PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS AND SELECTED ESSAYS




Contents:
Introduction
Peter Plymley's Letters
Historical Apology For The Irish Catholics
Ireland and England
Moore's Captain Rock



INTRODUCTION.



Sydney Smith, of the same age as Walter Scott, was born at Woodford,
in Essex, in the year 1771, and he died of heart disease, aged
seventy-four, on the 22nd of February, 1845. His father was a
clever man of wandering habits who, when he settled in England,
reduced his means by buying, altering, spoiling, and then selling
about nineteen different places in England. His mother was of a
French family from Languedoc, that had been driven to England by the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Sydney Smith's grandfather, upon
the mother's side, could speak no English, and he himself ascribed
some of his gaiety to the French blood in his veins.

He was one of four sons. His eldest brother Robert--known as Bobus-