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ADVICE TO THE CLEKGY, BY THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



My Beloved Brethren: — You are all fully sensible of the deep 

 and sincere interest I have ever felt for your temporal and everlasting 

 welfare. If a doubt of my sincerity or zeal should lurk in the mind 

 of any one of you, the proof I am now on the point of giving you will 

 remove it. 



I would, if it were in my power, bestow on you all rectories, vicar- 

 ages, deaneries, prebendal stalls, and other fat places, and so provide, 

 in a great degree, for your temporal wants. Since it is not in my 

 power to do so, I must perform the next best office within the compass 

 of my means. 



I will, my brethren, offer you a few short apothegms in verse, which, 

 if j^ou connnit to memory, may do much towards obtaining those tem- 

 poral blessings which I, alas ! cannot bestow. 



I have preferred reducing the substance into poetry, since the essence 

 of it, by so doing, is better condensed, and perhaps more easily 

 remembered. Since the plan may seem uncommon to some among 

 you, it will be as well to offer you a few authorities, or prototypes, 

 which will effectually shield me from what you all know to be a crying 

 and heinous sin, well deserving clerical excommunication — innovation. 



Solomon, of whom, I presume, you have all heard, has given to 

 the world a code of ethics in couplets, called by the learned, antithetic 

 parallelisms. Some other, perhaps Hellenistic Jews, followed his ex- 

 ample. Plutarch has also, in pithy prose, conveyed to posterity the 

 apothegmatic sayings collected in his time. Stobacus has done much of 

 the same nature, and deserves your attention, after your tithes have 

 been gathered in, and you have nothing to do. Macrobius indulged 

 liis fancy in that kind of writing. Julius Caesar, who, I think, would 

 have favoured pluralities had he been ordained in our church, has 

 preserved for our use many admirable sayings. Cervantes may be read 

 with advantage. Lord Bacon's apothegms, too, should be diligently 

 studied. 



It may be said that these great men have given us knowledge, as 

 skilful chemists give us compounded essences. 



Many, my brethren, have been the schemes proposed by men to 

 convey information with rapidity and certainty to others. Dean Swift 

 tells us of a celebrated projector, who was condensing the essence of 

 books into pills, which were to be taken in the morning fasting, and 

 which was to be persevered in for days, when the essence of their 

 contents would be conve3^ed to the brain. However admirable the for- 

 mer part of this plan may be, you will, I am sure, agree with me in 

 condemning the latter part as impracticable ; and if, to some extraor- 

 dinary persons, probably curates from the northern counties, not 

 impracticable from long habits, a cruel and grievous mode of giving 

 public instruction ; and so injurious to the agi-icultural and commercial 

 interests of the country, as to be unworthy of farther discussion. 



Some men have been eminently successful in condensing the whole 

 substance of books into single paragraphs, which, you will admit, is very 

 superior to the system of pills and fasting. I should not have given 

 so decided an opinion on this point, if the fasting could have been 

 dispensed with, and the pills would have created an appetite and 

 improved the powers of digestion. 



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