Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/315

Rh Mr. Smith had a long and perfect intimacy with all the Greek and Latin Claſſics; with whom he had induſtriouſly compared whatever was worth peruſing in the French, Spaniſh, and Italian, and all the celebrated writers in his own country. He conſidered the antients and moderns, not as parties, or rivals for fame, but as architects upon one and the ſame plan, the Art of Poetry. If he did not always commend the compoſitions of others, it proceeded not from ill-nature (for that was foreign to his temper) but a ſtrict regard to juſtice would not ſuffer him to call a few flowers elegantly adorned, without much art, and leſs genius, by ſo diſtinguiſhed a name as poetry. He was of Ben Johnſon’s opinion, who could not admire,

Mr. Smith's Bodleian Oration, printed with his other works, though taken from a remote and imperfect copy, has ſhewn the world, how great a maſter he was of Ciceronian Eloquence. Since Temple and Roſcommon (ſays Mr. Oldiſworth) ‘No man underſtood Horace better, eſpecially as to his happy diction, rolling numbers, beautiful imagery, and alternate mixture of the ſoft and ſublime. His friend Mr. Philips’s Ode to Mr. St. John, after the manner of Horace’s Luſory, or Amatorian Odes, is certainly a maſter-piece: But Mr. Smith’s Pocockius is of the ſublimer kind; though like Waller’s writings upon Cromwell, it wants not the moſt delicate and ſurprizing turns, peculiar to the perſon praiſed.’

He was an excellent judge of humanity, and ſo good a hiſtorian, that in familiar converſation, he would talk over the moſt memorable facts in ;