There are those who think Dr. Smith the poet of higher account than Dr. Smith the preacher. I do not agree with them, though there can be no question that the author of "Olrig Grange" and Mr. Alexander Anderson are the two men now in Edinburgh who have (at times) the divine afflatus. "Surfaceman" is a true son of Burns. Of him it may be said, as it never can be said of Dr. Smith, that he sings because he must. His thoughts run in harmonious numbers. The author of "Olrig Grange" is the stronger mind, however, and his lines are always pregnant of meaning. He is of the school of Mr. Lewis Morris, but an immeasurably higher intellect if not so fine an artist: indeed, though there are hundreds of his pages that are not poetry, there are almost none that could not be rewritten into weighty prose. Sound is never his sole object. Good novels in verse are a mistake, for it is quite certain they would be better in prose. The novelist has a great deal to say that cannot be said naturally in rhythm, and much of Dr. Smith's blank verse is good prose in frills. It is driven into an undeserved confinement.
The privilege of critics is to get twelve or twenty minor poets in a row, and then blow them all over at once. I remember one who despatched Dr. Smith with a verse from the book under treatment. Dr. Smith writes of a poet's verses, "There is no sacred fire in them, Nor much of homely sense and shrewd;" and when the critic came to these lines he stopped reading: he declared that Dr. Smith had passed judgment on himself. This is a familiar form of criticism, but in the present case it had at least the demerit of being false. There is so much sacred fire about Dr. Smith's best poetry that it is what makes him a poet; and as for "homely sense and shrewd," he has simply more of it than any contemporary writer of verse. It is what gives heart to his satire, and keeps him from wounding merely for the pleasure of drawing blood. In conjunction with the sacred fire, the noble indignation that mean things should be, the insight into the tragic, it is what makes "Hilda" his greatest poem. Without it there could not be pathos, which is concerned with little things; nor humor, nor, indeed, the flash into men and things that makes such a poem as "Dr. Linkletter's Scholar" as true as life, as sad as death. If only for the sake of that noble piece of writing, every Scottish student should have "North-Country Folk" in his possession. The poem is probably the most noteworthy thing that has been said of northern university life.