ISO 



SMITH 



Netheravon, near Amesbury. 'Mr Hicks-Beach, 

 h tolls us, 'the squire, took a fancy to me, and 

 requested me to go with his son "to reside at 

 Weimar; but Germany hernme the scat of war, 

 and in stress of politic.* we put into Kdinhurgh, 

 where I remained five years ' ( 1798-1803). Dunne 

 this time he officiated in an Episcopal chapel 

 there, and published Six Sermon* ( 1800) ; married 

 in 1HOO a Miss Pybus of Cheam in Surrey ; and in 

 1802, with Jeffrey, Horne.r, and liroughain, started 

 the Edinburgh. Rei-irtr (q.v.), writing eigliteen ol 

 the articles in the first four numbera. He next 

 lived six years in London, and soon made his mark 

 u- a preacher, a lecturer at the Royal Institution 

 on moral philosophy (1804-6), anil a brilliant 

 talker; but in 1809 'WAS suddenly caught up by 

 the Archbishop of York, and transported to the 

 living of Foston in Yorkshire, where there had not 

 been a resident clergyman for 150 years,' but where 

 he continued for twenty as ' village parson, village 

 doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and 

 Edinburgh reviewer.' He farmed his glebe and 

 built a parsonage, but was pinched in his means 

 till in 1820 he came into 400 a year. In 1828 

 Lord Lyndhurst, the Tory chancellor, presented 

 him to a prebend of Bristol, and next year enabled 

 him to exchange Foston for the more desirable 

 rectory of Combe- Florey in Somerset. In 1831 

 Earl Grey appointed him a cation residentiary of 

 St Paul's, and this completed his round of eoclttj 

 astical preferment. Visions of a mitre hail some- 

 times crossed his waking dreams, but those deams 

 were never to be realised. However, he managed 

 to ' grow old merrily ' at Coml>e-Florey, which, in 

 his own phrase, 'bound up well with London.' In 

 London he died at his house, 56 Green Street, 

 Grosvenor Square, on 22d February 1846. He is 

 buried at Kensal Green. 



Sydney Smith's writings include sixty-five arti- 

 cles, collected in 18.39 from the Edinburgh Renew, 

 where they had appeared during 1802-27 ; Peter 

 Plymley's Letters (1807-8), in favour of Catholic 

 emancipation : Three Letters to Archdeacon Simili-- 

 ton on the Ecclesiastical Commission (1837 .'(!); 

 and other letters and pamphlets on the ballot, 

 American repudiation, the game- laws, prison 

 abuses, &c. They deal mainly with dead abuses 

 and forgotten controversies, and their very success 

 has consigned them to oblivion : who nowadays 

 cares to study the cleverest arguments against 

 seven years' transportation for poaching? So that 

 their author is chiefly rememliered as the creator 

 of ' Mrs Partington,' the kindly sensible humorist 

 who stands immeasurably aliove Theodore Hook, if 

 a good way below Charles Lamb. 



His Life (1855) was written by his daughter Saba 

 (1802-66), who in 1834 married Dr (Sir) Henry Holland 

 (q T.I ; voL ii. consists of selections from his Letter*, 

 edited by Hn Austin. See also vol. i. of Hay ward's Bio- 

 liraphical and Critical Euayt ( 1858 ), and Stuart J. Reid's 

 Lift and Times of Sidney Smith (18H4 ; newed. 1896). 



Smith. WALTER CHALMERS, Scottish poet, was 

 born in Aberdeen in 1824, studied at Old Aberdeen 

 and Edinburgh, and, after holding a Presbyterian 

 charge in London for some years, laboured as a 

 minister of the Free Church'at Orwell (Kimo 

 shire), in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and again in 

 l-'.'linburgh in the Free High Church. Widely 

 iM)|iular as an amiable and accomplished man and 

 an admirable preacher, he has won the favour of 

 a yet larger public by a series of volumes of poetry 

 marked by richness of thought, creative imagina- 

 tion, ami lyrical charm, although unequal and not 

 seldom careless in construction. These are Th 

 Bishop's Wall;, by ' Orwell' (1861 ); Olrig Grange, 

 by 'Hermann Kunst' (1872); Hilda among the 

 Broken Gods (1878); Raban, or Life Splinters 

 (1880); North-Country Folk (1883); Ktidrostan, 



a !>r,nii,itic Poem (1884); 77i-/w,//,/.v </ r antic* 

 for Sunday Kivniiujt ( 1887); .1 //,,./,- , 1890). 



