The Rev. Sydney Smith, who appeared in these notes yesterday, was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review and edited the first number in October 1802. He proposed that the motto of the journal be:
We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.
The magazine would become famous. But when it was founded, its champions were young, pinched for resources and outside the literary establishment, looking in. They were oatmeal eaters.
Smith’s proposed motto was rejected by his fellows. He was chagrinned that the majority favored a Latin line that was translated:
The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted.
The line is from Publilius Syrus. Smith said he was sure none of the founders of the Edinburgh Review had read him.
Why a note on the Rev. Sydney Smith?
Because I’m reading Ronald Blythe’s Next to Nature, which is filled with casual references to people who must be looked up and gotten acquainted with.
• Source: The 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica’s entry on the Rev. Sydney Smith, 1771-1845, is here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Smith,_Sydney
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