Smith, Sydney

political writer and wit, born at Wood ford, E ex, of partly English and partly Huguenot blood; educated at Westminster and Oxford, bred for the Church; after a brief curacy in Wilts hire settled in Edinburgh from 1798 to 1803, where, while officiating as a clergyman, he became one of the famous editors of the Edinburgh Review , and a contributor; settled for a time afterwards in London, where he delivered a series of admirable lectures on ethics, till he was appointed to a small living in Yorkshire, and afterwards to a richer living in Somerset, and finally a canonry in St. Paul's; his writings deal with abuses of the period, and are, except his lectures perhaps, all out of date now (1771-1845).