[Here, Thayer chronicles the development of maturity in Smith's writing, from his first labeling as a spasmodic poet, to the complex issues addressed in his essays. ]

When rare men die young, such as mark their way with presagings of genius, we cherish their work as we do the visions of the upland, while yet are denied to us the grander reaches from mountain heights. Much as we prize the impulse of these potential minds, age alone gives to their thought that ripe distinction and maturity which shall make them indisputable masters; hints of power, of resources, open glimpses of a scope and breadth that make us marvel at what might be the crowning fruition. There are instances of such genius, minds that have flashed as meteors across the literary sky, and then, without warning, have left us; tentative minds, yet, as signals, emitting such fire and beauty as make the world sad at the untimely taking off. Of this class, circumstances have much to do with the degree of brilliancy and attainment by which they are recognized. Byron, through the intensity of his individual traits, touched a popular chord, and suddenly rose to almost unexampled recognition. He was enabled through the glitter of his personality, and through the distinguishing features of his poetic creations, to draw the eyes of the reading world to himself; a certain audacious defiance allied to an abnormal dramatic, if not heroic attitude gave Byron a wide fame, and a perilous eminence. Keats and Shelley, with minds of finer grain, of more delicately poetic fibre, and of more exacting artistic feeling and spirit, lived and died with no such recognition or favor from the common voice; for the poetry of these, unlike Byron's, had but few readers while yet they lived. The three were contemporaneous, and all died young; Keats very young, misinterpreted, unsung, and brokenhearted. Byron's powers and tendency, it may be said, exemplified a nearer approach to maturity than did those of Shelley or Keats, but the three, respectively, left alike traces of marvelous poetic quality and distinction.

It is not, therefore, fair always to classify or to discriminate between writers by their limited and often fragmentary work, but by their high initiatory marks, which point unerringly to their possible range of thought and quality of genius. There are but few of such as these named whom the world can so confidently appropriate, but there is a larger group of writers (we speak of English authors) familiar to our minds, who, though having fallen short in promise, have yet, dying young, left some things so excellent and beautiful that men reverently cherish their excellence and beauty; of these, Alexander Smith is a noble, even an exceptionally noble example. Born and bred to laborious conditions, he won not only recognition, but an unmistakably eminent place in human letters. We need not discuss the determination and tendency of the will to master mean conditions and carve out the career that Nature forecasts in her endowments, nor need we dwell on the often-repeated experience of men with rare gifts, whom untoward fate has seemed to especially confront and contravene with harassment and defeat, for we never could, by any general survey, establish an order or theory that would meet, or adequately account for, vagaries and vicissitudes of this nature, nor that would challenge contradiction.

