Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/94

 works appeared at the exhibitions of the Incorporated Society of Artists, the Free Society of Artists, and the Royal Academy between 1773 and 1805.

Smith died at Doncaster, where he resided during the last three years of his life, on 2 March 1812, in his sixtieth year, and was buried in Doncaster churchyard. He possessed great artistic talent, combined with a humorous and convivial temperament, which led him much into society and often into dissipation. A bust of him was modelled by Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A., whose early talent he had encouraged. William Hilton, R.A., and Peter De Wint were among his pupils.

John Rubens Smith, his son, painted portraits in the style of his father, and exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1796 and 1811. Emma Smith, his daughter, was born about 1787. She painted water-colour drawings and miniatures, and exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1799 and 1808. She was also for a time a member of the Associated Artists in Watercolours, and had five drawings in their first exhibition in 1808.

 SMITH, JOHN RUSSELL (1810–1894), bookseller and bibliographer, was born at Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1810, and was apprenticed to John Bryant of Wardour Street, London. He took a shop at 4 Old Compton Street, Soho, devoted himself to English topography and philology, and issued in 1837 his useful ‘Bibliotheca Cantiana; or a Bibliographical Account of what has been published on the History, Antiquities, Customs, and Family History of the County of Kent’ (large octavo). The titles are classified with collations and notes. Smith left two copies, with manuscript annotations, to the British Museum. Among his supporters was John Sheepshanks [q. v.], the well-known collector. His ‘Bibliographical List of the Works that have been published towards illustrating the Provincial Dialects of England,’ arranged under counties, 8vo, appeared in 1839, as well as ‘Westmoreland and Cumberland Dialects: Dialogues, Poems, Songs, and Ballads by various Writers in the Westmoreland and Cumberland Dialects, now first collected, with a copious Glossary,’ 8vo.

In 1842, on the occasion of the schism in the Archæological Association, one section of the members, including Thomas Wright, Mark Anthony Lower, Halliwell-Phillipps, and Henfrey, transferred their publications to Russell Smith. Increase of business caused Russell Smith to move to 36 Soho Square. Among the books he published there were Nares's ‘Glossary’ (edited by Wright and Halliwell-Phillipps), Barnes's ‘Dialect Poems and Grammar,’ Vernon's ‘Guide to the Anglo-Saxon Tongue,’ and Bosworth's ‘Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,’ abridged. He is best remembered by his ‘Library of Old Authors,’ an interesting and valuable series of reprints, chiefly of sixteenth and seventeenth century literature. The volumes, which were neatly printed by the Chiswick Press in small octavo, were for the most part carefully edited, and were issued between 1856 and 1875.

Among the catalogues of secondhand books issued by Russell Smith may be mentioned one of topographical prints, drawings, and books printed before 1700 (1849), ‘Shakesperiana’ (1864), ‘Americana’ (1865), tracts, twenty-six thousand in number (1874), and engraved Portraits (1883). He contributed the first complete list of English writers on fishes and fishing to R. Blakey's ‘Historical Sketches of Angling Literature’ (1855). Some copies were separately issued as ‘Bibliographical Catalogue of English Writers on Angling and Ichthyology’ (1856).

Smith retired from business about 1884, when his stock and copyrights were sold. The ‘Library of Old Authors’ was disposed of to William Reeves for 1,000l. He died on 19 Oct. 1894, at Kentish Town, aged 84. His industry and literary taste are noticed by Saunders (Salad for the Social, 1856, p. 46), and his ‘integrity in the publishing way’ by W. C. Hazlitt (Four Generations of a Literary Family, 1897, ii. 367). A portrait after a photograph is prefixed to his ‘Catalogue of Engraved Portraits’ (1883).

 SMITH, JOHN SIDNEY (1804–1871), legal writer, son of John Spry Smith of 9 Woburn Square, London, was born in 1804, and held a situation in the six clerks' office in the court of chancery until 23 Oct. 1842, when the establishment was abolished. He soon after entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. 1847 and M.A.