——­Verses, as smooth and soft as cream,
  In which their was neither depth nor stream.

Mr. Smith’s Bodleian Oration, printed with his other works, though taken from a remote and imperfect copy, has shewn the world, how great a matter he was of Ciceronian Eloquence.  Since Temple and Roscommon (says Mr. Oldisworth) ’No man understood Horace better, especially as to his happy diction, rolling numbers, beautiful imagery, and alternate mixture of the soft and sublime.  His friend Mr. Philips’s Ode to Mr. St. John, after the manner of Horace’s Lusory, or Amatorian Odes, is certainly a master-piece:  But Mr. Smith’s Pocockius is of the sublimer kind; though like Waller’s writings upon Cromwell, it wants not the most delicate and surprizing turns, peculiar to the person praised.’

He was an excellent judge of humanity, and so good a historian, that in familiar conversation, he would talk over the most memorable fads in antiquity; the lives, actions, and characters of celebrated men, with amazing facility and accuracy.  As he had carefully read and distinguished Thuanus’s Works, so he was able to copy after him:  And his talent in this kind was so generally confess’d, that he was made choice of by some great men, to write a history, which it was their interest to have executed with the utmost art, and dexterity; but this design was dropp’d, as Mr. Smith would not sacrifice truth to the caprice, and interested views of a party.

* * * * *

Our author’s Poem, condoling the death of Mr. Philips, is full of the noblest beauties, and pays a just tribute to the venerable ashes of that great man.  Mr. Smith had contracted for Mr. Philips the most perfect friendship, a passion of which he was very susceptible, and whole laws he considered as sacred and inviolable.

* * * * *

In the year 1707 Mr. Smith’s Tragedy called Phaedra and Hippolitus was acted at the Theatre-Royal.  This play was introduced upon the stage, at a time when the Italian Opera so much engrossed the attention of the polite world, that sense was sacrificed to sound.  It was dress’d and decorated, at an extraordinary expence:——­and inimitably perform’d in all its parts, by Betterton, Booth, Barry, and Oldfield.  Yet it brought but few, and slender audiences.——­To say truth, ’twas a fine Poem; but not an extraordinary Play.  Notwithstanding the intrinsic merit of this piece, and the countenance it met with from the most ingenious men of the age, yet it languished on the stage, and was soon neglected.  Mr. Addison wrote the Prologue, in which he rallies the vitiated taste of the public, in preferring the unideal entertainment of an Opera, to the genuine sense of a British Poet.

  The prologue.