CHRISTOPHER, now chiefly remembered by his prose translation of Horace, was born at Shippbourne, in Kent, on the 11th of April 1722. He received his education successively at Maidstone, at Durham, and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He early gave evidence of possessing a power of versification; and on entering college he rose to immediate distinction as a classic, a rhymer, and a frequenter of taverns. Smart was chosen fellow of his college in 1745, and gained the Seatonian prize for five successive years, for poems composed on the Supreme Being. In 1752 he married Miss Carman, a relation of

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1 This garden was first established by the company in 1673; and having, after that period, been stocked by them with a great variety of plants for the improvement of botany, Sir Hans, in order to encourage so serviceable an undertaking, granted to the company the inheritance of it, being part of his estate and manor of Chelsea, on condition that it should be for ever preserved as a physic garden. As a proof of its being so maintained, he obliged the company, in consideration of the said grant, to present yearly to the Royal Society, in one of their weekly meetings, fifty specimens of plants that had been grown in the garden the preceding year, and which were all to be specifically distinct from each other, until the number of 2000 should be completed. This number was completed in the year 1761. In 1733 the company erected a marble statue of Sir Hans, executed by Ryerbeck, which is placed upon a pedestal in the centre of the garden, with a Latin inscription expressing his donation, and the design and advantages of it. Newberry the publisher, gave up his fellowship, and he took himself to London, to commence the career of author. He wrote a satire, called the *Hilliad*, against the notorious Sir John Hill, who had previously attacked him in a criticism of his poems. He was not deficient in those mental qualities which ensure success in the literary calling, but he was hopelessly addicted to drinking and other vices, which speedily wrecked his constitution. Harassed by disease, and plunged irrecoverably into poverty, he lost his reason, and was confined in a lunatic asylum for two years. During his intervals of sanity he executed prose translations of the Psalms, of Phaedrus, and of Horace. He was in the receipt of £50 a year out of the treasury, yet his confirmed habits as a spendthrift could not be broken through, and he died in great poverty in King's Bench prison, where he had been confined during the latter part of his life, on the 22nd of May 1771. Poor Smart was not quite destitute of good qualities. He was generous and open-hearted, and was possessed of considerable sensibility. He was known after a debauch to pen fervid lines on his knees, so great was his contrition; but as usually happens, when the next temptation came, he had forgotten all his vows. He was the friend of Garrick, of Goldsmith, and of Johnson. He was the Edgar Allan Poe of the eighteenth century, though he fell considerably short of that ideal writer in all the higher qualities of his genius. A quarto edition of his poems was published in 1753, and a collected edition of them in 1791.

**Smeaton, John**, an eminent civil engineer, was born on the 18th of June 1724, at Austhorpe, near Leeds, in a house built by his grandfather, and where his family have resided ever since. The strength of his understanding and the originality of his genius appeared at an early age. His playthings were not the playthings of children, but the tools which men employ; and he appeared to have had greater entertainment in seeing the men in the neighbourhood work, and asking them questions, than in anything else. One day he was seen on the top of his father's barn, fixing up something like a windmill; another time, he attended some men fixing a pump at a neighbouring village, and observing them cut off a piece of bored pipe, he was so lucky as to procure it, and he actually made with it a working pump that raised water. These anecdotes referred to circumstances that happened while he was yet in petticoats, and most likely before he attained his sixth year. About his fourteenth or fifteenth year, he constructed for himself an engine for turning, and made several presents to his friends of boxes in ivory or wood very neatly turned. He forged his iron and steel, and melted his metal; he had tools of every sort for working in wood, ivory, and metals. He made a lathe, by which he cut a perpetual screw in brass, a thing little known at that day, which was the invention of Henry Hindley of York, with whom Smeaton soon became acquainted, and they spent many a night at Hindley's house till daylight, conversing on those subjects. Thus had Smeaton, by the strength of his genius and indefatigable industry, acquired, at the age of eighteen, an extensive set of tools, and the art of working in most of the mechanical trades, without the assistance of any master. A part of every day was generally occupied in forming some ingenious piece of mechanism. Smeaton's father was an attorney, and desirous of bringing him up to the same profession. Smeaton therefore came up to London in 1742, and attended the courts in Westminster Hall; but finding that the law did not suit the bent of his genius, he wrote a strong memorial on that subject to his father, whose good sense from that moment left the youth to pursue the bent of his genius in his own way.

