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SMY widow, and a tall Tuscan column by his cousin, Commissary Smollett, on the banks of the Leven. In person, according to Dr. Moore, Smollett was stout and well-proportioned, his countenance handsome and engaging, but with an air that seemed to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own powers. Although proud, irascible, and of a somewhat cynical turn of temper, he was yet kind and generous, especially to distressed artists and men of letters. He had no suppleness in his conduct, was "bold, upright, and independent in his own character, stooped to no patron, sued for no favour, but honestly and honourably maintained himself by his literary labours." He was a most affectionate husband and father, and a most zealous and unselfish friend. His colloquial powers were of the highest order. As a critic and political writer he stood high, though not in the highest rank. His taste and talents, his ready wit and command of his large stores of miscellaneous learning, qualified him peculiarly for periodical criticism. But on the other hand, as Scott remarks, he was always a hasty and often a prejudiced judge. As a novelist Smollett has been ranked with Fielding; and though inferior to that great master in literary art and in finished style, he was at least equal if not superior to him in humour and in rhetorical strength. Smollett's novels abound in scenes of broad, often coarse mirth. His sea characters have been pronounced by Sir Walter Scott inimitable, and the power with which he has diversified them is a most absolute proof of the richness of fancy with which he was gifted.—J. T.  * SMYTH,, an eminent British astronomer and physicist, is the son of Admiral William Henry Smyth, and was born at Naples on the 3rd of January, 1819. In 1845 he succeeded Henderson as astronomer-royal for Scotland, and professor of astronomy in the university of Edinburgh. In 1852 he proposed to the board of visitors of the Edinburgh observatory a project for realizing a suggestion made by Newton as to the advantage of making observations with telescopes placed at a great height in the atmosphere, by means of an astronomical expedition to the Peak of Teneriffe. That project was carried into effect in the summer of 1856, the expense being paid by the British admiralty, and the famous engineer, Robert Stephenson, lending his yacht as the means of conveyance. During that summer Professor Smyth carried out with complete success an extensive series of astronomical, meteorological, and physical observations at a height of more than ten thousand feet above the sea; and in this he received material assistance from Mrs. Piazzi Smyth. The results were published in 1858, and form a most important body of scientific information. Mr. Smyth invented the method of using the stability of rotating discs to maintain a level stand for astronomical instruments at sea, and made various improvements in the construction and use of those instruments. He is the author of many papers on such subjects, and on the zodiacal light and other physical phenomena, published for the most part in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Astronomical Society. He is a fellow of those societies, of the Royal Society of London, and of other scientific bodies.—R.  SMYTH,, M.D., was born in Perthshire in 1741, and obtained his medical education in Edinburgh. There he graduated as doctor of medicine in 1764. He then spent some time in the hospitals and medical schools of London, Holland, France, and Italy, and in 1768 settled as a physician in London. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1770, and was appointed physician to the Middlesex hospital in 1775. In 1780 a malignant typhus fever broke out in the prison and hospital of Winchester. The government selected Dr. Smyth to take charge of the sick. He accordingly devoted himself to the work of combating the epidemic. To arrest contagion he had recourse to the fumes of nitrous acid as a disinfectant. This and the other measures he adopted proved so effectual that parliament voted him the sum of £5000 in remuneration for his services, and he was appointed physician extraordinary to the king. The discovery of the value of nitrous acid as a disinfectant was claimed by Dr. Johnstone of Kidderminster for his father, and also by M. Chaptal for M. Guyton Morvean. To these claims of priority Dr. Smyth published what were considered sufficient answers. He was admitted to the fellowship of the College of Physicians in 1788, and in 1793 delivered the Harveian oration. Some years before his death Dr. Smyth retired from practice. He died in the eightieth year of his age, at Sunbury, June 18, 1821. Besides his writings in reference to nitrous acid, he published an account of the effects of swinging in pulmonary consumption, London, 1787; an account of the jail distemper at Winchester, 1795; and a treatise on hydrocephalus, London, 1814.