The
_Letters of Peter Plymley_ abound in medical and obstetrical imagery. The
effect of the Orders in Council on the health of Europe supplies endless
jokes. Peter roars with laughter at the thought of his sister-in-law, Mrs.
Abraham Plymley, "led away captive by an amorous Gaul." Nothing can be
nastier (or more apt) than his comparison between the use of humour in
controversy and that of the small-tooth comb in domestic life; nothing less
delicate than the imaginary "Suckling Act" in which he burlesques Lord
Shaftesbury's Ten Hours Bill. He barbs his attacks on an oppressive
Government by jokes about the ugliness of Perceval's face and the poverty
of Canning's relations--the pensions conferred on "Sophia" and "Caroline,"
their "national veal" and "public tea"; and the "clouds of cousins arriving
by the waggon." When a bishop has insulted him, he replies with an
insinuation that the bishop obtained his preferment by fraud and
misrepresentation,[153] and jeers at him for having begun life as a
nobleman's Private Tutor, called by the "endearing but unmajestic name of
Dick." It is only fair to say that these aberrations from good taste and
good feeling became less and less frequent as years went on. That they ever
were permitted to deform the splendid advocacy of great causes is due to
the fact that, when Sydney Smith began to write, the influence of Smollett
and his imitators was still powerful.
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