Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/45

 ‘Fly Sheets’ and the action of the expelled ministers, Dunn, Everett, and Griffiths (Bibl. Cornub. iii. 1163).  ‘Doctrine of the Cherubim,’ 1850.  ‘Polity of Wesleyan Methodism exhibited and defended,’ 1851.  ‘Doctrine of the Pastorate,’ 1851; 2nd edit. 1851.  ‘Wesleyan Local Preachers' Manual,’ 1855.  ‘Harmony of the Divine Dispensations,’ 1856.  ‘History of Wesleyan Methodism:’ vol. i. ‘Wesley and his Times,’ 1857; vol. ii. ‘The Middle Age,’ 1858; vol. iii. ‘Modern Methodism,’ 1861, a work of permanent value; the second and revised edition came out in 1859–62, and the fourth edition appeared in 1865.  ‘The Cassiterides, or the Commercial Operations of the Phœnicians in Western Europe, with particular reference to the British tin trade,’ 1863.  ‘Book of Prophecy: a Proof of the Plenary Inspiration of Holy Scripture,’ 1865.  ‘Life and Reign of David,’ 1868. A companion work on Daniel was left incomplete.



SMITH, GEORGE (1815–1871), bishop of Victoria, born in 1815, was the only son of George Smith of Wellington, Somerset. He matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 17 Dec. 1831, graduating B.A. in 1837 and M.A. in 1843. He was ordained deacon in 1839 and priest in the following year. In 1841 he became incumbent of Goole, Yorkshire, and in 1844 he undertook a mission of exploration in China for the Church Missionary Society. On his return he published the results of his expedition under the title ‘A Narrative of an Exploratory Visit to each of the Consular Cities of China, and to the Islands of Hong Kong and Chusan,’ London, 1847, 8vo. He was consecrated bishop of Victoria in Hong Kong on 29 March 1849, resigned the see in 1865, and died on 14 Dec. 1871, at his residence at Blackheath, Kent. He married a daughter of Andrew Brandram, rector of Beckenham, Kent, and secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Besides the work mentioned, Smith was the author of:
 * 1) ‘Hints for the Times,’ London, 1848, 16mo.
 * 2) ‘A Letter on the Chinese Version of the Holy Scriptures to the British and Foreign Bible Society,’ Hong Kong, 1851, 8vo.
 * 3) ‘Lewchew and the Lewchewans,’ London, 1853, 8vo.
 * 4) ‘Our National Relations with China,’ London, 1857, 8vo.
 * 5) ‘Ten Weeks in Japan,’ London, 1861, 8vo.



SMITH, GEORGE (1840–1876), Assyriologist, was born at Chelsea of parents in a humble station of life on 26 March 1840, and was apprenticed in 1854 to Bradbury & Evans to learn bank-note engraving. His imagination had been fired from an early age by the accounts which he had read of the oriental explorations of Layard and Rawlinson, and he frequently spent the greater portion of his dinner hour at the British Museum, while his spare earnings were devoted to the purchase of books on Assyrian subjects. Sir Henry Rawlinson was struck by his intelligence and enthusiasm, and in 1866 gave him permission to study the paper casts in his workroom at the museum. Concentrating his attention at first upon the annals of Tiglath Pileser, Smith achieved his first success by the discovery of a new and confirmatory text which enabled him to assign a precise date to the tribute paid by Jehu, the son of Omri, to Shalmaneser II. A short account of this discovery was published by Smith in the ‘Athenæum’ (1866, ii. 410); and, being encouraged by Rawlinson and Dr. Birch, he next set to work upon the cylinders containing the history of Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus), and was gradually enabled to introduce some order into the confusion which had reigned among those documents. His remarkable success led Rawlinson to propose to the museum trustees that Smith should be associated with himself in preparing a new volume of the ‘Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia.’ The suggestion was adopted, and in January 1867 Smith entered upon his official life at the museum, and definitely devoted himself to the study of the Assyrian monuments. The first fruits of his labours were the discovery of two inscriptions—one fixing a date of the total eclipse of the sun in the month Sivan in B.C. 763, and the other the date of an invasion of Babylonia by the Elamites in B.C. 2280; while, in a series of articles in the ‘Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache,’ he threw a flood of light upon later Assyrian history and the political relations between Assyria and Egypt. In 1870 Smith was appointed senior assistant to Dr. Birch, the keeper of oriental antiquities, and during 1871 he published his invaluable ‘Annals of Assur-bani-pal,’ transliterated and translated, an expensive and laborious work, issued at the cost of J. W. Bosanquet and H. Fox Talbot. On 6 June in this same year Smith read before the newly founded<section end="Smith, George (1840-1876)"/>