SMITH, ALEXANDER ( 1830-67 ). A Scottish poet, born at Kilmarnock. His father was a lace-pattern designer. After the usual education of a Scotch boy, Smith took up the trade of his father at Paisley and Glasgow', whither the fam ily in turn had gone. His Life Drama (1853) created a sensation. It was both defended and ridiculed: The faults of the book were obvious: every page showed immaturity and extravagance; a rather narrow reading had made him passion ately fond of a few modern poets, as Keats and Tennyson. and their peculiar turns of expres sion, reappearing in his verse, gave color to the charge of plagiarism, which was pushed to an absurd length. The richness and originality of imagery in his verse atone for its many sins against taste and knowledge. In 1854 Smith was appointed secretary to the University of Edinburgh: and in the following year, along with Sydney Dohell, he published a volume of Sonnets on the Crimean. War. He also wrote City Poems
(1857), Edwin of Deira (1861), and several de lightful prose works, as Dreamt/tory (1863), A Summer in Skye (1865), and Alfred Ilagart's Household, a story of Scotch life (1866), and a sequel, Miss Dona JPQuarrie. After his death appeared Last Leares (London, 1868), edited with a memoir by P. P. Alexander. Smith's verse and prose, though often admirable, just pass the hounds of sanity. He was classed with Philip James Bailey (q.v.), Sydney Dobell (q.v.), and Gerald Massey (q.v.), as a member of the `Spasmodic' school. The epithet was first used in Blued wool's .1/agazinc for May, 1854. Besides the memoir cited above, consult Brisbane, Early Years of .1. Smith (London, 1869).