SOURCE: "Alexander Smith: Poet of Victorian Scotland," in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XIV, 1979, pp. 98-111.

Below, Scott maintains that Smith used his personal experience in mid-Victorian Scotland as the basis for his poetry.

"It ought .. . to be distinctly recognised that, whatever he is by birth, Mr. Smith is not a Scottish poet, if we understand by that a poet of a certain supposed national type. It is not Scottish scenery, Scottish history, Scottish character, and Scottish social humours that he represents or depicts," wrote David Masson in 1853.¹ Scots critic Masson must have held a very narrow definition of that "supposed national type," the Scottish poet, who presumably ought to limit himself to explicitly Scottish themes (and, probably, to Scots language as well). His critical motives in thus commenting on Alexander Smith's A Life-Drama (Poems, 1853) were perhaps nationalistic, more probably unimaginative. His conception of what the Scottish poet...