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V. A ‘Petty’ Professor of Modern History: William Smyth (1765–1849)1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

K. T. B. Butler
K. T. B. Butler
Affiliation:
Mistress of Girton College and Lecturer in Italian in the University
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Extract

In 1807 William Smyth, tutor of Peterhouse, was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge through the good offices of Lord Henry Petty, later third Marquis of Lansdowne and then still liberal M.P. for the University. Two years later, not long after Smyth had delivered his first course of lectures, there appeared the caricature of him reproduced as a frontispiece to this paper and bearing the same title. It represents him in profile lecturing to a drowsy and yawning audience of undergraduates and elderly bewigged Fellows.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , 1948 , pp. 217 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1948

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References

2 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4602, 6 December 1811.

3 The Hon. Berkeley, G. F., My Life and Recollections (1866), iv, 136Google Scholar.

4 Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor (London, 1876), 1, 414–15Google Scholar.

5 Biographical Sketches, ‘The Marquis of Lansdowne’ (4th edition, enlarged, 1876), p. 94.Google ScholarGooch, G. P. (Studies in Modern History (1931), pp. 303–4),Google Scholar regards Harriet Martineau's censure as ‘a little excessive’, since ‘Modern History was then regarded as a subject of little importance, and it is improbable that British statesmanship would have profited by a different appointment’.

6 Sykes, Norman, Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London (Oxford, 1926), pp. 94–107; cf. alsoGoogle ScholarSir Firth, Charles in English Historical Review (1917)Google Scholar; Browning, Oscar in Cambridge Review (25 November and 9 December 1927)Google Scholar; Gooch, G. P., ‘The Cambridge Chair’ in Studies in Modern History (1931)Google Scholar; Winstanley, D. A., Unreformed Cambridge (C.U.P., 1935), pp. 154–62Google Scholar.

7 Quoted by Winstanley, , op. cit. p. 156Google Scholar.

8 Correspondence of Thomas Gray (ed. Toynbee, and Whibley, , Oxford, 1935), I, 65–6Google Scholar.

9 Pp. 22 and 14.

10 ‘Character of Thomas Gray’, first published in London Magazine, March 1772Google Scholar.

11 Winstanley, , op. cit. p. 161Google Scholar.

12 Lectures on Modern History (London, 1840), 1, 24Google ScholarPubMed.

13 Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 35,129, f. 305.

14 ‘Autobiographical Sketch.’

15 Notes and Queries, 3rd series, v, 259.

16 English Lyrics (5th edition, 1850), p. 31; cf. alsoGoogle ScholarBreton, Le, Memoirs and Letters of Lucy Aikin (1864), pp. xxv–xxvi, 93–4;Google ScholarTicknor, , Life, etc., 1, 438–9;Google ScholarMemories of Seventy Years. (ed. Mrs Martin, Herbert, London, 1884), pp. 23, 33, 162-3Google Scholar.

17 ‘Autobiographical Sketch.’

18 Memoir of Mr Sheridan (Leeds, 1840), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

19 Ibid. pp. 8-9.

20 For some account of this literary society, see Currie, W. W., Memoir of James Currie, M.D., F.R.S. (2 vols., London, 1831)Google Scholar.

21 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4467, 15 May 1797.

22 Memoir of Mr Sheridan, pp. 60-1.

23 Ibid. p. 71.

24 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4467.

25 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4561.

26 Ibid. Letter 4568.

27 Lane-Poole, Stanley, Life of the Rt. Hon. Stratford Canning (London, 1888), pp. 24–5Google Scholar.

28 The Private Letter-Books of Sir Walter Scott (ed. Partington, W., London, 1930)Google Scholar.

29 Gentleman's Magazine, 1857, p. 311Google Scholar.

30 II, 474.

31 VIII (1806), 154-8.

32 Breton, Le, Memoirs and Letters of Lucy Aikin (1864), pp. 93–4Google Scholar.

33 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4639.