Alexander Smith's life had an interior conflict beyond any theory of accountability or compensations, and furnishes an instance of pathetic, poignant solicitude seldom experienced by one whose ambition was so free from offense, and whose nature and life were so rich in pure incentive and spirit. Art is an exacting mentor, and a noble stimulus; beauty and truth dwell in its temples; it has a religion of its own, and a service, as fitting as ever had creed, and it also bestows a freedom as wide as the dispensation of love itself. There never was artist or poet whosoever who did not feel need of its consecrating truth, though he might be a truant from its laws, defying their gentle insistence. Why should not the artistic sense have an excellence and righteousness of its own? The art precepts of a Ruskin, feeling, as they often did, tentatively and mistakingly for the right, yet breathing a loyalty unquestioned, give out an impulse toward rectitude in the religion of art as strenuous as ever a Milton's toward Puritanism. It was a misfortune of Alexander Smith that while his sensitive nature lent all its delicacy of feeling and soul-instinct to poetic impulse and poetic imagery, that it yet lacked that nice adjustment of this delicacy and this instinct in the assimilation of his poetic imagery to his creations, and in the fine blending of true tone and expression. It was this inaptitude, allied to a high ambition, bent on attaining what proved with him mostly unattainable, that wrought in his life, somewhat shattered in health as it was, a kind of perpetual heart-break, a tragic feeling of loss and bitterness akin to the deepest sadness, infinitely deeper than one might feel at a trick of fortune which should play him false, and which he might easily lay at the world's door; all the sentiment of his being, every fibre and pulsation seemed ready to add to the song he would sing, but yet, the ear, the touch, were below the inward gift, and made but partial response to the high spirit that felt it all. It is admitted by most who are familiar with the poetry of Alexander Smith that in the art and beauty of modulation, his untrained imagination was lacking in sure and effective balance, and that he, himself, felt keenly this blemish; these faulty, half utterances hindered and fettered his spirit. At first he did not surrender, he was brave; one has a right to test the full measure of faith which he may have in himself, to master the truth in his art; is it not as creditable in its way as to triumph, or essay to triumph, in any noble undertaking? The voice of the critics, the judgment of his fellow-craftsmen, when against him, spurred him, and served as a challenge; he was balked and thwarted, but, at first, not downcast; he knew he was a poet, as so many have known before and since. Can we not conceive that Carlyle must have felt to touch the harp of song more than once, with his great, deep nature, enrapt by the tides and swells of poetic emotion? Do we think it can be any consolation to the heart of him who, steeped in poetry, breaks the silence only to find, alas, that there are lawless renderings of the rhythmic minstrelsy, when he knows that, at least, he has it in him? If it were immaturity only with Alexander Smith, his early volume, entitled A Life Drama and Other Poems, exhibited this, indeed, both in thought and art, but it exhibited more: there was a vagrant abandon of expression in his poetry, a persistent extravagance in the heedless huddling of thoughts and fancies, that could not have failed, as it did not, to challenge the critical and public taste, especially at a time when the exquisite lyrics of Tennyson, and his perfect idyls, like a magic flute, had captivated the poetic ear of the reading world; such tones as these, rendered so long, and without rival, made the minor songsters self-distrustful and chary. The English taste for the music of poetry was highly strung in those days, and felt the jarrings of untutored songsters, as it did, after the genius of Byron, of Shelley, of Keats, Scott, Campbell, and Moore had given to verse an almost matchless rhythmic euphony and beauty. Surely the sensitive nature of Alexander Smith must have felt keen misgivings when it resolved to cope with such as these.

