V — ‘Peter Plymley’s Letters’
By Sydney Smith
(Letters II., VI., VII., IX.)
(The pamphleteering spirit is strong in almost all Sydney Smith’s ‘Contributions to the Edinburgh Review,’ but the form and subjects of those contributions exclude them here. Of his two great pamphlet issues proper, Peter Plymley’s Letters and those To Archdeacon Singleton, the former are, though perhaps of less polished and perfect wit than the latter, more distinctly political, and have more of that diable au corps which Voltaire considered necessary to success in the arts. They have also the advantage that, while the Letters to Archdeacon Singleton, though not an avowed recantation, are in the nature of a palinode—always an awkward thing—Plymley is frankly and confidently, not to say wantonly, aggressive. These Letters, ten in number, were written just after the fall of the mainly Whig Ministry of ‘All the Talents,’ to which Sydney had been indebted for his preferment of Foston, and which lost its position not least owing to its intended support of the ‘Catholic’ claims. Those claims were not admitted for twenty years later; and Sydney’s advocacy of them was regarded as a little too exuberant by some even of his own party. But there is no doubt that the Letters had a great influence in laughing if not in arguing sections of the public round to the Emancipation side.)