Sydney Smith | Page 2

to contribute to so valuable a work; but the

Smiths never had any arms. They invariably sealed their letters with
their thumbs." In later life he adopted the excellent and characteristic
motto--_Faber meæ fortunæ_; and, to some impertinent questions about
his grandfather, he replied with becoming gravity--"He disappeared
about the time of the assizes, and we asked no questions."
As a matter of fact, this maligned progenitor came to London from
Devonshire, established a business in Eastcheap, and left it to his two
sons, Robert and James. Robert Smith[2] made over his share to his
brother and went forth to see the world. This object he pursued, amid
great vicissitudes of fortune and environment, till in old age he settled
down at Bishop's Lydeard, in Somerset. He married Maria Olier, a
pretty girl of French descent, and by her had five children: Robert
Percy--better known as "Bobus"--born in 1770; Sydney in 1771; Cecil
in 1772; Courtenay in 1773; and Maria in 1774.
Sydney Smith was born on the 3rd of June; and was baptized on the 1st
of July in the parish church of Woodford. His infancy was passed at
South Stoneham, near Southampton. At the age of six he was sent to a
private school at Southampton, and on the 19th of July 1782 was
elected a Scholar of Winchester College. He stayed at Winchester for
six years, and worked his way to the top place in the school, being
"Prefect of Hall" when he left in 1788. Beyond these facts, Winchester
seems to retain no impressions of her brilliant son, in this respect
contrasting strangely with other Public Schools. Westminster knows all
about Cowper--and a sorry tale it is. Canning left an ineffaceable mark
on Eton. Harrow abounds in traditions, oral and written, of Sheridan
and Byron, Peel and Palmerston. But Winchester is silent about Sydney
Smith.
Sydney, however, was not silent about Winchester. In one of the
liveliest passages of his controversial writings, he said:--
"I was at school and college with the Archbishop of Canterbury:[3]
fifty-three years ago he knocked me down with the chess-board for
checkmating him--and now he is attempting to take away my patronage.
I believe these are the only two acts of violence he ever committed in
his life."

Now Howley was a prefect when Sydney was a junior, and this game
of chess must have been (as a living Wykehamist has pointed out to me)
"a command performance." The big boy liked chess, so the little boy
had to play it: the big boy disliked being checkmated, so the little boy
was knocked down. This and similar experiences probably coloured
Sydney's mind when he wrote in 1810:--
"At a Public School (for such is the system established by immemorial
custom) every boy is alternately tyrant and slave. The power which the
elder part of these communities exercises over the younger is
exceedingly great; very difficult to be controlled; and accompanied, not
unfrequently, with cruelty and caprice. It is the common law of these
places, that the younger should be implicitly obedient to the elder boys;
and this obedience resembles more the submission of a slave to his
master, or of a sailor to his captain, than the common and natural
deference which would always be shown by one boy to another a few
years older than himself. Now, this system we cannot help considering
as an evil, because it inflicts upon boys, for two or three years of their
lives, many painful hardships, and much unpleasant servitude. These
sufferings might perhaps be of some use in military schools; but to give
to a boy the habit of enduring privations to which he will never again
be called upon to submit--to inure him to pains which he will never
again feel--and to subject him to the privation of comforts, with which
he will always in future abound--is surely not a very useful and
valuable severity in education. It is not the life in miniature which he is
to lead hereafter, nor does it bear any relation to it; he will never again
be subjected to so much insolence and caprice; nor ever, in all human
probability, called upon to make so many sacrifices. The servile
obedience which it teaches might be useful to a menial domestic; or the
habit of enterprise which it encourages prove of importance to a
military partisan; but we cannot see what bearing it has upon the calm,
regular, civil life, which the sons of gentlemen, destined to opulent
idleness, or to any of the more learned professions, are destined to lead.
Such a system makes many boys very miserable; and produces those
bad effects upon the temper and disposition which boyish suffering
always does produce. But what good it does, we are much at a loss to
conceive. Reasonable