His first volume was written while yet he labored as designer in one of the mills of Glasgow, but with all of its crudity and lavish exuberance it marked him for a higher place, and he was soon chosen Secretary of the Edinburgh University. The faults that appeared in this volume were not without precedent; do we forget "Endymion" of Keats, which was borne down by excess of classic lore and garment, and by an unrestrained wealth of imagery, the cruel condemnation of which broke his shattered life? Alexander Smith read the verdict of the critics, and, in a lesser degree than Keats, felt the burden of disappointment weighing his spirit down; at twenty-three years of age, however, men brought to sudden despair yet feel the warmth and see the light of morning suns. The day is mostly before them, and the buffer of their pride happily shields them from the lingering darkness and weariness of spirit which age brings. This frailty of health, of which I have intimated, had not, in this earlier period, asserted its mastery; unlike Keats and others who have lost their vital physical strength in the bloom of early manhood, Alexander Smith had not yet reached this crisis of his life; there was enough of success in his first poetic venture, and enough of flame and courage in his yet undaunted nature, to buoy his hope in a coming good fortune, which so often waits on faith and untiring industry. The public knew of him, the critics were ready to do him justice, the inexpressible longings which are only half breathed in the written song gave wings to his native purpose, and inspired his ardent love for poetry with a resolute will; four years only intervened between the coming of the first and second volume of his verse, four years of secret, tireless work, but work bound in love. During these he had written various prose essays; he had lost somewhat in health, and he had lavished his best resources on this new poetic advent, this volume entitled City Poems. Now he hoped for ample recognition, and not without encouragement. The reviewers, many of them, broke forth in almost unstinted praise. "Since Tennyson," said the Literary Gazette, "no poet has come before the public with the same promise as the author of this volume." The Spectator said: "It is to the earlier works of Keats and Shelley alone, that we can look for a counterpart in richness of fancy and force of expression." The Westminster Review added: "There is not a page of this volume on which we cannot find some Shakespearian felicity of expression, or some striking simile." And still another said: "Nearly every page is studded with striking metaphors." Yet, underlying these fair sayings, there seemed to lurk a negative verdict, the more extended reviews made marked qualifications, and there came from Tennyson himself a word that must have cast a heavy shadow over the young poet's dream. The laureate said that "Alexander Smith's poems show fancy, but not imagination." The quick sensibilities of his nature must have deeply felt these words, for who could better judge? And Tennyson was right. Simile, paradox, bold metaphor, quick invention, all children of a luxuriant fancy, were his in their wealth of vivid coloring, but there yet lacked a sustained spiritual imagination in carrying forward and amplifying in epic thought and dignity the higher order of creative verse. Striking passages there are in these poems, passages that easily, at first, arrest the attention, and captivate the sentiment of the reader, but a more critical study betrays marked unevenness; there is frequent and sudden falling away in movement and in quality; strained and unique fancies, introduced, lower the general motive and smite the nice, inward ear with a sense of incongruity. It is an instance of loose reins given to the wanton tricks of fancy, and another instance, resulting therefrom, of poetry overweighted with imagery, and thereby failing to answer the gentle, yet exacting demand of true art,—an art which holds the poet to the primal cousideration of an harmonious entirety, and to the equally important condition of harmony in the parts. The author of City Poems, in spite of the reviewers, felt the sting of failure; his volume neither established nor confirmed its author as one of the choice few in the circle of English poets. The verdict was never reversed; it seems, now, to stand unshaken after thirty years. The effect wore on the author: the severe tension of feeling that such disheartenment left weighed on his sensitive nature; ill health came, stealthily, yet surely; he had written some essays, but they had given him but little fame. As the shadows seemed to gather, and he realized that the recognition for which he had labored and waited was as far remote from his grasp as ever, without tangible motive or aim, but simply as a passing consolation, he commenced a series of essays while, part of the time, journeying, if haply he might regain his lost strength. He alone who has met with such an experience as this can enter into sympathy with the life that has passed through it. Possessed of one of the most exquisitely sensitive poetic temperaments, spurred by a noble ambition, raised by his own force of will and character, and the motives which they fostered, from a mean estate to one of comparative prominence wherein he could gain somewhat of the tuition and training which his mind needed; flushed with an aspiration and a promise which stirred within him visions of name and eminence in letters, and dreams of a niche in the temple of the immortals, he alone, I fancy, who has thus thought, with reason, to achieve an enviable place among men, and then feels his hold loosen, and himself fading from the world's sight, can participate in the bitterness of such an one as Alexander Smith, while, in utter misgiving, he breathed out the sweet, inimitable beauty and pathos that permeates, like a fine atmosphere, the spirit and sentiment of his prose poems in Dreamthorp.

Careless of repute now, indifferent to the listless public, bent only on disclosing to his own heart the exaltations, the reveries, that may raise him above sorrowings for a lost cause, he at last breathes a new freedom. With death not far away, he pours a wealth and warmth of spirit in this magic prose of his that gains for him all that, unseeking now, he had let slip as beyond him.

Dreamthorp, the half soliloquies, the unrestrained musings of a rich, disenthralled, idealized nature, heedless of praise or blame, won, without concern or purpose of its author, the now uncoveted prize, and made him famous in the world. No more notable essays in this rare vein, wherein the writer has made his reader a confidant, has told him of his foibles and weaknesses, of his fleeting moods and meditations, of his loves and aversions, of his vagrant delights and fancies, of a hundred and one impelling feelings and episodes, of reflections and observations that bear, with charming spirit and sincerity, on the motives and exigencies of human conduct and life, have been published since Lamb's "Elia," or Leigh Hunt's "Lear," and they gained, if anything, advantage over these, that they were doubly endowed with a beauty of imagery, a poetic flavor, and a philosophic elevation beyond either Lamb's or Hunt's.

