that myrtles flourish at Craig Crook.[22] In vain I have represented to him that they are of the genus Carduus, and pointed out their prickly peculiarities....  Jeffrey sticks to his myrtle illusions, and treats my attacks with as much contempt as if I had been a wild visionary, who had never breathed his caller air, nor lived and suffered under the rigour of his climate, nor spent five years in discussing metaphysics and medicine in that garret of the earth—­that knuckle-end of England—­that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulphur.”

As soon as he reached England, he wrote to his friend Jeffrey:—­

“I left Edinburgh with great heaviness of heart; I knew what I was leaving, and was ignorant to what I was going.  My good fortune will be very great, if I should ever again fall into the society of so many liberal, correct, and instructed men, and live with them on such terms of friendship as I have done with you, and you know whom, at Edinburgh.”

On arriving in London, in the autumn of 1803, the Sydney Smiths lodged for a while at 77 Upper Guilford Street, and soon afterwards established themselves at 8 Doughty Street.  Sydney’s dearest friend, Francis Horner,[23] had preceded him to London, and was already beginning to make his mark at the Bar, without, apparently, abandoning his philosophical pursuits.  “He lives very high up in Garden Court, and thinks a good deal about Mankind.”  But he could spare a thought for individuals as well as for the race, and did a great deal towards securing his friend an introduction into congenial society.  Doughty Street was a legal quarter, and among those with whom the Smiths soon made friends were Sir Samuel Romilly, James Scarlett (afterwards Lord Abinger), and Sir James Mackintosh.  To these were added as time went on, Henry Grattan, Alexander Marcet, John William Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley), Samuel Rogers, Henry Luttrell, “Conversation” Sharp, and Lord Holland.

Sydney Smith’s eldest brother Robert ("Bobus"[24]) had married Caroline Vernon, Lord Holland’s aunt.  Sydney’s politics were the politics of Holland House.  Lord Holland was always recruiting for the Liberal army, and an Edinburgh Reviewer was a recruit worth capturing.  So the hospitable doors were soon thrown open to the young clergyman from Doughty Street, who suddenly found himself a member of the most brilliant circle ever gathered under an English roof.  In old age he used to declare, to the amusement of his friends, that as a young man he had been shy, but had wrestled with the temptation and overcome it.  As regards the master[25] of Holland House, it was not easy to be shy in the presence of “that frank politeness which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls."[26] And even the imperious mistress[27] of the house found her match in Sydney Smith, who only made fun of her foibles, and repaid her insolence with raillery.  Referring to this period, when he had long outlived it, he said:—­