SMITH, Edmund, or NEALE, for such was his father's name, an English poet, who gained some reputation in Dr Johnson's time for the elegance of his poetic genius, was born at Handley, in Westmoreland, in 1668. He was educated at Westminster and Oxford, where he took his degree of M.A. on the 8th of July 1696. Giving high promise both at school and college of his future eminence, his friends watched his progress with the liveliest interest. As so frequently happens with young men of genius, he got into irregular habits, and pestered the authorities of his college by his tavern brawls and general riotous behaviour. The Oxford dignitaries showed great forbearance to the young scapegrace, but without effect. In his life of Smith, Dr Johnson has recorded that he was silently expelled on December 20, 1705; but a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, for September 1822, contradicts this statement. At all events he came shortly afterwards to London, where he was favourably introduced to the theatre by Addison and Prior. His drama of Phaedra and Hippolitus was acted for the first time on the 21st of April 1707, but while it pleased the critics with the fine elegance of its classical mythology, the public, for whose amusement it was designed, unfortunately thought little, and cared less, for the beauties of mere classical allusion, and it was allowed to fall into oblivion before it had been enacted four times. Smith was too proud, or too indolent, or too shy to ensure its success by the regular band of applauders, and he found, to his mortification, that it was incapable of standing by its naked excellence. His Oxford ode on the death of Pocock, the orientalist, was reckoned, by Dr Johnson, the best lyrical composition of any that had appeared among modern writers. "Captain Rag," for such was the name he bore at Oxford, continued to please his friends by his varied knowledge and by the brilliancy of his conversation; but continued also to disgust them by the depth of his potations. It was said of Smith's friend, Phillips, the poet, "that he was never good company till he was drunk;" but it was said of Smith himself, that he was never good company "but while he was sober." He was, however, in his lucid moments a ready and exact critic, who had the faculty of seeing into the merits or demerits of a production at a glance. His casual censures or praises dropped in conversation, were, like those of the elder Scaliger, thought worthy of preservation by his friends. He had a great opinion of his own merits, and like most vain men, he did not escape the scorn and contempt of those who were much
his inferiors. He died in the month of July 1710, of too large a dose of medicine, which he had taken in boastful contempt of the cautions of the apothecary. He was buried at Hartham, in Wiltshire. Oldsworth has left a highly laudatory notice of Smith, and Dr Johnson has assigned him a niche in his gallery of the poets.