Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/117

 under a canopy, giving a laurel chaplet to Sir Isaac Newton, while Bacon is at the king's feet.

Smith published two works. The first was ‘A compleat System of Opticks, in four books,’ 1738, 2 vols.; dedicated, with unusual warmth of expression, to Right Hon., afterwards Sir Edward Walpole, a personal friend at Cambridge, through whose aid the work was started and finished, and under Smith's will and codicil Walpole received legacies of 2,000l. South Sea stock. The ‘elementary parts’ of these volumes, selected and arranged for the use of students at the universities, were published separately at Cambridge in 1778. They were translated, with additions, into German by Kaestner in 1755, and into French, with additions, by Dural le Roy, at Brest in 1767, with a supplement in 1783, and by L. P. P. [i.e. le Père Pézénas] at Avignon in 1767. Benjamin Robins [q. v.] published a criticism upon them in 1739. From this treatise on optics, Smith went by the nickname of ‘Old Focus.’ Smith's second volume was ‘Harmonics, or the Philosophy of Musical Sounds,’ 1749, dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland; 2nd edit. 1759, and postscript, 1762. The latter was inscribed to Sir Edward Walpole. Both works were of the highest value. They were recommended to Gibbon by George Lewis Scott [q. v.], with the words that the treatise on optics entered ‘into too great details for beginners,’ and that the volume on harmonics ‘is the principal book of the kind’ (, Miscellaneous Work's 1837, pp. 232–3).

Smith left numerous papers on Cotes and Newton to the Rev. Edward Howkins, who in 1779 bequeathed them to the college. From them was collected the ‘Correspondence of Newton and Cotes,’ edited by the Rev. J. Edleston in 1850, and afterwards republished at Amsterdam. Twenty to thirty letters from Newton to Cotes were borrowed from Smith by Conduitt for his projected life of Newton, and never returned (, Correspondence, ii. 776–7). Letters to Smith are printed in the ‘Correspondence of Newton and Cotes’ (pp. 231–9), in Brewster's ‘Memoirs of Newton’ (2nd edit.), ii. 47–9, and in James Bradley's ‘Works and Correspondence’ (1832), pp. 401–3. His name frequently occurs in the diaries of John Byrom, with whom he was contemporary at Cambridge, and Byrom's verses on John Gilbert Cooper's ‘Epistles from Aristippus in retirement,’ in a letter to Dr. S—, are supposed to be addressed to Smith. When Zachary Grey [q. v.] published an ‘Examination of the Fourteenth Chapter of Newton's Observations on Daniel,’ Smith wrote ‘Three Observations’ upon it which were not published.

[Gent. Mag. 1768, p. 94; Willis and Clark's Cambridge, ii. 500, 547–50, 583, 600, 606; Rouse Ball's Mathematics at Cambridge, 1889, pp. 91–101; Wordsworth's Scholæ Academicæ, pp. 67, 236; Corresp. of Newton and Cotes, pp. xvi–xix, 199, 200, 227–9; Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, ii. 319–20; Hartshorne's Cambr. Book Rarities, pp. 275, 481, 484–5; Byrom's Remains, i. 296, 623–34, ii. 34, 135, 206–7, 833–841; Byrom's Poems, ed. Ward, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 408; J. J. Smith's Cambr. Portfolio, p. 97; Monk's Bentley, i. 203, 401–2; Cumberland's Memoirs, 1806 edit. pp. 70, 107–9; Anecdotes of Watson 1817, pp. 9, 21; information from W. Aldis Wright, esq. of Trin. Coll. Cambr.]

 SMITH, ROBERT, first (1752–1838), the third but eldest surviving son of Abel Smith (d. 1788) by his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Bird of Barton, Warwickshire, was born at Nottingham on 2 Feb. 1752 and baptised at St. Peter's on the 21st. His father, a member of the banking firm of Smith, Payne, & Co. of Nottingham and London, sat in parliament for Aldborough in 1774, St. Ives in 1780, and St. Germains in 1785. On the death of his elder brother Abel in 1779 Robert succeeded him as member of parliament for Nottingham, which he represented in five successive parliaments, until his elevation to the peerage in 1797. From the first he attached himself to the fortunes of the younger Pitt, and a close friendship sprang up between the two. In 1786 Pitt selected Smith to examine into the state of his disordered private affairs (, Life of Pitt, ed. 1879, i. 223). According to Wraxall, Smith's character was ‘without reproach and his fortune ample,’ but he ‘possessed no parliamentary talents’ (Posthumous Memoirs, 1836, i. 66–9). He was generous in the use of his wealth, and one of his benefactions was to place considerable sums of money in the hands of the poet Cowper for the benefit of the poor at Olney (, Life and Works of Cowper, i. 254–5). On 11 July 1796, as a reward for his fidelity and the support which he secured to Pitt through his pocket-boroughs Midhurst and Wendover, Smith was created Baron Carrington of Bulcot Lodge in the peerage of Ireland, and on 20 Oct. 1797 Baron Carrington of Upton, Nottinghamshire, in the English peerage. According to Wraxall, this was the only instance in which George III's objections to giving English peerages to those engaged in trade were overcome; he also insinuates that the honour was the