Miiilll. WILLIAM, called the Km her of English 

 Geology ,_was Wn at Churchill in <)\ioi.Uhire, 23,1 

 March 1769. He became a land surveyor and en- 

 gineer, anil MI was naturally drawn to geology; 

 and in 1794, after hb MaiatOMBl as engineer to 

 the Somerset Coal Canal, he U-gan his stud\ i.f 

 the strata of England. His e|MK-li-muking Geologi- 

 cal Map of England was published in 1815, and 

 from 1819 to 1824 he published, with self denying 

 zeal, no fewer than twenty-one geologically col- 

 oured maps of English counties. ,,-sisted i'n the 

 latter task by bis nephew and pupil, John Phillips, 

 afterwards professor at Oxford. Smith received 

 th<- I.L.I), degree from Trinity College, Dublin, in 

 1835, and a Pension of IOO' from the erown in 

 1831. He died at Northampton. -JMli August ls:;<i. 

 He was buried here, and thus had his wish to be 

 buried in the Oolite as he had been born on it. 

 See his Memoirs by Professor Phillips ( 1844). 



Smith. SIR WILLIAM, eminent for his advance- 

 ment of classical and biblical learning, was Ixirn 

 in London in 1813, distinguished himself highly in 

 Greek and Latin in the examinations of the uni- 

 versity of London, and went through the course of 

 law at Gray's Inn. But he began the real work of 

 his life in 1840 with the publication of editions of 

 the Apology, Pha-do, and Criio, of Plato, and the 

 Agricola, Germania, and part of the Annuls of 

 Tacitus. His great Dictionary of Greek and ROHHUI 

 Antiquities appeared in 1840-42, and was only 

 superseded by it own third edition in 1891 (2 

 vols.). The Dictionary of (In /.- and Himnm /;,- 

 iirinihy and Mythology (3 vols. 1843-49) followed, 

 and this magnificent series of classical handliooks 

 was concluded by the lHi-ti<mar\i of Greek n,,,f 

 Roman Geography (2 vols. 1853-57). Their learned 

 editor next turned, and with still more striking 

 success, to the task of preparing a series of smaller 

 classical dictionaries for schools ; and some years 

 later still achieved further successes with bis well- 

 known series, Principia Latina and Iiiitia Grtrca, 

 on a method extended also to German and Italian. 

 Students' manuals of history formed the next series 

 of hooks he edited, including Hi < . . . l;,,nn . /'nun;-. 

 Iliunc, and Ilallam. His complete edition of 

 Gihlton's 1 in-l i in' ,nnl /',,// appeared in 1854 (8 

 yols.) ; his serviceable l.utiti l-'.n<ilixli l>irt!tnnin/ 

 in 1855 ; the Student's Latin Ormmmar in 18(i3 : the 

 .Mil mini uj 'English LUrnittn-f in 1864; and the 

 English-Latin Dirliiinary in 1S70. 



Another monumental group of works is his series 

 of theological dictionaries : the famous Dietionani 

 of the little (3 vols. 1860-63; new ed. 1893); A 

 Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, in conjunction 

 with Archdeacon Cheethani (_> vols. f876-SO) ; and 

 A Dictionary uj ' ('1,,-istian Biography, Literature, 

 Sects, and Doctrines during thejirst eight Centuries, 

 in conjunction with I)r Waee (4 vols. 1877-87). He 

 became editor of the Quartrrlt/ /,'/, in )St>7, held 

 the D.C.L. of Oxford (1870) and other honorary 

 degrees, and was knighted in 1892. He died on 

 the 7th October 1893. 



Smith. WILLIAM HENRY, newsagent, book- 

 seller, and Cabinet Minister, was born in London, 

 June 24, 1825. He was educated at the grammar- 

 school, Tnvistock, and while a youth entered his 

 Father's business, and rose step by step to be head 

 it" the tirm. This, the largest wholesale newspaper 

 nisiness of the kind in Britain, was founded by his 

 father (born 1792), who saw that the London 

 newspapers, sent o(F by the evening coaches only, 

 were not delivered in Manchester and Liverpool 

 intil forty-eight hours after publication. He con- 

 ched the idea of forwarding the papers by express 

 >arcel, with private coaches leaving London in the 



