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This story I heard from the late Mr. Clark of Lincoln's Inn 1, 45 to whom it was told by the friend of Smith.

Such scruples might debar him from some profitable employ- 46 ments, but as they could not 'deprive him of any real esteem they left him many friends; and no man was ever better introduced to the theatre than he who, in that violent conflict of parties, had a Prologue and Epilogue from the first wits on either side 2.

But learning and nature will now and then take different courses. 47 His play pleased the criticks, and the criticks only. It was, as Addison has recorded, hardly heard the third night 3. Smith had indeed trusted entirely to his merit; had ensured no band of applauders, nor used any artifice to force success, and found that naked excellence was not sufficient for its own support.

The play, however, was bought by Lintot, who advanced the 48 price from fifty guineas, the current rate, to sixty 5; and Halifax, the general patron, accepted the dedication. Smith's indolence kept him from writing the dedication, till Lintot, after fruitless importunity, gave notice that he would publish the play without it. Now therefore it was written; and Halifax expected the author with his book, and had prepared to reward him with a place of three hundred pounds a year. Smith, by pride, or caprice, or indolence, or bashfulness, neglected to attend him,

'Johnson in his Shakespeare, viii. 337, describes him as the late learned and ingenious Mr. Thomas Clark of Lincoln's Inn.'

2 For his Phaedra and Hippolitus
Addison wrote the prologue (Addi-
son's Works, vi. 533) and Prior the
epilogue (Eng. Poets, xxxiii. 92), in
which he is very happily facetious.'
Post, PRIOR, 60. It begins:-
'Ladies, to-night your pity I implore
For one who never troubled you
before;

An Oxford man, extremely read in
Greek,

Who from Euripides makes Phaedra
speak;

And comes to town to let us Moderns know

How women loved two thousand years ago.'

3Would one think it was possible (at a time when an author lived that

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though doubtless warned and pressed by his friends, and at last missed his reward by not going to solicit it'.

Addison has, in The Spectator, mentioned the neglect of Smith's tragedy as disgraceful to the nation, and imputes it to the fondness for operas then prevailing. The authority of Addison is great; yet the voice of the people, when to please the people is the purpose, deserves regard3. In this question, I cannot but think the people in the right. The fable is mythological, a story which we are accustomed to reject as false, and the manners are so distant from our own that we know them not from sympathy, but by study: the ignorant do not understand the action, the learned reject it as a school-boy's tale; incredulus odis. What I cannot for a moment believe, I cannot for a moment behold with interest or anxiety. The sentiments thus remote from life are removed yet further by the diction, which is too luxuriant and splendid for dialogue, and envelopes the thoughts rather than displays them. It is a scholar's play, such as may please the reader rather than the spectator; the work of a vigorous and elegant mind, accustomed to please itself with its own conceptions, but of little acquaintance with the course of life.

Dennis tells, in one of his pieces, that he had once a design to have written the tragedy of Phædra; but was convinced that the action was too mythological.

51 In 1709, a year after the exhibition of Phædra, died John Philips, the friend and fellow-collegian of Smith, who, on that occasion, wrote a poem, which justice must place among the best elegies which our language can shew, an elegant mixture of fondness and admiration, of dignity and softness'. There are some

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passages too ludicrous'; but every human performance has its faults.

This elegy it was the mode among his friends to purchase for 52 a guinea; and, as his acquaintance was numerous, it was a very profitable poem.

Of his Pindar, mentioned by Oldisworth, I have never other- 53 wise heard. His Longinus3 he intended to accompany with some illustrations, and had selected his instances of the false Sublime from the works of Blackmore.

He resolved to try again the fortune of the Stage, with the 54 story of Lady Jane Grey. It is not unlikely that his experience of the inefficacy and incredibility of a mythological tale might determine him to choose an action from English History, at no great distance from our own times, which was to end in a real event, produced by the operation of known characters.

A subject will not easily occur that can give more opportuni- 55 ties of informing the understanding, for which Smith was unquestionably qualified, or for moving the passions, in which I suspect him to have had less power.

Having formed his plan and collected materials he declared 56 that a few months would complete his design; and, that he might pursue his work with less frequent avocations, he was, in June 1710, invited by Mr. George Ducket5 to his house at Hartham in Wiltshire. Here he found such opportunities of indulgence as did not much forward his studies, and particularly some strong ale, too delicious to be resisted. He eat and drank till he found himself plethorick; and then, resolving to ease himself by evacuation, he wrote to an apothecary in the neighbourhood a prescription of a purge so forcible, that the apothecary thought it his duty to delay it

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till he had given notice of its

For far-fetch'd rhymes makes puzzled angels strain,

And in low prose dull Lucifer complain.' Eng. Poets, xxv. 113.

2

Ante, SMITH, 24.

Ante, SMITH, 25, 26.

