Percy Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford

Percy Ellen Algernon Frederick William Sydney Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford (November 26, 1826–January 9, 1869) was a British nobleman and man of letters.

He was born in St Petersburg, Russia, the son of the 6th Viscount Strangford, the British Ambassador. During all his earlier years Percy Smythe was nearly blind, in consequence, it was believed, of his mother having suffered very great hardships on a journey up the Baltic Sea in wintry weather shortly before his birth. His education was begun at Harrow, whence he went to Merton College, Oxford. He excelled as a linguist, and was nominated by the vice-chancellor of Oxford in 1845 a student-attache at Constantinople.

While at Constantinople, where he served under Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Smythe gained a mastery not only of Turkish and its dialects, but of almost every form of modern Greek, from the language of the "literati" of Athens to the least Hellenized Romaic. He had already a large knowledge both of Persian and Arabic before going east, but until his duties led him to study the past, present and future of the sultan's empire he had given no attention to the tongues which he well described as those of the international rabble in and around the Balkan peninsula.

On succeeding his brother as Viscount Strangford in 1857 he continued to live in Constantinople, immersed in cultural studies. At length, however, he returned to England and wrote a good deal, sometimes in the "Saturday Review", sometimes in the "Quarterly Review", and much in the "Pall Mall Gazette". A rather severe review in the first of these organs of the Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines of Emily Anne Beaufort (1887) led to a result not very usual, the marriage of the reviewer and the authoress. One of the most interesting papers Lord Strangford ever wrote was the last chapter in his wife's book on the "Eastern Shores of the Adriatic". That chapter was entitled "Chaos," and was the first of his writings which made him widely known amongst careful students of foreign politics. From that time forward everything that he wrote was watched with intense interest, and even when it was anonymous there was not the slightest difficulty in recognizing his style, for it was unlike any other.

On his death in 1869 his titles became extinct. A "Selection from the Writings of Viscount Strangford on Political, Geographical and Social Subjects" was edited by his widow and published in 1869. His "Original Letters and Papers upon Philology and Kindred Subjects" were also edited by Lady Strangford (1878).

*1911