoir remembers an amusing anecdote related of him at the table of an eminent literary character by a member of Lord Woodhouselec's family, who had been desirous to obtain for Sydney the patronage of the godly. To this end she persuaded Robert Grant and Charles Grant (afterward Lord Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear him, she hoped, to advantage; to her consternation he broke forth into so familiar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the jocosethough no one had deeper religious convictions than he hadthat the two saintly brothers listened in disgust. They forgot how South let loose the powers of his wit and sarcasm; and how the lofty-minded Jeremy Taylor applied the force of humor to lighten the prolixity of argument. Sydney Smith became, nevertheless, a most popular preacher; but the man who prevents people from sleeping once a week in their pews is sure to be criticised.

Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His

SYDNEY'S 66 GRAMMAR OF LIFE."

449

circle of acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland House, but by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution. Sir Robert Peel, not the most impressionable of men, but one whose cold shake of the hand is said—as Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh-"to have come under the genus Mortmain," was a very young man at the time when Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street to the other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of Logan, the Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner.

His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a house in Orchard Street. Doughty Street-raised to celebrity as having been the residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of Charles Dickens-was too far for the habitué of Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street long to sojourn there. In Orchard Street Sydney enjoyed that domestic comfort which he called the "grammar of life;" delightful suppers to about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a week also at Sir James Mackintosh's at a supper, which, though not exactly Cowper's "radish and an egg," was simple but plentiful-yet most eagerly sought after. "There are few living," writes Sydney Smith's daughter, "who can look back to them, and I have always found them do so with a sigh of regret."

One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a supper. "Now, Sydney," whispered the simple girl, "I know all these are very remarkable people; do tell me who they are." "Oh, yes; there's Hannibal," pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw; "he lost his leg in the Carthaginian war: there's Socrates," pointing to Luttrell: "that," he added, turning to Horner, "is Solon."

Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin. an ensign in a Highland regiment with him. The young man's head could carry no idea of glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered, "Is that the great Sir Sidney Smith ?" "Yes, yes," answered Sir James; and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave evening preacher at the Foundling immediately assumed the character ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his battles over again-even charging the Turks-while the young Scot was so enchanted by the great Sir Sidney's condescension, that he wanted to fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this