both for and against this practice. By adopting it a judicious editor may no doubt greatly improve the articles offered to him, pruning away their extravagances, and freeing them from those little eccentricities of style and diction from which few writers are exempt. It also tends to give the various articles a certain unity of tone desirable in a periodical work conducted on fixed principles. But there is always a danger of carrying the practice too far, and infusing too much of the editor's own personality into articles "touched up" by him. Charles

Dickens, who took even greater liberties than Jeffrey with the contributions to his periodical, by additions and emendations, often made them so "Dickensesque" as to impart to them a disagreeable mannerism.

Scarcely less prominently connected than Jeffrey with the origin and early career of the Edinburgh Review was the Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845), whose unique vein of wit and almost unequalled power of sarcasm gave to his contributions on temporary subjects an enduring literary value. The son of a clever but odd English gentleman, he was educated at Winchester, of which school he in due course rose to be captain. Referring to this period of his life, he used to say, “I believe, whilst a boy at school, I made above ten thousand Latin verses, and no man in his senses would dream in afterlife of ever making another. So much for life and time wasted." From Winchester, Sydney went to Oxford, where, at the close of his undergraduate career, he obtained a fellowship worth about £100 a year. From this period his father left him to shift for himself, and, wanting the means necessary to gratify his desire to study for the Bar, he was compelled to enter the Church. After acting for three years as curate in a small village in Salisbury Plain, the squire of the parish engaged him as tutor to his eldest son. It was arranged,” writes Sydney, "that I and his son should proceed to the University of Weimar, in Saxony. We set out, but before reaching our destination Germany was disturbed by war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained for five years." He arrived at Edinburgh in 1797, and soon

found many congenial friends among the numerous clever young men then staying there. In 1804 we find him in London, and during that and the two following years he lectured on Moral Philosophy at the Royal Institution. His lectures, which were attended by crowded and fashionable audiences, were published after his death under the title of "Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy." They make no pretension to philosophic depth, but, like everything that came from his pen, they are amusing and instructive. In 1806 he obtained, through the influence of the Whig Government, a presentation to the small living of Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire. In 1828 Lord Lyndhurst presented him with the Canonry of Bristol Cathedral; and it was through the influence of the same nobleman, though differing from him in politics, that he was enabled to exchange Foston-le-Clay for the living of Combe Florey, near Taunton. His pen had been such a powerful auxiliary in aiding the Whig party, that from them he might reasonably have expected high ecclesiastical promotion, but such never came. All they did for him was to make him a prebend of St. Paul's in 1831. This neglect of his reasonable claims Sydney felt bitterly. It is not easy to say exactly from what cause it arose. Perhaps it may have been because some of his writings were considered to be inconsistent with clerical decorum, but there were probably other and more cogent reasons. At any rate, his great Whig friends were always full of specious promises of promotion to him, which they were either unable or unwilling to translate into acts.

Sydney Smith's contributions to the Edinburgh Review began with its first number, and were continued till 1828, when, owing to his ecclesiastical promo ion, he ceased to write in it. They embrace a very wide range of topicsEducation, Methodism, Indian Missions, the Game-Laws, the Poor-Laws, Prisons and Prison Discipline, Irish Grievances, &c., &c., all handled with great acuteness and incisiveness, an abundance of sparkling wit, and in general much good feeling and sound sense. They contributed much-as well they might to the success of the Edinburgh, though some

people complained of their light style of treating grave topics. Even Jeffrey, it would seem, sometimes joined in this charge, which Smith successfully combated in an admirable and spirited letter written in 1819. "You must consider," he wrote to Jeffrey, "that Edinburgh is a very grave place, and that you live with philosophers who are very intolerant of nonsense. I write for the London, not for the Scotch market, and perhaps more people read my nonsense than your sense. The complaint was loud and universal against the extreme dulness and lengthiness of the Edinburgh Review. Too much, I admit, would not do of my style; but the proportion in which it exists enlivens the Review, if you appeal to the whole public, and not to the eight or ten grave Scotchmen with whom you live. I am a very ignorant, frivolous, half-inch person; but such as I am, I am sure I have done your Review good, and contributed to bring it into notice. Such as I am, I shall be, and cannot promise to alter. Such is my opinion of the effect of my articles. . . . Almost any of the sensible men who write for the Review would have written a much wiser and more profound article than I have done upon the game-laws. I am quite certain that nobody would obtain more readers for his essay upon such a subject; and I am equally certain that the principles are right, and that there is no lack of sense in it." There was never a lack either of sense or wit in anything he wrote. Ridicule was invariably employed in his writings to aid the cause and opinions which he considered to be true, and just, and honourable. A hard hitter, with a keen eye for the weak points in an opponent's armour, he delighted in combat, not content with only acting on the defensive, but sallying into the enemy's country and vigorously attacking him. He would have made an admirable writer of leading articles-his clearness, point, and vigorous way of stating facts and arguments would have made his services invaluable to newspaper editors. The only recent writer we can think of whose political articles have something of the flavour of Smith's, and, like them, bear reading after the interest of the questions which caused them has passed

