SOURCE: Introduction to Dreamthorp: With Selections from "Last Leaves," by Alexander Smith, Oxford University Press, 1914, pp. v-xxv.

In the essay below, Walker proposes that Smith should be considered among the greatest English prose writers.

Alexander Smith, the author of Dreamthorp, was born at Kilmarnock in Ayrshire on the last day of the year 1830, and died near Edinburgh on January 5, 1867. His whole life, therefore, covered little more than half the allotted span, and what we may call his effective life—deducting the years of immaturity—was considerably less than half of what is normal. Yet in these thirty-six years Smith touched almost the extreme heights and depths of obscurity, fame, and neglect; and this fact imparts an aspect of romance to a career which was in its outward circumstances eminently prosaic and commonplace.

Smith's father was a designer of patterns for lacework; and at some period, vaguely referred to...