518 



SMITH 



Smith. Al.KX \M>i:i:. |MM-I, wa.- hoin .'il-l DC 

 cnilier 1830 at Kiliiiarnuck, but was brought up 

 at Paisley and Glasgow. He received the usual 

 Scottish schooling, and then had to give up all 

 thought* of the ministry for his father* calling of 

 pattern-designer in a Glasgow warehouse. Here 

 lie began to write verses, some of which gained 

 admission to the Glasgow Citizen. Through George 

 Gillillan hi* Life Drama appeared in several 

 issues of the London Critic (1851), and was re- 

 printed the next year in a volume of which 10,000 

 copies sold in a very few month*. A reaction, 

 however, set in ; and the author had scarcely 

 found himself famous when he began to be fiercely 

 assailed. The faults of hi* book were obvious 

 enough ; every page bore evidence of immaturity 

 and its natural result, extravagance ; while a 

 somewhat narrow reading having made him pas- 

 sionately attached to a few modern poeta, such as 

 Keats and Tennyson, their turns of expression 

 reappeared in his verse, and gave colour to the 

 charge of plagiarism which was carried to an 

 alwurd length. Still, he has always a richness and 

 originality of imagery that more than atone for all 

 defects of taste and knowledge ; and no poet since 

 Shakespeare's day has written occasional line* with 

 a more Shakespearian ring. In 1854 he was 

 appointed secretary to the university of Edin- 

 burgh, and next year produced Sonnets on the 

 War in conjunction with Sydney Dobell (q.v.), 

 his brother-poet in the ' Spasmodic ' school. He 

 afterwards wrote City Poems ( 1857 ) ; the Northum- 

 brian epic, Edwin of Deira ( 1861 ) ; and, in semi- 

 poetic prose, Dreamtnorp : a Book of Essays ( 1 863 ) ; 

 A Summer in Slcye (1865); and Alfred /ftigart's 

 Household ( 1866 ), a simple and touching story 

 of Scottish middle-class life. In 1857 he married 

 Miss Flora Macdonald from Skye ; and he died at 

 Wardie, near Edinburgh, 8th January 1867. 



See the Rev. T. Brisbane's Early Yeari of Alexander 

 Smith ( 1869 ), and the Memoir by P. P. Alexander pre- 

 fixed to his Last Leant (1869). 



Smith. GEORGE, Assyriologist, was horn of 

 humble parentage in London on 26lh March 1840. 

 Whilst pursuing his trade of tank-note engraver 

 he found means to study the cuneiform inscrip- 

 tions in the British Museum, and through the 

 kindly notice and assistance of Sir Henry Haw- 

 linson and Dr Birch wits in 1807 appointed an 

 assistant in the department of antiquities in 

 that museum. He helped the former to prepare 

 the third volume of Cuneiform Inscriptions ( 1870), 

 and through his skill as an interpreter of the 

 A--yrian monumental writing not only as able 

 to fix the dates of important events in the 

 history of the East, but djMOWnd the >'/in/dir,in 

 'lint of the Deluge (1872). He likewise fur- 

 ni-hed ( 1871 ) the key to the interpretation of the 

 Cypriote character and script. In 1872 he was 

 sent by the proprietors of the Doily Telegraph, to 

 Nineveh in quest of discoveries; the collections he 

 brought home ere presented to the nation. The 

 Britisli Museum commissioned him ( 1873) to return 

 and complete t he excavation* he had begun amongst 

 the rain-mound* of ancient Assyria, an account of 

 A-hich expedition, entitled As*<iiinii /'/w.irrie*, 

 was published in 1875 (7th ed. 1883). Whilst on 

 a third visit to the same regions he suddenly died 

 at 

 the 



(1871), ]>erlmps hi* most important publication; 

 History of Austria ( 1875) ; A'///////i ('mum (1875), 

 a work on oriental chronology ; Ifixtiirit of Baby- 

 i<,,i,u (ed. I'rofesKor Sayce, 1877): lli\fi,i-if <//' ,sV- 

 nacherib (od. Professor Sayce, 1878); and papers 

 contributed to Tmnxlationi of Hiblictil Architology 

 and the lirst series of Record* of the Pott. 



