SOURCE: "A New Poet in Glasgow," in The Critic, London, Vol. X, No. 256, December 1, 1851, pp. 567-68.

Gilfillian is the critic credited with discovering and encouraging Smith. The following article, the second on Smith by Gilfillian, introduced Smith to about six thousand readers before he had even published a book of poetry, and caused Smith's first volume to be eagerly anticipated. Here, Gilfillian favorably compares Smith to Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge, saying Smith has the potential to become a genius poet.

Discoverers are often a much injured class of men. Sometimes the worth of their object is denied, sometimes their claim to the fact of finding it out is contested, and sometimes, in the brilliance of the star, the astronomer who has first observed it is utterly eclipsed! Nevertheless it is a pleasant thing, "when a new planet swims into our ken," or when, to pursue the quotation, we...