Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/276

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SMITH, C. — SMITH, G.

and other Essays (1784), dedicated by permission to William Hayley, and printed at her own expense. For some months Mrs Smith and her family lived in a tumble-down château near Dieppe, where she produced a translation of Manon Lescaut (1785) and a Romance of Real Life (1786), borrowed from Les Causes Célèbres. On her return to England Mrs Smith carried out a friendly separation between herself and her husband, and thenceforward devoted herself to novel writing. Her chief works are: — Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle (1788); Celestina (1792); Desmond (1792); The Old Manor House (1793); The Young Philosopher (1798); and Conversations introducing Poetry (1804). She died at Tilford, near Farnham, Surrey, on the 28th of October 1806. She had twelve children, one of whom, Lionel (1778-1842), rose to the rank of lieutenant-general in the army. He became K.C.B. in 1832 and from 1833 to 1839 was governor of the Windward and Leeward Islands.

Charlotte Smith's novels were highly praised by her contemporaries and are still noticeable for their ease and grace of style. Hayley said that Emmeline, considering the situation of the author, was the most wonderful production he had ever seen, and not inferior to any book in that fascinating species of composition (Nichols, Illustrations of Literature, vii. 708). The best account of Mrs Smith is by Sir Walter Scott, and is based on material supplied by her sister, Mrs Dorset, with a detailed criticism of her work by Scott (Misc. Prose Works, 1841, i. 348-359). Charlotte Smith is best remembered by her charming poems for children.


SMITH, COLVIN (1795-1875), Scottish portrait-painter, was born at Brechin, Scotland, in 1795. He studied in London in the schools of the Royal Academy and worked in Nollekens's studio. He then proceeded to Italy, where he executed some fine copies from Titian; and at Antwerp he made studies from the works of Rubens. Returning to Scotland in 1827, he settled in Edinburgh, occupying the house and studio which had formerly belonged to Raeburn. Soon he attained a wide practice as a portrait-painter, and among his sitters were Lord Jeffrey, Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling, and many of the most celebrated Scotsmen of the time. His portrait of Sir Walter Scott was so popular that he executed some twenty replicas of it, for seven of which he received fresh sittings. His works are distinguished by excellent draftsmanship, by directness and simplicity of treatment, and by well-marked individuality. He died in Edinburgh on the 21st of July 1875.


SMITH, EDMUND KIRBY (1824-1893), Confederate general in the American Civil War, was the son of Joseph Lee Smith (1776-1846), an American lawyer and soldier, who served with credit in the War of 1812 and rose to the rank of colonel U.S.A. His elder brother, Ephraim Kirby Smith (1807-1847), also a soldier, fell at Molino del Rey; and Joseph Lee Kirby Smith, Ephraim's son, who took the Federal side in the Civil War, was mortally wounded at the battle of Corinth, having at the age of twenty-six attained the rank of brevet-colonel U.S.A. Edmund Kirby Smith was born at St Augustine, Fla., on the 16th of May 1824, and graduated at West Point in 1845, being assigned to the infantry. In the Mexican War he was breveted first lieutenant, and captain for gallantry at Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo and at Contreras-Churubusco. He was assistant professor of mathematics at West Point from 1849 to 1852 and was later engaged in Indian warfare on the Texas frontier. In 1861 he attained the rank of major. When Florida seceded he resigned his army commission and entered the Confederate service as a lieutenant-colonel. He was made a brigadier-general on the 17th of June 1861, and was wounded at the battle of Bull Run (q.v.). In command of the Confederate forces in the Cumberland Gap region Kirby Smith took part in General Bragg's invasion of Kentucky in the autumn of 1862, and inflicted upon the Federal forces a severe defeat at Richmond, Ky., on the 30th of August; and was present at the battles of Perryville and Murfreesboro (Stone River). From February 1863 to the fall of the Confederacy he was in command of the trans-Mississippi department, and was successful in making this section of the Confederacy (isolated from the rest by the fall of Vicksburg) self-supporting. He instituted a regular system of blockade-running, and met and defeated the Red River expedition under General N. P. Banks in 1864. Kirby Smith and his troops surrendered on the 26th of May 1865, being the last armed forces of the Confederate States to do so. After the war, he was from 1866 to 1868 president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph company, from 1868 to 1870 president of the Western Military Academy, from 1870 to 1875 chancellor of the university of Nashville, and from 1875 to his death professor of mathematics at the university of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. He died at Sewanee on the 28th of March 1893.