Aleppo, in Syria, on 19th August IHTIi. licsides 

 e book* quoted, lie wrote Annals of A 



Smith. itot.DwiN, son of a Bcikshire physician, 

 was IMUII at Heading, 13th August 1823. He re- 

 ceived his education at Eton ami Oxford, where he 

 had a brilliant career, completed by a lirst-class in 

 classics in 1845. In 1847 he wo.- elected Fellow of 

 University College, and in the -ame Mar lie was 

 called to the tar at Lincoln's Inn. He was nomi- 

 nated assistant-secretary to the first, and secre- 

 tary to the second Oxford Inivcisity Commission, 

 ana served on the Popular Education Commission 

 in 1858. He was regius professor of Historv at 

 Oxford from 1858 till 1866. During the American 

 civil war he was a strenuous upholder of the 

 North, writing several pamphlets in support of the 

 Federal cause, and in 1864 lectured in the 1'nited 

 States. In 1868 he wa elected to the chair of 

 English and Constitutional History in the Cornell 

 University at Ithaca, New York. In 1871 he 

 settled in Canada, where he became a member of 

 the senate of Toronto University. He edited the 

 Canadian Monthly, 1872-74, and founded and for 

 a time edited The Week and The AV'""" 1 "'- He 

 regards the annexation of Canada to the Tinted 

 States as inevitable, and strongly advocates com- 

 mercial union or complete reciprocity between the 

 two. He has written much for periodicals, and 

 has contributed to this Encyclopaedia. Among his 

 works are Irish History and Irish Character ( 18(il ) ; 

 Lectures on the Study of History ( 1881 ) ; Rational 

 Religion ( 1861 ) ; Empire ( 1863) ; The Civil War in 

 America (1866); Three Eiil,*h f<t,if<:inif>, ( 1'ym, 

 Hampden, and Cromwell, 1867 ; new ed. 1882) ; A 

 Short History of England (1869); The Political 

 Destiny of Canada (1879); Cotoper ( 1 880 ) ; Lecture* 

 ami BMOM (1881); Jane Austen (1890) ; The United 

 States (1893) ; Questions of the Day (1894) : .\.-. 



Smith, HKNRY JOHN STEPHEN, mathematician, 

 was l>orn in Dublin, Novemlx-r 2, 1M26, and was 

 educated at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford, 

 taking a double-first in 1849. In 1861 he became 

 Savilian professor of Geometry. He died February 

 3, 1883. He was the greatest authority of his day 

 on the theory of numbers ( see his British Associa- 

 tion fitpotff from 1859 to 1865), and also wrote on 

 elliptic functions and modem geometry. In 1SS1 

 the French Academy offered tlieir 'Grand Prix' 

 for a demonstration of certain theorems, ignorant 

 of the fact that they had already been demonstrated 

 fourteen years before by Smith, to whom accord- 

 ingly the "prize of 3000 francs was awarded, but not 

 till a month after his death. He was a man of 

 great versatility, geniality, soundness of judgment, 

 and delicacy of humour. 



Smith. JAMKS and HORACE, authors of The 

 Reject i-<l Adilrcxses, were the sons of an eminent 

 London solicitor, and were Imrn, the former on 

 10th February 177">, the latter on .'{1st December 

 1779. Both were educated at Chigwell in K~M \. 

 .lames succeeded his father as solicitor to the Board 

 of Ordnance; Horace adopted the profession of u 

 stockbroker, and realised a handsome ton urn-, on 

 which lie retired with his family to Brighton. Both 

 were popular and accomplished men .lames n 

 markable for his gaiety ami conversational |MICT-. 

 and Horace the wealthier of the two distin 

 gnished for true liberality and benevolence. Both 

 had written for the Pic-nic. (1802), the Monthly 

 Mirror (1807-10), &c., when the committee of 

 management advertised for an address to U> sjHiken 

 at the opening of the new Drury Lane Theatre in 

 18)2, and the brothers adopted a suggestion made 

 to them, that they should write a series of supposed 

 ' Rejected Addresses.' They accomplished the task 

 in six weeks James furnishing imitations of \Vords- 

 worth, Southey, Coleridge, Crahhf, Cobliett, \c., 

 and Horace those of Scott, Byron (all but the lirst 

 stanza), 'Monk' Lewis, Moore, \V. T. Fitzgerald. 



