See NATURE 
381 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1883 
PROFESSOR HENRY SMITH 
N Friday, the 9th inst., we lost one of our most 
gifted men. By the death of Prof. Henry Smith 
there has dropped out from our roll-call a name which 
was already known among a wide circle of friends and 
admirers, but which would assuredly have been more 
widely known and more fully recognised if he had 
remained longer in our ranks. 
Henry John Stephen Smith was born in Dublin, but 
when he was about two years old his family, at his father’s 
death, removed to England. His precocity from the earliest 
age was remarkable; but what was perhaps still more 
remarkable, the talents which he thus showed did not, as 
is so often the case, fail him in after life. He was a fair- 
haired child, and was known among his relations as the 
“white crow.” When he was two years old it was 
understood that he could read; and on his third birth- 
day it was agreed that he should be tried, on the condi- 
tion that, in the case of failure, the white crow should be 
allowed to fly out of the window, which was set open for 
the purpose. Itis needless to add that there was no occa- 
sion for flight. At the age of four he was found one day lying 
flat on the floor, with his face raised slightly above his book 
(his sight being, even then, short) teaching himself Greek 
from an old-fashioned grammar full of antique contrac- 
tions in the characters. His subsequent education was 
carried on until he was eleven by his mother, and then by 
tutors. For an account of the rapidity with which he 
galloped over the ground with one of them, we are indebted 
to an interesting letter in the 77wes of the 12thinst. With 
a view to his education the family removed to Oxford in 
1840, whence he was transplanted to Rugby. He entered 
the school in August, 1841, the commencement of the last 
year of Dr. Arnold’s Head Mastership, and was in the 
Boarding House of the late Rev. Henry Highton, who 
was himself an old Rugbeian, a pupil of Arnold, and Co- 
Exhibiticner from the school with the present Dean of 
Llandaff and the late Dean of Westminster, and had lately 
graduated at Oxford, taking a First Class in Classics and 
a Second in Mathematics. Henry Smith had been 
Highton’s private pupil at Oxford, and was so well taught 
that when he entered Rugby he was (although only then 
fourteen) placed in the fifth form, which is the highest 
form but one below the sixth, and which, by the rules of 
the school, is the highest in which a new boy can be 
placed. He was distinguished at Rugby for his unvarying 
gentleness of character, and was a favourite alike with 
masters and boys. An old schoolfellow writes of him 
thus; ‘I was a young boy in the house, and remember 
being struck with his great gentleness and amiability. It 
did me good at once, and I felt it, as I believe, to my 
lasting benefit.” He was always much attached to his 
old friend and tutor, Highton; and ever since the latter’s 
death, in December, 1874, no one has shown more kind- 
ness to his widow and children than Henry Smith. At 
Rugby he progressed as rapidly as elsewhere, and was 
kept back from entering the sixth form under Arnold, only 
on account of his age. He was the first boy promoted to 
that form under Dr. Tait, Dr. Arnold's successor, 
VOL. XXVII.—NOo. 695 
Nothing in fact seemed capable of stopping his intel- 
lectual career. The death of his only brother and his 
consequent withdrawal from school, which would have 
thrown most boys entirely out of gear, did not interfere 
with his gaining, at the age of eighteen the scholarship 
at Balliol. A severe illness delayed his residence at college, 
but neither the malady itself, nor absence from Eng- 
land, nor severance from books prevented him in 1848, 
winning the blue ribbon in classics among Oxford under- 
graduates—the Ireland Scholarship. In 1850 he took his 
degree, obtaining an old-fashioned ‘Double First,” 
namely, in classics and mathematics. The next year 
he gained the Senior Mathematical Scholarship; and 
if in this he had but few competitors, it was because his 
strength and powers were already known. After such a 
University career, almost unparalleled in the annals of 
Oxford, it seems but a natural consequence that he 
should be elected, as was the case, to a Fellowship at his 
College. In 1861 he was elected successor to the late 
Baden Powell in the Savilian Professorship of Geometry, 
which chair he retained until his death. With a view to 
relieving him from the labour and duties of College 
tuition, which he had faithfully discharged for five-and- 
twenty years, Corpus Christi College offered him a Fellow- 
ship free from such duties. Notwithstanding his regret 
at leaving (although, as it subsequently proved, tem- 
porarily) his old college, he decided, having reference to 
the growing calls upon his time, to accept the offer. But 
Balliol, unwilling to lose all connection with its dis- 
tinguished alumnus, afterwards bestowed upon him an 
honorary Fellowship, and, under the recent Statutes, a 
full Fellowship without emolument. 
The malady under which he ultimately sank may be 
considered hereditary, for his father died from the same 
cause, and the son showed symptoms of it even at an 
early age. It is idle now to speculate whether a quieter 
or less exhausting life would have prolonged his years. 
There is some truth in the idea that a man can first and 
last perform a certain amount of work andno more. On 
this supposition it may be even a gain to the individual to 
have performed his task in the minimum of time, while 
those who remain must rest thankful at having lived in his 
day, and having retained him amongst us as long as was 
the case. 
The testimony of his friends to his ability and other 
qualities is from all quarters abundant. Prof. Huxley 
writes : ‘‘ Henry Smith impressed me as one of the ablest 
men I ever met with; and the effect of his great powers 
was almost whimsically exaggerated by his extreme 
gentleness of manner, and the playful way in which his 
epigrams were scattered about. They were so bright and 
sharp that they transfixed their object without hurting 
him. I think that he would have been one of the greatest 
men of our time, if he had added to his wonderfully keen 
intellect and strangely varied and extensive knowledge 
the power of caring very strongly about the attainment of 
any object.” Although the present writer is not likely to 
differ much from Prof. Huxley in his estimate of the 
man, he would still suggest that Henry Smith’s care for 
the attainment of an object was measured rather by his 
estimate of its ultimate value than by its present advan- 
tage. For those who knew him best were most fully 
aware of the effort which it cost him to postpone (as he 
s 
