Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/406

 the Institution of Civil Engineers, established on 2 Jan. 1818.

Smeaton was a man of simple tastes and few wants. The Princess Dashkoff of Russia tried in vain to tempt him to Russia with the most splendid offers, but he steadfastly refused to leave his native country. Astronomical and antiquarian pursuits afforded him a relaxation; on the former he contributed several papers to the Royal Society between 1768 and 1788, but his incessant labours gradually destroyed his naturally strong constitution, and after a short illness he died at Austhorpe, in his sixty-eighth year, on 28 Oct. 1792; he was buried in the chancel of Whitkirk parish church, where there is a tablet to his memory. On 8 June 1756 he married Anne (d. 1784), by whom he left two daughters. The last years of his life he had intended to devote to an account of his numerous works, but his account of the construction of his great work, the Eddystone Lighthouse, which appeared in the year of his death, was all that he lived to complete.

In addition to a portrait, attributed to Rhodes, in the National Portrait Gallery, there is an oil painting of Smeaton by Wildman, after Gainsborough, at the Institution of Civil Engineers. An engraving of another portrait by W. Brown forms the frontispiece to the first volume of ‘Smeaton's Reports,’ published in 3 vols. in 1812 by the Society of Engineers.

[Smiles's Lives of the Engineers—Smeaton and Rennie; Smeaton's Narrative of the Building and a Description of the Construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse, 2nd edit. 1793; Smeaton's Reports, 1812, 3 vols. (a brief memoir is given as an introduction to vol. i.); Platt's Records of Whitkirk, 1892; Flint's Mudge Memoirs, Truro, 1883; Ann. Reg. 1793, p. 255; notes kindly supplied by R. B. Prosser, esq., and Oliphant Smeaton, esq., of Edinburgh.]

 SMEDLEY, EDWARD (1788–1836), miscellaneous writer, second son of the Rev. Edward Smedley by his wife Hannah, fourth daughter of George Bellas of Willey in the county of Surrey, was born in the Sanctuary, Westminster, on 12 Sept. 1788. His father was educated at Westminster school and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1773, M.A. 1776, and became a fellow of his college. He held the post of usher of Westminster school from 1774 to 1820, and was sometime reader of the Rolls Chapel. He was appointed vicar of Little Coates, Lincolnshire, in 1782, and of Meopham, Kent, in 1786. He published in 1810, ‘Erin: a Geographical and Descriptive Poem,’ London, 8vo. In 1812 he was instituted vicar of Bradford Abbas, and rector of Clifton-Maybank in Dorset, and in 1816 was made rector of North Bovey and of Powderham in Devonshire. He died on 8 Aug. 1825.

Edward was sent to Westminster school as a home boarder in 1795, before he had completed his seventh year. He became a king's scholar in 1800, and was elected head to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805. He obtained the wooden spoon in 1809, graduating B.A. in the same year, and M.A. in 1812. As a middle bachelor he gained one of the members' prizes for Latin prose in 1810, and in the following year he gained a similar distinction as a senior bachelor. He was elected to a fellowship of Sidney-Sussex College in 1812, and won the Seatonian prize for English verse in 1813, 1814, 1827, and 1828. Smedley was ordained deacon in September 1811, and took priest's orders in the following year. Through the kindness of his father's old friend, Gerrard Andrewes [q. v.], Smedley became preacher at St. James's Chapel, Tottenham Court Road, and in July 1815 was appointed clerk in orders of St. James's parish, Westminster. Smedley vacated his fellowship on his marriage, on 8 Jan. 1816. Shortly afterwards he became evening lecturer at St. Giles's, Camberwell, a post which he held for a few years only. In 1819 he resigned his appointment of clerk in orders of St. James's parish, and took to teaching in addition to his literary and clerical work. In 1822 he accepted the editorship of the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana.’ He commenced his duties with the seventh part, and continued to hold the post of editor until his death. Owing to his increasing deafness, he was compelled in 1827 to give up taking pupils, and in the following year he became totally deaf. In 1829 he was collated by the bishop of Lincoln to the prebend of Sleaford, and in 1831 he resigned his preachership at St. James's Chapel. In spite of his many bodily infirmities he continued his literary labours until within a few months of his death. He died, after a lingering illness, on 29 June 1836, aged 47, and was buried at Dulwich. By his wife Mary, youngest daughter of James Hume of Wandsworth Common, Surrey, secretary of the customs, he had several children.

Smedley was a frequent contributor to the ‘British Critic’ and to the ‘Penny Cyclopædia,’ as well as to the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana.’ His ‘Poems … with a Selection from his Correspondence and a Memoir of his Life,’ London, 8vo, were published by his widow in 1837. ‘The Tribute: