Author: Smith, William
Biography:
SMITH, William (1711-87: ODNB)
The primary source for later biographical accounts of Smith is the prefatory memoir by his friend Thomas Crane in his edition of the poems that had been entrusted to him with the proviso that they should not be published in Smith’s lifetime. Smith was known and respected as a classical scholar for his translations of Longinus (1740), Thucydides (1753), and Xenophon (1770). He had also published Nine Discourses on the Beatitudes (1782). The poems are quite good of their kind but unquestionably frivolous by comparison: the three longest are a tribute to Knowsley, the estate of Smith’s patron the Earl of Derby, and contrasting verses supposed to have been written by dogs—the mastiff Lion versus the lapdog Veny. He was the son of William and Mary Smith of Worcester, Worcestershire, where his father was rector of All Saints’ church. His mother was probably the Mary Honieburn who married William Smith at All Saints, Evesham, Worcestershire, in 1705. From the Worcester grammar school he went up to New College, Oxford (matric. 1728, BA 1732, MA 1737, BD and DD 1753). He was employed at first as reader to the tenth Earl of Derby, then in 1735 took orders and was presented by the Earl to the living of Holy Trinity, Chester, Cheshire, as Rector. Other preferments followed; he had a short and unsatisfying term as a schoolmaster; but in 1758 he became the Dean of Chester and settled there for the rest of his life. He died at the Deanery on 12 Jan. 1787 and was buried in his cathedral. At a date and place unknown he married—according to Crane, a former Miss Heber of Essex—but had no children. She was the “affectionate widow” who raised a monument in his memory in Chester cathedral. ODNB gives her first name as Elizabeth. No birth or marriage record has been found to confirm her identity, however, and it is not known what became of her. (ODNB 10 Nov. 2024; findmypast.com 10 Nov. 2024; CCEd 10 Nov. 2024; Alumni Oxonienses; Thomas Crane, “Memoir” in William Smith, Poetic Works [1788])