And now the months flew by and the great work neared its end. Smeaton himself chose the last details—the iron railings—the glass for the lantern. In the upper storeroom directly beneath the ceiling he had the motto carved—“Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.” And the mason’s last work was a “Laus Deo” in stone.
Towards the end Smeaton could not leave it. With his own hands he fitted the windows in their sashes—fixed the gilt ball on the top—no easy matter—but he had ever filled the post of danger himself. He asked no one to put himself where he was not willing too to go. Expert as any skilled mechanic, he himself gave his great work its finishing touches. Twenty-four candles in a chandelier formed the light. The lightning-conductor was fixed—the rooms finished. The magnificent column towered to seventy feet, the lantern and gilt ball twenty-eight inches higher, and on October 16th, 1759, the work was done.
Three years later a mighty storm broke along the coast, wrecking docks and ships and harbours, but the Eddystone stood firm.
And now Smeaton’s name was made. Other feats followed. Other triumphs awaited him—the building of docks and harbours and bridges—but the thing that men will ever link with his name is the Eddystone. After the stress and struggle of public life, he went back again to the old home of his boyhood. He gathered again about him his workshop, his study, his observatory. And so he worked to the end. He could not help it. He could not live without his tools.
Great man though he was, his wants were very few and simple. Offers of riches and magnificence had no power to tempt him, and when he refused a post abroad which meant wealth and position, the Russian Princess who offered it exclaimed, in wondering admiration—
“I shall go back to Russia and tell them there is one man who has not his price.”
He was happiest in the quiet of his own home. As a boy he had been rather retiring and thoughtful. As a man he was found the same. Simple, modest, while he would converse easily on other subjects, it was hardly possible to get him to talk of self. In this, as well as in his life-work, “he was indeed a very great man.”
He had had a long life of work—hard, incessant toil—from six to sixty, though it had been work that he had loved. It may be he had overtaxed his strength, for as age crept on he grew less robust. In his sixty-eighth year he had a slight stroke. He feared a gradually clouding brain. “The shadow must lengthen as the sun goes down,” he said to himself. But this distress was spared those dear to him, and with not much suffering, on the 28th October, 1792, he passed away. They buried him in the old church of Whitkirk, and raised a tablet to his memory, naming in it that great work of his that will “convey to distant ages, as it does to every nation of the globe, the name of its constructor.”
The world looks still upon John Smeaton as a wonderful engineer—a great mechanic—a man who climbed to the top of his profession, and the sound of whose fame spread over Europe; but he will ever be best remembered by the light of the Eddystone, that memorial monument that stood firm for more than a century, sometimes hid in blinding spray, anon gleaming out clear and steady, a rescuer from shipwreck and death.
Till 1877 storms continued to beat upon it without avail. Then, owing to the undermining of a portion of the reef, it was thought well to build a new house on another part of the rock. The old base still stands on the old place, and the upper rooms have been put on the Hoe at Plymouth.