event even more momentous than the publication of his first book.  It was the year of his marriage.  His sister Maria had a friend and schoolfellow called Catharine Amelia Pybus.  He had known her as a child; and while still quite young had become engaged to marry her, whenever circumstances should make it possible.  The young lady’s father was John Pybus, who had gone to India in the service of the Company, attained official distinction and made money.  Returning to England, he settled at Cheam in Surrey, where he died in 1789.  In 1800 his daughter Catharine was twenty-two years old.  Her brother, a Tory Member of Parliament and a placeman under Pitt, strongly objected to an alliance with a penniless and unknown clergyman of Liberal principles; but Miss Pybus happily knew her own mind, and she was married to Sydney Smith in the parish church of Cheam on the 2nd of July 1800.  The bride had a small fortune of her own, and this was just as well, for her husband’s total wealth consisted of “six small silver teaspoons,” which he flung into her lap, saying, “There, Kate, you lucky girl, I give you all my fortune!”

In the autumn of 1800, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Smith established themselves at No. 46 George Street, Edinburgh.  Mrs. Smith sold her pearl necklace for L500, and bought plate and linen with the proceeds.  Michael Beach had now quitted Edinburgh for Oxford, but his younger brother William took his place in the Smiths’ house, and was joined by the eldest son of Mr. Gordon of Ellon.  Lady Holland states that with each of these young gentlemen her father received L400 a year; and Mr. Hicks-Beach, grateful for his good influence on Michael, made a considerable addition to the covenanted payment.

In 1802 the Smiths’ eldest child was born and was christened Saba.  The name was taken out of the Psalms for the Fourteenth Day of the Month, and was bestowed on her in obedience to her father’s conviction that, where parents were constrained to give their child so indistinctive a surname as Smith, they ought to counterbalance it with a Christian name more original and vivacious.  Saba Smith became the wife of the eminent physician, Sir Henry Holland, and died in 1866.  The other children were—­a boy, who was born and died in 1803; Douglas, born in 1805, died in 1829; Emily, wife of Nathaniel Hibbert, born in 1807, died in 1874; Wyndham, born in 1813, died in 1871.

[1] For this remarkable variant, see Burke’s Peerage, Bowyer-
    Smijth, Bart.

[2] (1739-1827.)

[3] William Howley (1766-1848).

[4] In 1819 Sydney Smith violated his own canon, thus:  “But, after all, I
    believe we shall all go—­

        “ad veteris Nicolai tristia regna,
      Pitt ubi combustum Dundasque videbimus omnes.”

[5] He became M.A. in 1796.

[6] (1765-1822.) Lees’ Reader in Anatomy 1790, Regius Professor of Medicine
    1801.