This vein in prose writing I know, in this reportorial age, is out of date; the scientific and the journalistic vogues, in this latter day, for the time effectually kill prose-poetry in Human Letters. We classify our facts with nimble expertness, but seldom write our hearts. The eye and ear have great appetites, analysis stifles the emotion; we are detectives and epitomizers. We revel in Egyptology, anthropology, chronology, and all the ologies that can be tortured into scientific or metaphysical speculation, but think ourselves childish, if for an instant we pause to touch the springs of human sympathy, or interpret the impulses of emotive thought, save in our novels.

Irving is now old-fashioned; that fine humor which so leisurely plays through the mesh of his delightful romanticism has lost caste with the present race of astringent thinkers and writers. Every sentence takes deadly aim to-day; the expert, the specialist, is uppermost, and so it comes about that such as Lamb, Irving, and Alexander Smith are dusty; literature has run to facts, speculations, or polemics; positivism, agnosticism, and prehistoric research successively cudgel our tired brains. Modern society, with its prevailing mezzotints and neutralities in thought and enthusiasms, with its half-beliefs and relaxing sentiment, is compromising our story-tellers, while poetry is doing its best to smother itself in vague and misty meanings and metaphors, vexing itself with how not to say a simple thing in pure musical cadence and diction, laboring to wreck itself in words. In the midst of all this, however, and let us say grace for it, comes the voice of the good publisher, crying a "new edition of Dreamthorp," even though it be a poor one. Irving, too, is newly dressed, and newly heralded by more than one publisher, and the world is again buying these books. The protester and the publisher have joined hands, and are mutual friends. We have struck a clearing in this wilderness of literature, where the lights of these genuine spirits can impart their warmth once more; and how delightful! We have turned over and over the huge tomes on Evolution, have impaled our thousand darts in the targets of theory and doctrine, and again like thirsty children we return to these springs of feeling, fresh and pure, to authors who give us these human letters, themes personal, heart's-ease, consolations, in lieu of the "Gospel of dirt," as Carlyle dubs the latter-day materialistic writers. The human mind will always crave release, and is sure to call for its wings, sooner or later, and take to the wild wood. Men will love the epistolaries of human experience and of human sympathy better than the skillful thrusts of an intellectual sparring match, and so we are again, with infinite relish, reading Dreamthorp. And what is this famous volume? What does it contain? It is as beautiful in tone of thought as a veiled autumn sunset to the eye. This maturity came, in shadow, to Alexander Smith, hastened by the touch and pathos of gathering night; it came, too, with a wealth of fine spiritual consecration as healthful and native as it was tender and impressive; he lived in hearty and intimate relation with all that was noble and genuine. In his prose he possessed a singularly felicitous method, or no method of treatment, which was as fascinating as it was unconventional. He delighted in the roving spirit, blunt truth, and happy egotism of Montaigne, barring his vulgarity. Alexander Smith's thought of the essay was that, "as a literary form, it resembles the lyric, in so far as it is moulded by some central mood, whimsical, serious, or satirical." "Give the mood, and the essay, from the first sentence to the last, grows around it as the cocoon grows around the silkworm." "The essay-writer is a chartered libertine, and a law unto himself." This is, indeed, the spirit and fashion of the old essayists after whom Alexander Smith patterned, if he patterned after anybody. It is the method and meaning of Montaigne, who wrote equally wise on trifling personal themes, and on the majesty of the king. His frankness was uncompromising, almost abandonment. As another has said, "He is serious on the most trifling subjects, and he trifles with the most serious." He is wayward, surprising, and, to most minds, without any logical sequence, but he is the prince of essayists. Alexander Smith loved him, and there came to his own style and mental vogue much of this famous author's liberty in art. Not all men can veil their seriousness under the guise of a light and airy invention or vein; not all can draw tears of tender sentiment from the eyes of laughter; not all, nay scarcely any writer, can treat great, ideal themes and issues in the same breath with innocent mockery and banter. Seriousness in Alexander Smith's mobile mind seems to go hand in hand with good fellowship and easy familiarity with the reader; he has the art of alternating between opposite and apparently discordant notes, but he has the rare genius of making his finest unity of feeling out of a medley of thought; "perilous moods, perilous art," you will say, but the result is all we have to consider, and when these gifts are native, how picturesque, how wise, withal, how Shakespearian!

