We go too fast, Sir, with
horses; besides, horses eat oats, and farmers live by selling oats;
if, therefore, by inconveniencing ourselves, and occasionally
risking our lives, we can, however imperfectly, accomplish by steam
what is now done by horses, we get rid of the whole race of
oat-sowers, oat-sellers, oat-eaters, and oat-stealers, vulgarly
called ostlers."
Sydney Smith especially aimed at pleasantry in his humour, there was no
animosity in it, and generally no instruction. Mirth, pure and simple,
was his object. Rogers observes "After Luttrell, you remembered what
good things he said--after Smith how much you laughed."
In Moore's Diary we read "at a breakfast at Roger's, Smith, full of
comicality and fancy, kept us all in roars of laughter." His wit was so
turned, that it never wounded. When he took leave of Lord Dudley, the
latter said, "You have been laughing at me constantly, Sydney, for the
last seven years, and yet in all that time, you never said a thing to me
that I wished unsaid."
It would be superfluous to give a collection of Smith's good sayings,
but the following is characteristic of his style. When he heard of a
small Scotchman going to marry a lady of large dimensions, he exclaimed,
"Going to marry her? you mean a part of her, he could not marry her
all.
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