3

4

Ante, SMITH, 24.

5 Post, POPE, 122, 153. Duckett was a Commissioner of the Excise. He died on Oct. 6, 1732. Gent. Mag. 1732, p. 1030.

Gartham in the Lives. Hartham is near Chippenham.

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58

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danger. Smith, not pleased with the contradiction of a shopman, and boastful of his own knowledge, treated the notice with rude contempt, and swallowed his own medicine, which, in July 1710, brought him to the grave. He was buried at Hartham.

Many years afterwards, Ducket communicated to Oldmixon the historian an account, pretended to have been received from Smith, that Clarendon's History was, in its publication, corrupted by Aldrich, Smalridge, and Atterbury, and that Smith was employed to forge and insert the alterations'.

This story was published triumphantly by Oldmixon, and may be supposed to have been eagerly received; but its progress was soon checked, for finding its way into the Journal of Trevoux 2 it fell under the eye of Atterbury, then an exile in France, who immediately denied the charge, with this remarkable particular, that he never in his whole life had once spoken to Smith 3; his company being, as must be inferred, not accepted by those who attended to their characters.

The charge was afterwards very diligently refuted by Dr. Burton of Eaton, a man eminent for literature, and, though not of the same party with Aldrich and Atterbury 5, too studious of truth to leave them burthened with a false charge. The testimonies which he has collected have convinced mankind that either Smith or Ducket was guilty of wilful and malicious falsehood.

1 See Appendix A.

2

Atterbury, in his Vindication, says:-'An Holland-Journal gave me the first notice.' It was entitled Bibliothèque Raisonnée des Ouvrages des Sçavans de l'Europe, Amsterdam, 1730, p. 154. Burton's Genuineness, &c., pp. 125, 131. See also Atterbury Corres. i. 273.

3 'Atterbury learned in the ninthyear of his banishment, that he had been accused by Oldmixon, as dishonest and malignant a scribbler as any that has been saved from oblivion by The Dunciad [ii. 283], of having, in concert with other Christ-Church men, garbled Clarendon's History. He published a short vindication of himself, which is a model in its kind, luminous, temperate, and dignified.' MACAULAY, Misc. Writings, 1871, p. 351.

The Vindication is reprinted in Burton's Genuineness, &c., p. 121, and

in Atterbury Corres. 1783, i. 278. Oldmixon, in 1732, published a Reply. [Three years later he virtually abandoned the charge, though in a disingenuous manner. Hist. of Eng. 1735, Pref. p. 4.]

In 1704 Atterbury wrote:- The Tale of a Tub comes from Christ Church. . . . The authors are now supposed generally at Oxford to be one Smith and one Philips, the first a Student, the second a Commoner of Christ Church.' Corres. iii. 203,214.

Ante, SMITH, 2. His work was published in 1744, but we learn from the preface that part of it had appeared about twelve years earlier in the Weekly Miscellany. To this Oldmixon published a Reply, reprinted in Burton's Genuineness, &c., P. 141.

5 Burton shows on pp. 103, 113 that he was a Whig.

Oldmixon, in Duckett's lifetime,

This controversy brought into view those parts of Smith's life 60 which with more honour to his name might have been concealed.

Of Smith I can yet say a little more. He was a man of such 61 estimation among his companions that the casual censures or praises which he dropped in conversation were considered, like those of Scaliger, as worthy of preservation.

He had great readiness and exactness of criticism, and by a 62 cursory glance over a new composition would exactly tell all its faults and beauties.

He was remarkable for the power of reading with great 63 rapidity, and of retaining with great fidelity what he so easily collected.

He therefore always knew what the present question required; 64 and when his friends expressed their wonder at his acquisitions, made in a state of apparent negligence and drunkenness, he never discovered his hours of reading or method of study, but involved himself in affected silence, and fed his own vanity with their admiration and conjectures.

One practice he had, which was easily observed: if any thought 65 or image was presented to his mind that he could use or improve, he did not suffer it to be lost; but, amidst the jollity of a tavern or in the warmth of conversation, very diligently committed it to paper.

Thus it was that he had gathered two quires of hints for his 66 new tragedy; of which Rowe, when they were put into his hands, could make, as he says, very little use, but which the collector considered as a valuable stock of materials 2.

had published a letter, purporting to be written by him, in which it was stated that Smith had informed him of the interpolation. Genuineness, &c., p. 122. Burton remarks on this: -We are not told of any deathbed repentance and confession [on Duckett's part]; but he has been thoroughly convicted of the falsehood of this report, which he dared not to defend, and was ashamed to retract.' Ib. p. 45.

1 Baker records an anecdote showing the rapidity with which he composed. 'Mrs. Barry, who acted Phaedra, complaining to him at the rehearsal that she thought her exit in the third act too tame, he told her he

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