Mr. Smith's Summer in Skye followed easily the first volume of essays, and possesses qualities suggesting the influence of the earlier and greater work. These were followed, in the year before his death, by an experimental novel, which did not in any way enhance the fame of the author; indeed, the beauty and inspiration so signal in the masterpiece is hardly sustained in his subsequent creation: his genius seemed to strike twelve in Dreamthorp.

There is more play for the fancy in prose than in poetry, and Mr. Smith employed it in a less spasmodic, and in a larger, more effective, more impartial way, and with a more sagacious purpose in his essays than in his poetry. His theory of human letters was somewhat unique; he believed that, in this field of literature, "It is not of as much consequence what you say, as how you say it," and, "that the charm of style is indefinable, yet all subduing, just as fine manners are in social life," and, finally, "that style, rather than thought, after all, is the immortal thing in literature." There was an illimitable range open to such a literary creed as these passages indicate; his subjects might be selected from a vast field. He discourses on the "Importance of a Man to Himself," on "Death and Dying," on "Christmas," on "Books and Gardens," on "A Lark's Flight," on "Vagabonds," subjects that are portentous of a wealth of description, of sentiment, of delicate satire, and of idiosyncratic treatment, such as, employed by him, marked his style as individually characteristic and distinguishable with a freshness of conception and a skill of mock egotism quite up to Lamb, and far excelling any contemporary. He was impatient of the monotonous world; he liked to write of odd men deflected from the common mould, and he lamented that they were now so rare to meet. The vagabond, to his mind, is a treat: "He chooses his friends neither for their fine houses nor their rare wines, but for their humors, their goodness of heart, their capacities of making a joke and of seeing one." "Tourists," he says, "would be few, if every inch of soil were drained, ploughed, manured;" personally, "he would detest a world all red and ruled with the ploughshare in spring, all covered with harvest in autumn;" he "desiderates moors and barren places, the copse where you can flush the wood-cock;" he says, "The fresh, rough, heathery part of human nature where the air is freshest, and where the linnets sing, is getting encroached upon by cultivated fields." "Every one is making himself and herself useful; every one is producing something; everybody is clever; everybody is a philanthropist; I don't like it, I love a little eccentricity." "It's high time, it seems to me," he says, "that a moral game law were passed for the preservation of the wild and vagrant feelings of human nature." These sayings of his epitomize the whole tenor of Alexander Smith's essays in Dreamthorp. They expose the touch by which his various coloring is made to produce most fascinating studies, wherein the shadings of thought, fancy, and spirit blend and interblend with the sure felicity and unpremeditated beauty of nature's own weaving. The vexing realities of conventional life confront him, he thinks we know it all now: "This world, the planet, is as familiar as the trodden pathway between towns." "Ah me," he adds, "what a world this was to live in two or three centuries ago, when it was getting itself discovered; when the sunset gave up America; when the Arabian Nights were commonplace."

There is a charming bearing of defiant freedom and abandon in the atmosphere and fibre of these prose poems, which give them a unique quality, and provoke a genuine relish for every word of them. There was a time, not very far gone, when these masters in human letters, from Montaigne to Goldsmith, Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Irving, Alexander Smith, and their kind, commanded the heart of readers. Let us be wise and try if we can reclaim those days. The human mind palls and revolts from too deep and intricate soundings, such as the researches and polemics, that serve mainly to bore through the crustations of earth, or scale immeasurable heights, but have no power that moves and masters human emotions. Evolution has reached a point where a second Darwin is needed to make conjecture anywhere near fact. The Philosophy of Comte is taken in for repairs. The master debater in material and speculative science confesses that at the far edge of his circle he is gazing into an infinitude of veiled possibilities, which, at least, makes the promise and potency of matter still very questionable. Let these all rest and take breath, while this pure literature engages the mind, and brings into play the healthful and refreshing exercise of the more ideal conceptions of thought, so beneficent and wholesome as a foil and refuge to the human intellect in its feverish search among the complexities, perplexities, and problems of existence.