SMITH, FRANCIS HOPKINSON (1838-), American author, artist and engineer, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 23rd of October 1838, a descendant of Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He became a contractor in New York City and did much work for the Federal government, including the stone ice-breaker at Bridgeport, Connecticut, the jetties at the mouth of the Connecticut river, the foundation for the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty in New York harbour, the Race Rock Lighthouse off New London, Conn., and many life-saving stations. His vacations were spent sketching in the White Mountains, in Cuba, in Mexico, and afterwards in Venice, Constantinople and Holland. He published various volumes of travel, illustrated by himself; they include Old Lines in New Black and White (1885); Well-Worn Roads (1886); A White Umbrella in Mexico (1889); Gondola Days (1897), and The Venice of To-Day (1897). His novels and short stories are especially felicitous in their portrayal of the Old South. Among them are: Col. Carter of Cartersville (1891), which was successfully dramatized; A Day at La Guerre's and other Days (1892); A Gentleman Vagabond (1895); Tom Grogan (1896); Caleb West, Master-Diver (1898); The Other Fellow (1899); The Fortunes of Oliver Horn (1902), which has reminiscences of his artist friends; Col. Carter's Christmas (1904); At Close Range (1905); The Tides of Barnegat (1906); The Veiled Lady (1907); The Romance of an Old Fashioned Gentleman (1907); Peter (1908); and Forty Minutes Late and Other Stories (1909).


SMITH, GEORGE (1789-1846), British publisher, founder of the firm of Smith, Elder & Co., was born in Scotland in 1789. From Elgin, where he was apprenticed to a bookseller, he migrated to London, where he found employment first with Rivingtons, and afterwards with John Murray. In 1816 Smith and another Scot, Alexander Elder, began business at 158 Fenchurch Street as booksellers and stationers; and in 1819 they became publishers also. It was here that George Smith (2) (1824-1901), the most famous member of the firm, was born on the 19th of March 1824; and in the same year the business was removed to 65 Cornhill. At the age of fourteen George Smith (2) came into the business, and in 1843 he took over the control of the publishing department. On his father's death in 1846 the responsibility of the business devolved principally upon him, and under his management it increased thirteen times in twenty years. A large portion of the business was connected with foreign agencies and banking, especially with India, but this was relinquished in 1868 to his partner Henry S. King, who now separated from the firm, retaining the old premises at Cornhill, while Smith removed the publishing business, now under his sole control, to 15 Waterloo Place. For over thirty years Smith was the friend and publisher of Ruskin, and it was with him that Jane Eyre found a publisher. In 1855 was started the Overland Mail, a weekly periodical for Indian readers, and the Homeward Mail, containing Indian news for English readers. By Smith, Elder & Co. were issued works by Darwin, Ruskin, Thackeray, Robert and Mrs Browning, Wilkie Collins, Matthew Arnold, Miss Martineau, James Payn and Mrs Humphry Ward. In 1866 was published Trollope's Last Chronicles of Barset, for which £3000 was paid. In January 1860 the first of George Smith's three great undertakings was begun, the Cornhill Magazine being issued in that month under the editorship of Thackeray. The second venture was the founding in 1865 of the Pall Mall Gazette (see Newspapers). The third and most important was the publication of the Dictionary of National Biography, the first volume of which was issued in 1882; it was completed in 1901, in 66 volumes; and this