In 1751 he began a course of experiments to try a machine of his invention to measure a ship's way at sea, and also made two voyages in company with Dr Knight to try it, and a compass of his own invention and making, which was rendered magnetic by Dr Knight's artificial magnets. The second voyage was made in the Fortune sloop of war, commanded at that time by Captain Alexander Campbell. In 1753 he was elected member of the Royal Society. The number of papers published in their *Transactions* will show the universality of his genius and knowledge. In 1759 he was honoured, by a unanimous vote, with their gold medal for his paper entitled "An Experimental Inquiry concerning the Natural Powers of Water and Wind to turn Mills, and other Machines depending on a circular motion." This paper, he says, was the result of experiments made on working models in the years 1752 and 1753, but not communicated to the Society till 1759; before which time he had an opportunity of putting the effect of these experiments into real practice, in a variety of cases, and for various purposes, so as to assure the Society he had found them to answer. In December 1755, the Eddystone lighthouse was burned down. Weston, the chief proprietor, and the others, being desirous of rebuilding it in the most substantial manner, inquired of the Earl of Macclesfield, then president of the Royal Society, whom he thought the most proper to rebuild it; and his lordship recommended Smeaton. He accordingly undertook the work, and he completed it in the summer of 1759. Of the preparation for this extraordinary work, of its commencement and progress, Smeaton has given an ample and interesting description in a splendid folio volume which was first published in 1791. The same volume contains the history of the different buildings which have been erected on the Eddystone rock. Though Smeaton completed the building of the Eddystone lighthouse in 1759, yet it appears he did not soon get into full business as a civil engineer; but in 1764, while in Yorkshire, he offered himself a candidate to be one of the receivers of the Derwentwater estate, and on the 31st of December in that year, he was appointed, at a full board of Greenwich hospital, in a manner highly flattering to himself; when other two persons, strongly recommended and powerfully supported, were candidates for the employment.

Smeaton having now got into full business as a civil engineer, performed many works of general utility. He made the Calder navigable; a work that required great skill and judgment, owing to the very impetuous floods in that river. He planned and attended the execution of the great canal in Scotland, joining the Firths of Forth and Clyde, for conveying the trade of the country either to the Atlantic or German Ocean; and having brought it to the place originally intended, he declined a handsome yearly salary, in order that he might attend to the multiplicity of his other business. The vast variety of mills which Smeaton constructed, so greatly to the satisfaction and advantage of the owners, will show the great use which he made of his experiments in 1752 and 1753; for he never trusted to theory in any case where he could have an opportunity to investigate it by experiment. He built a steam-engine at Austhorpe, and made experiments upon it, purposely to ascertain the power of Newcomen's steam-engine, which he greatly improved. About the year 1785 Smeaton's health began to decline; and he then took the resolution of endeavouring to avoid all the business he could, so that he might have leisure to publish an account of his inventions and works, which was certainly the first wish of his heart; for he has often been heard to say, that "he thought he could not render so much service to his country as by doing that." He got only his account of the Eddystone lighthouse completed, and some preparations to his intended *Treatise on Mills*. He could not resist the solicitations of his friends in various works; and Aubert, whom he greatly loved and respected, being chosen chairman of Ramsgate harbour, prevailed upon him to accept the place of engineer. To their joint efforts the public is chiefly indebted for the improvements which have been made there, as fully appears in a report that Smeaton presented to the board of trustees in 1791, which they immediately published. Smeaton being at Aughtorpe, walking in his garden on the 16th of September 1792, was struck with palsy, and died the 28th of October.