"An Unoriginal Brightness of Intellect'

I hadn’t expected to laugh while reading an account of Church of England patronage in the nineteenth century. As often seems the case with the writing of Sydney Smith, context is too cumbersome to explain. Trying to do so is time-consuming and likely to kill the joke. Let me quote the phrase from “Letters to Archdeacon Singleton” that ambushed me with comedy: “[H]is little muffin-faced son.” It’s useful to know that the boy’s father is a baker. In the middle of an account of church patronage, one pictures a round, brown, fragrant little creature, unquestionably wholesome, seated beside his father. So as not to give an impression of utter silliness, let me quote Smith’s subsequent paragraph:

 

“Young Crumpet is sent to school—takes to his books—spends the best years of his life, as all eminent Englishmen do, in making Latin verses—knows that the crum in crum­pet is long, and the pet short—goes to the University—gets a prize for an Essay on the Dispersion of the Jews—takes orders—becomes a Bishop’s chaplain—has a young nobleman for his pupil—publishes an useless classic, and a serious call to the unconverted—and then goes through the Elysian transitions of Prebendary, Dean, Prelate, and the long train of purple, profit and power.”

 

In his introduction to Selected Writings of Sydney Smith (1956), W.H. Auden pinpoints Smith’s gently satirical target, one that remains alive and well in our own institutions of higher learning, with a few obvious differences:

 

“It is not hard to deduce from this description the personal qualities best fitted for a rise from obscurity to a mitre: an unoriginal brightness of intellect which is good at passing exams but not at thinking for itself, a proper respect for titles, a talent for flattery, a solemn mien and, above all, Tory political opinions.”

 

Muffin-faced is not original with Smith. The OED helpfully defines the word as “adj. colloquial having a face reminiscent of a muffin; spec. having an expressionless face.” I’m uncertain how a muffin expresses expressionlessness rather than, say, snarling aggression. The Dictionary’s most recent citation, in Newsday, dates from 2000.

I looked a little deeper and found a reference to muffin-face as a noun. Green’s Dictionary of Slang outlines various meanings, including hairless, “foolish or childish” and “protruding muscles.” As an adjective, Green suggests “having a fat face or a face with protruding muscles.” Regardless, it’s not flattering either to muffins or little boys.