ciety, of which they were members, by one bearing the name of Linnæus. On his return to England in the autumn of 1787, he left Chelsea, with a view to practising as a physician in London, and in 1788 took a house in Great Marlborough Street. There the first meeting of the Linnean Society was held on 8 April 1788. Smith was elected president, and delivered an ‘Introductory Discourse on the Rise and Progress of Natural History.’ Marsham became secretary, Goodenough treasurer, and Dryander librarian. The society started with thirty-six fellows, sixteen associates, and about fifty foreign members, mostly those naturalists whose acquaintance Smith had made during his tour. Banks joined the new society as an honorary member. From this period Smith gave lectures at his own house on botany and zoology, numbering among his pupils the Duchess of Portland, Viscountess Cremorne, and Lady Amelia Hume, and about the same time he became lecturer on botany at Guy's Hospital. In 1789 he republished, under the title of ‘Reliquiæ Rudbeckianæ,’ those wood-blocks of plants, prepared by Olof Rudbeck for his ‘Campi Elysii,’ which had escaped the great fire at Upsal in 1702, and during the four following years he issued parts of several illustrated botanical works, which, owing to want of patronage, he failed to complete. In 1790, however, he began the publication of what has proved his most enduring work, though as his name did not appear on the first three volumes, it is still often known as Sowerby's ‘English Botany,’ from the name of its illustrator, James Sowerby [q. v.] It formed thirty-six octavo volumes, with 2,592 plates, comprising all known British plants, with the exception of the fungi; its publication was not completed until 1814. In 1791 Smith was chosen, by the interest of Goodenough and Lady Cremorne, to arrange the queen's herbarium, and to teach her and her daughters botany and zoology at Frogmore; but some passages in his ‘Tour,’ praising Rousseau, and speaking of Marie-Antoinette as Messalina, although they were removed from the second edition, gave offence at court. Soon after his marriage, which took place in 1796, Smith retired to his native city, only coming to London for two or three months in each year to deliver an annual course of lectures at the Royal Institution, which he continued down to 1825. He was, however, annually re-elected president of the Linnean Society until his death. After he had completed his important ‘Flora Britannica,’ in three octavo volumes, 1800–4, Smith was chosen by the executors to edit the ‘Flora Græca’ of his friend, John Sibthorp [q. v.] He published the ‘Prodromus’ in two octavo volumes in 1806 and 1813, and completed six volumes of the ‘Flora’ itself before his death. In 1807 appeared the first edition of his most successful work, ‘The Introduction to Physiological and Systematic Botany,’ which passed through six editions during the author's lifetime. In 1808, on the retirement through illness, which terminated fatally, of the Rev. William Wood, who had contributed the botanical articles to Rees's ‘Cyclopædia’ down to ‘Cyperus,’ the editor applied for assistance to Smith. He wrote 3,348 botanical articles, among which were fifty-seven biographies of eminent botanists, including Adanson, Clusius, Peter Collinson, and William Curtis. All were signed ‘S.’ as he disliked anonymous writing. In 1814, when the prince regent accepted the position of patron of the Linnean Society, Smith received the honour of knighthood. In 1818 his friend, Thomas Martyn (1735–1825) [q. v.], professor of botany at Cambridge, who was then over eighty years of age, invited him to lecture for him; but the university authorities objected, on the ground that Smith was a unitarian. The incident led him to write two somewhat acrimonious pamphlets.
What has been described as his ‘last and best work,’ ‘The English Flora,’ occupied Smith during the last seven years of his life, the first two volumes appearing in 1824, the third in 1825, and the fourth in March 1828, on the very day when he was seized with his fatal illness. The ‘Compendium,’ in one volume, appeared posthumously in 1829, and the fifth volume, containing the mosses by Sir W. J. Hooker, and the fungi by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, in 1833–6. Smith died in Surrey Street, Norwich, on 17 March 1828, and was buried at Lowestoft, in the vault of the Reeve family. He married, in 1796, Pleasance, only daughter of Robert Reeve of Lowestoft; she is separately noticed [see Smith, Pleasance, Lady].
Sprengel's eulogy of Smith as μέγα κῦδος Βριτννῶν is extravagant, but his easy, fluent style, happy illustration, extensive knowledge, and elegant scholarship, both in his lectures and in his writings, did much to popularise botany. His possession of the Linnæan collections invested him, in his own opinion, with the magician's wand, and he set a value on his judgment in all botanical questions which his own attainments did not wholly warrant (B. D. Jackson, Guide to the Literature of Botany, p. xxxvii). But his ownership of the Linnæan treasures secured him a great influence abroad, and he was elected a member of the Academy
