poor to stay long at college, but as he kept up his studies while supporting himself in various places, probably by teaching, he became a good linguist and well read in philosophy. About 1659 he obtained the vicarage of Great Gonerby, Lincolnshire. He was a distant relative of Robert Sanderson (1587–1663) [q. v.], who became bishop of Lincoln in 1660. In consequence of the Uniformity Act he resigned his living in 1662, rejecting Sanderson's offer of further preferment. He now became domestic chaplain to Sir John Bright [q. v.], and subsequently to John White, a Nottinghamshire presbyterian. In 1667 he was living at Mansfield with Joseph Truman [q. v.], but in that year he came to London, and became pastor of a congregation at Rutland House, Charterhouse Yard. He was on good terms with many of the London clergy, particularly Benjamin Whichcote [q. v.] and Tillotson. Baxter, who remained to the last in communion with the church of England, and declined to be pastor of any separated congregation, nevertheless became, from 1687, Sylvester's unpaid assistant. He valued Sylvester for his meekness, temper, sound principles, and great pastoral ability. Baxter's eloquence as a preacher supplied what was lacking to Sylvester, whose delivery was poor, though in prayer he had a remarkable gift, as Oliver Heywood notes. After Baxter's death in 1691 the congregation declined. Early in 1692 it was removed to a building in Meeting House Court, Knightrider Street. Edmund Calamy, D.D. [q. v.], who was Sylvester's assistant (1692–5), describes him as ‘a very meek spirited, silent, and inactive man,’ in straitened circumstances. After Calamy left him he plodded on by himself till his death. He died suddenly on Sunday evening, 25 Jan. 1708. Calamy preached his funeral sermon on 1 Feb. A portrait painted by Schiverman was engraved by Vandergucht (Bromley, p. 184).
He published four sermons in the ‘Morning Exercise’ (1676–90); three single sermons (1697–1707), including funeral sermons for Grace Cox and Sarah Petit, and ‘The Christian's Race … described [in sermons],’ 1702–8, 8vo, 2 vols. (the second edited by J. Bates). He wrote prefaces to works by Baxter, Manton, Timothy, Manlove, and others. His chief claim to remembrance is as the literary executor of Baxter. In 1696 he issued the long-expected folio, ‘Reliquiæ Baxterianæ. Or, Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times;’ appended is Sylvester's funeral sermon for Baxter. No book of its importance was ever worse edited. Sylvester, an unmethodical man, had to deal with ‘a great quantity of loose papers,’ needing to be sorted. He insisted on transcribing the whole himself, though it took his ‘weak hand’ above an hour to write ‘an octavo page’ (Preface, § 1). During the progress of the work he was ‘chary of it in the last degree’ (Calamy), and with great difficulty brought to consent to the few excisions which Calamy deemed necessary. In addition to a fatal lack of arrangement, the folio abounds in misprints, as Sylvester ‘could not attend the press and prevent the errata.’ The ‘contents’ and index are by Calamy, who subsequently issued an octavo ‘Abridgment’ (1702, 1714), much handier but very inferior in interest to the ‘Reliquiæ.’
[Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, 1696, iii. 96; Funeral Sermon by Calamy, 1708; Calamy's Account, 1714, pp. 449 sq.; Calamy's Own Life, 1830, i. 312, 359, 376, ii. 80; Protestant Dissenter's Mag. 1799, p. 391; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, ii. 105; Hunter's Life of O. Heywood, 1842, p. 193; Mayor's Admissions to St. John's Coll. Cambridge, 1882, i. 115.]
SYME, EBENEZER (1826–1860), colonial journalist, son of George Syme, schoolmaster at North Berwick state school, was born at North Berwick in 1826, and educated first at his father's school, afterwards from 1841 to 1845 at the university of St. Andrews. His early inclination was to enter the ministry of the church of Scotland, but he could not subscribe literally to any generally accepted creed. He therefore began about 1846 to travel through Scotland and England as an independent evangelist. About 1848 he began to write for reviews, particularly for the ‘Westminster Review,’ then at the height of its influence; and, eventually coming to London, he assisted Dr. John Chapman for a short time in the editorial work.
In 1852 Syme emigrated to Victoria to take advantage of the journalistic opening afforded by the rush to the diggings. He first wrote for the ‘Melbourne Argus,’ then the ‘Digger's Advocate.’ Soon he was joined by a younger brother, and purchased the recently started ‘Melbourne Age,’ which he piloted though its early struggles till it became the leading liberal organ. His work had a marked influence on colonial politics; he attacked with particular vigour the O'Shanassy administrations of 1857 and 1858–9. In 1859 he relinquished the management of the ‘Age’ to his brother, and entered parliament as member for Avoca in the advanced liberal interest. He died on 13 March 1860 at Grey Street, St. Kilda, Melbourne. He
