Author: Smyth, Philip
Biography:
SMYTH, Philip (1759-1840: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 27 Mar. 1759 at Weston-Longville, Norfolk, the second of seven children of Philip Smyth (1721-97), attorney and owner of Gimingham Hall, Norfolk, and Eleanor Thompson (1730-98), who had married at Holt, Norfolk, in 1757. It is not known where he went to school but he proceeded to New College Oxford (matric. 1777, BCL 1784, Fellow 1789-1809), entered the established church and was ordained deacon (1781) and priest (1785). He may have migrated from Cambridge (“On Visiting the University after Many Years’ Absence,” Rhyme and Reason, 108-9), but is not recorded there. His early clerical career is not known and he may have remained in Oxford until he was given the lucrative living of Worthen, Shropshire, by his college in 1809. He died at Worthen on 21 July 1840 and was buried there, leaving £2000 to his niece Sophie, with his nephew acting as executor. He never married. He translated Henry Aldrich’s (1648-1710) Latin text on ancient and modern architecture as The Elements of Civil Architecture (1789). He was also known for his translations from French: Selections from the French Anas (1797), revised and expanded as The French Anas (1805). His separately published verse consists of the lively The Coffee House (1795) and the short lyrics and sonnets of Rhyme and Reason (1803), which treats of several modern literary topics (“To the Shade of Cowper,” “On Mrs. Radcliffe’s Novels,” “A Hint to Modern Sonneteers,” “On Reading a Book on the Rights of Women,” “The Modern Philosopher”). (ancestry.co.uk 23 Feb. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 23 Feb. 2024; CCEd 23 Feb. 2024; Watkins, 323; Norfolk Chronicle 23 Dec. 1797; Ipswich Journal 1 Sept. 1798; OUCH 1 Aug. 1840; GM Oct. 1840, 439; GRO death cert.) AA