Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/417

 Highlands of Scotland’ (Edinburgh, 1850, 8vo) is an authoritative and sumptuous work. He collected his miscellaneous poems under the title ‘Io Anche! Poems chiefly Lyrical’ (Edinburgh, 1851, 8vo). Many of the pieces are inspired by an active fancy, and are correct and graceful in form; and one song, ‘The Scottish Widow's Lament,’ charms by its unaffected pathos.

 SMIRKE, EDWARD (1795–1875), lawyer and antiquary, third son of Robert Smirke [q. v.], and brother of Sir Robert Smirke [q. v.], and of Sydney Smirke [q. v.], was born at Marylebone in 1795. He was educated privately and at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. (being twelfth wrangler) in 1816, and M.A. in 1820. In July 1815 he obtained the chancellor's gold medal for an English poem on ‘Wallace,’ which was printed in that year, and in ‘Cambridge Prize Poems’ (1820, 1828, and 1859).

Smirke was called to the bar at the Middle Temple on 12 Nov. 1824, went the western circuit, and attended the Hampshire sessions. In December 1844 he was appointed solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales, and on the following 5 Feb. solicitor-general to him as Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. He succeeded to the post of attorney-general to the prince on 25 June 1852, and was ex officio member of his council. By letters patent under the great seal of England he was constituted on 2 July 1853 vice-warden of the stannaries of Cornwall and Devon, which post he held until 29 Sept. 1870. From 1846 to 1855 he was recorder of Southampton. On his retirement in 1870 from active life he was knighted at Windsor.

As a student, Smirke had a predilection for the investigation and elucidation of charters, and for the history of mining in the duchy of Cornwall. He was a member of the Royal Archæological Institute from its foundation, and took an active part at its annual meetings. From November 1861 to November 1863, and from that date in 1865 to November 1867, he presided over the Royal Institution of Cornwall. During the first of these periods, when the Cambrian Archæological Society paid a visit to Truro, he presided over the congress (1862). He died at 18 Thurloe Square, South Kensington, on 4 March 1875. He married at Kensington, on 11 Sept. 1838, Harriet Amelia, youngest daughter of the late Thomas Neill of Turnham Green. She died at Truro on 23 Feb. 1863.

Apart from many papers read before the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Smirke was author of: 1. ‘Wallace,’ a poem, 1815. 2. ‘Report of Cases, 1670–1704, by R. Freeman,’ 2nd ed. 1826. 3. ‘Digest of the Law of Evidence on the Trial of Actions at Nisi Prius, by Henry Roscoe,’ 5th ed., with considerable additions by C. Crompton and E. Smirke, 1839; subsequent editions down to the tenth in 1861 were ‘revised and enlarged’ by him. 4. ‘Case of Vice against Thomas, with an Appendix of Records and Documents on the early History of the Tin Mines in Cornwall,’ 1843. 5. ‘Procedure in the Court of the Vice-warden of the Stannaries,’ 1856; other volumes of rules and orders were published by him in 1862, 1863, and 1870. 6. ‘A Letter to Lord Campbell on the Rating of Railways,’ 1851.

 SMIRKE, ROBERT (1752–1845), painter, the son of a clever but eccentric travelling artist, was born at Wigton, near Carlisle, in 1752. He was brought to London by his father in 1766, and apprenticed to a coach-painter named Bromley. In 1772 he became a student of the Royal Academy, and in 1775 a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, with whom he began to exhibit by sending five works, his address then being ‘At Mr. Bromley's, Little Queen's Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.’ He exhibited again in 1777 and 1778, but in 1786 he sent to the Royal Academy ‘Narcissus,’ and ‘The Lady and Sabrina’ from Milton's ‘Comus.’ He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1791, in which year he exhibited ‘The Widow,’ and he became an academician in 1793, when he painted as his diploma work ‘Don Quixote and Sancho.’ In 1804 he was elected to succeed Joseph Wilton [q. v.] as keeper of the Royal Academy, but George III refused to confirm the appointment, possibly through fear of the influence on the students of the artist's freely expressed revolutionary opinions. His last contribution to the academy, entitled ‘Infancy,’ appeared in 1813, but he continued to exhibit occasionally elsewhere until 1834. His pictures were usually of small size and painted in monochrome, as being best adapted for engraving. He designed illustrations for the Bible, ‘The Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare’ (1783), Johnson's ‘Rasselas’ (1805), ‘Gil Blas’ (1809), the ‘Arabian Nights’ (1811), ‘Adventures of Hunchback’ (1814), ‘Don Quixote,’ 