'He is a very clever fellow, but he will never be a bishop.' George III 'A more profligate parson I never met.' George IV 'I sat next to Sydney Smith, who was delightful ... I don't remember a more agreeable party.' Benjamin Disraeli 'I wish you would tell Mr Sydney Smith that of all the men I ever heard of and never saw, I have the greatest curiosity to see ... and to know him.' Charles Dickens How one agrees with Dickens. Without doubt, Sydney Smith was the most famous wit of his generation. But there was more to him than that, he was an outstanding representative of the English liberal tradition. Starting as an impoverished village curate he went to Edinburgh as a tutor, and co-founded the Edinburgh Review, the first major nineteenth-century periodical. Happily married, he moved in 1803 to London, where he was introduced into the Holland House circle - of which he quickly became an admired...
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