34 (New York, 1852), pp. 154-5.

35 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4611.

36 Cf. Seymour, Lady, The Pope of Holland House (London, 1906)Google Scholar.

37 Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh (London, 1835), 1Google Scholar.

38 Ibid. pp. 412-13.

39 ‘Autobiographical Sketch.’

40 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4603.

41 ‘Autobiographical Sketch.’

42 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4596.

43 [Lectures on] Mod[ern] Hist[ory] (1840), I, 1–24Google Scholar.

44 XXIX (Boston, 1841), 366-73.

45 Introductory Lecture to Mod. Hist. (1840), 1, 16Google Scholar.

46 [Lectures on the] Fr[ench] Rev[olution], Prelim. Lecture, 1835, III, 325Google Scholar.

47 Mod. Hist. (1840), 1, 105Google Scholar

48 Fr. Rev. (1840), III, 404Google Scholar.

49 London Magazine, New Series, I, 503-4.

50 (London, 1878), 1, 65.

51 Ibid. p. 56.

52 These are printed as ‘Supplementary Lectures’, in Fr. Rev. II.

53 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4646.

54 Fr. Rev. III, 324.

55 Fr. Rev. III, 431.

56 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4564.

57 Fr. Rev. III, 269.

58 Clayden, P. W., Rogers and his Contemporaries (1859), II, 193–4Google Scholar.

59 Fraser's Magazine, XLV (1852), 170Google Scholar.

60 Reviewers singled out for special commendation in the Lectures on Modern History Smyth's characterization of Gibbon as a historian (1, 84-8) and his character of Charles I 204-5).

61 Fr. Rev. III, 122-3.

62 Fraser's Magazine, loc. cit.

63 Fr. Rev. III, 124.

64 Westminster Review, 1856, p. 616Google Scholar.

65 Fraser's Magazine, XXVI (December 1842), 631–42Google Scholar.

66 Westminster Review, loc. cit.

67 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4626.

68 Ibid.

69 Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 35,265, f. 33.

70 Notably: ‘Bologna’, a humorous account of a concert at Downing, and ‘Architectural Improvements’, a skit on the many restorations and new buildings planned in Cambridge about 1818. In C. Wordsworth's Scholae Academicae, there is a third Jeu d'esprit by Smyth on the lectures of his friend E. D. Clark, Professor of Anatomy.

71 Smyth was a great tea-drinker and always insisted on preparing it himself. According to Mrs Martin, , Memories of Seventy Years, ‘he had a seal with a tea-pot and Vert engraved on it’Google Scholar.

72 Glover, William, Reminiscences of Half a Century (1889), p. 108Google Scholar.

73 Lady Frances Morley was the second wife of the Earl of Morley and one of the wittiest, liveliest and most popular of the society women of the day.

74 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4625, 18 March 1878.

75 Impressions that remained (1919), 1, 3.Google Scholar H. Vaughan, in his article on Smyth in the Gentleman's Magazine, makes the same assertion, and both say that he aroused Jane's amused indignation by telling her that he thought he detected a Unitarian tendency in her later novels.

76 Visiting my Relations, etc., pp. 149-50.

77 Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling, p. 301.

78 Ibid. pp. 153-8.

79 Professor of Music, 1789-1821, violinist; a great friend of Smyth's, whose Installation Ode he set to music.

80 Mrs Frere?

81 Joseph Jowett (1782-1813), Professor of Civil Law. Came of a very musical family. Had a fine alto voice and frequently organized concerts at Trinity Hall and Queens'.

82 Roscoe Papers, Letter 4664, to William Roscoe, junior.

83 Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 39,809, f. 18, Letter from Smyth to John Mallet, 25 August 1846. Cf. also Roscoe Papers, Letter 4664, to William Roscoe, junior.

84 Papers, Roscoe, loc. citGoogle Scholar.