Sydney Smith's Characteristics.

351 away, is Charles Lever, whose "O'Dowd Papers," different though they are from Smith's articles in many ways, resemble them in their emphatic, epigrammatic way of putting things, and in their skill in hitting the right nail on the head. Besides his Review articles, Sydney Smith wrote two volumes of sermons, not of very great merit, and an admirable and trenchant discussion of the Catholic Question, under the title of "Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, by Peter Plymley" (1308), in addition to a few smaller performances. Mr. Hayward complains that Smith's humorous writings are often deficient in ease, smoothness, grace, rhythm, and purity, because he constantly aimed at effect by startling contrasts, by the juxtaposition of incongruous images or epithets, or by the use of odd-sounding words and strange compounds of Greek and Latin derivation-speaking of a preacher as wiping his face with his "cambric sudarium;" of a schoolmaster as a "mastigophorous superior;" of a weak and foolish man as "anserous and asinine," &c. There does not seem much force in this criticism. Sydney Smith's mode of producing humorous effects was always original, and always well adapted to the subject in hand; and if his writings were weeded of the kind of expressions Mr. Hayward objects to, we should lose some of their wittiest and most telling strokes.

Robust in constitution, constantly cheerful, and one of the most entertaining talkers ever listened to, Sydney Smith was a "diner-out of the first water," much sought after in London society. Many of his good sayings have been preserved, and amply prove (what the recorded sayings of many other London wits certainly do not prove) that his great contemporary fame as wit and conversationist was amply deserved. Though he gave free scope to his exuberant humour, and did not scruple to ridicule the little eccentricities and angularities of his friends, he had the gift, granted to but few, of expressing his witticisms so good-humouredly that the subject of them laughed as heartily as any one. There could be no better testimony to the want of the venom in his jokes than Lord Dudley's remark, that Sydney Smith had been laughing at

him for many years, and yet had never said a word to hurt him. In addition to his gifts as a talker and writer, Smith possessed the higher qualities of courage, honesty, and independence. A somewhat too great fondness for the good things of this life, which he always candidly avowed; an over-eager love of London society and the things which it prizes, were almost the only weaknesses which could be laid to his charge. He was better fitted for the Bar than the Church; and though he performed his duties as clergyman conscientiously according to his lights, his heart was never really in the work.

The establishment of Blackwood's Magazine in 1817 brought into notice another group of writers not less distinguished than the early contributors to the Edinburgh. Of this group the most prominent members were Wilson and Lockhart, to whose labours Blackwood owed as much of its early success as the Edinburgh did to Jeffrey and Sydney Smith. John Wilson (1785-1854) was born at Paisley, the son of a wealthy manufacturer there. When twelve years of age he became a student at Glasgow University, where he carried off the first prize in the Logic class, besides distinguishing himself, as at all subsequent periods of his life, by his personal prowess and athletic feats. From Glasgow, in 1803, he proceeded to Oxford, where he became a gentleman commoner of Magdalen College. There he lived a very wild and energetic life, which would probably have soon broken down any one of inferior constitution. He managed to be at the same time a hard student, a jolly companion who never flinched at his cups, and a daring and indefatigable athlete. In 1807 he quitted Oxford, having obtained his degree with singular distinction, and leaving behind him many anecdotes of his eccentric life and his great physical and intellectual capacities. His father's death had left him possessed of an ample fortune, and soon after leaving the University he purchased the small estate of Elleray, a charming property on the banks of Windermere. During his residence there he married, and for some years lived a life of unclouded prosperity, indulging in long solitary rambles on the mountains, and keeping a fleet of boats on the