—F. C. W.  SMYTH,, professor of modern history at Cambridge, was born in 1766 at Liverpool, where his father, a cadet of an Irish family, and a man of poetical and literary tastes, was established as a merchant. Smyth was sent to Eton, and thence to Cambridge, where he was eighth wrangler in 1797, becoming fellow and tutor of his college, Peterhouse. Intended for the bar, he found himself disqualified for it by a defect of vision; and he became tutor to the son of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the "Tom" of many an anecdote. Of the father in private life, he has chronicled some traits in his "Memoir of Mr. Sheridan," printed for private circulation in 1840. So early as 1806 Smyth published a little volume of "English Lyrics," which was praised by the Edinburgh Review, and cited by Dugald Stewart in his lectures. A fifth edition of it, preceded by an autobiographical fragment, was published in 1850. In 1809 he was appointed, according to his own account, by the present marquis of Lansdowne, then Lord Henry Petty, professor of modern history at Cambridge. His academical lectures, in three series, were published in 1840, and have been reprinted in one of Bohn's libraries. In style they are almost conversational, and perhaps their greatest merit is their indication of and criticism on the sources of and authorities for modern history. In 1845 he published his "Evidences of Christianity." Professor Smyth died at Norwich in 1849.—F. E.  SMYTH,, a distinguished British naval officer, hydrographer and astronomer, was born at Westminster in 1788. He entered the royal navy as a midshipman in 1805, and rose by degrees to the rank of vice-admiral. He took part in many celebrated actions of the war between 1805 and 1815. After its close he was employed by the British government in a general hydrographic survey of the Mediterranean, his account of which, published in 1854, is regarded as an unsurpassed model of excellence amongst works of its class. He is also the author of a work on Sicily, published in 1824; "A Cycle of Celestial Objects," 1844; and numerous scientific memoirs. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and a member of the Board of Longitude. He died on the 9th September, 1865.—R.  SNELL,, the founder of an exhibition from the university of Glasgow to Balliol college, Oxford, was born about 1630, "at Colmonell in Carrick, in the sheriffdom of Ayr," according to Anthony Wood, the chief authority for his biography. Snell, it seems, studied at Glasgow university, and was clerk to Sir Orlando Bridgman during the Protectorate. Rising with his patron, as Bridgman became chief baron of the exchequer, and chief justice of the common pleas, Snell was made crier of these courts. When Bridgman was appointed lord-keeper, Snell was made his seal-bearer—an office which he also held during Shaftesbury's chancellorship. "He was," says Wood, "much esteemed for his great diligence and understanding." He had spent some time in a suburb of Oxford—for the university of which he had probably conceived an attachment—before his death, in August, 1680. He left a manor in Warwickshire worth, in Wood's time, about £450 per annum, for the support at Balliol college, Oxford, of not more than twelve nor fewer than five Scottish students, who should distinguish themselves at the university of Glasgow. Many eminent Scotchmen—among them the late John Gibson Lockhart—have owed to Snell the advantages of an Oxford education. At present there are ten scholars assisted by the Snell exhibition, which is tenable for five years, two vacancies being filled annually.—F. E.  SNELL,, a Dutch mathematician, born at Oudenarde, 1547. He taught first mathematics and afterwards Hebrew in the university of Leyden, and died there, 1613. He commented on the works of Ramus, and wrote the "Apollonius Batavius, seu resuscitata Apollonii Pergei Geometria."  SNELL VAN ROLJEN,, generally known as , a Dutch mathematician and physicist, was born at Leyden in 1591, and died there on the 30th of October, 1626. He was the son of Rudolph Snell, professor of mathematics in the university of Leyden; and he succeeded his father in that office in 1613. He was the first who ever measured an arc of the meridian by trigonometrical surveying; the result of that measurement was published in his "Eratosthenes Batavus," 1617. <section end="271Zcontin" />