The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1884-12-18
SYDNEY SMITH.
Some characteristics of Famous Genius
and Wit.


and Wit.
When one tries to estimate the genius
of Sydney Smith, what strikes one
most is his humor unaccompanied by
melancholy. Most great humorists
have been melancholy men, like Mo-
here. Sydney Smith, on the other hand,
was not jester only in his books and
in society. His wonderful high spirits
were almost constantly with him in the
home which they filed with happiness
and laughter. The essence Of his wit is
this volatile and airy spirit, soaring
without trammel high above the labor
ing world, and discovering, from its
familiar heights, mirthful resemblances
in things where other men only saw in
congruities. Boldness, freedom, vivaci-
ty, these are the characteristics of his
humor. He had an extraordinary
audacity in venturing almost on the
the verge of nonsense. He was daring
in humorous exaggeration. This buoy
ant courage and gayety of fancy some
times give his good thing the character
of American humor.
He began his history of Ethics with
Socrates, and avoWed that ssAristotle
was not such a fool as many people think
who have never read him." The early
philosophers, he declared, sswere gallant
gentlemen, for whose company, I con-
fess, / have never had any great relish.
Again: ''If Orpheus or Linus sang, in
bad verse, such advice as a grandmother
would now give a child of six years old,
bc - 10 l. Al
gods, and statues or altars were erected
to his memory" This good-humored
irreverenee to the mighty shades of Or
pheus and Linus reminds one, in its
frank Philistianisn, of Mark Twain and
the Innocents Abroad. I am accus-
toned to take Orpheus very seriously,
and do not quite enjoy this cavalier
treatment of Linus. But the gayety of
Sydney Smith becomes more boisterous
than ever when he tries to account for
the superiority of man over the beasts.
To these he allows the rudiments of our
faculties. But tCe, he remarked, live
longer, collect more experience and are
gregarious, so that we communicate
our valuable discoveries to each
other. How different is the con-
duct, he says, of the unprogressiye
lion! "A lion lives under a hole in a
rock, and if any other lion happens to
pass by, they fight. Now whoever gets
a habit of lying under hole in rock,
and fighting with every gentleman who
passes near him, car not possibly make
any progress" Again, lions are un-
communicative, very; hence their sta
tionary culture. IF lions would only
come together and growl out the OBJ
seryations they have made about killing
sheep and shepherds, and the most
likely places for catching q calf grazing,
they could not fail to improve This
is quite in Marks way, as Lord Ten
nyson says. Again, when the Catholics
We're oppressed in Ireland, Sydney Smith
said to the clergy and the Government,
to bully? Why don't you torment Will
lam Wilberforce and the Clapham
saints? Why torture bulldog when
you can get a frog arabbitPn Again
he writes, on pulpit oratory: "Why are
we natural everywhere butin the pulpit?
Why call in the aid of paralysis to piety?
Is sin to be taken from man, as Eve
was from Adam, by casting him into
a deep sleepP" Yet, with all his
audacious humor, his friends could
only once remember that Sydney
Smith made jest bordering on
irreverence towards things Scriptural,
and he instantly withdrew it, and
seemed ashamed of his words.
He was a great lover of light; he re-
joiced, like Scott, in the discovery of
gas, a faring mode of lighting which
we do not much admire nowadays This
love Of light, of shadowless views and
clear-cut distinctions, was part of his
intellectual nature. ''We are all for
orthodoxy and common-sense, y he ex-
claimed, in the Edinburgh Reuies0, and
he was convinced that common-sense
and orthodoxy were at one in their de-
cisions. His mind was of the eighteenth
century. He had no more mercy on
Methodists and missionaries (guilty, both
of them, of ''enthusiasm') than on
'.Puseyites, those ambiguous creatures,
the bats of the modern twilight of the
gods.--Aadret0 Lang, S1t Harper's Nag
tyziJ1e