“The men who have led the way in useful discoveries, have ever held the first place of honour in the estimation of all who in after times have understood their works or trodden in their steps. It is upon this abiding principle that we have acted; and in awarding our first prize to Mr. Smith, we believe that we have done honour to our own body, and are sanctioned by the highest feelings which bind societies together.
“I think it a high privilege to fill this chair on an occasion when we met, not coldly to deliberate on the balance of conflicting claims, in which, after all, we might go wrong, and give the prize to one man by injustice to another; but to perform a sacred duty, where there is no room for doubt or error, and to perform an act of public gratitude, in which the judgment and the feelings are united.”[6]
On this occasion Mr. Smith presented to the society the original Table of Stratification drawn in 1799, and a circle-map of the vicinity of Bath, which had been geologically coloured about the same period.
The British Association, founded at York in 1831, held its second meeting at Oxford in June, 1832; and on this occasion the Wollaston Medal, awarded in the previous year, was put in Mr. Smith’s possession; and he was further gratified by the announcement that a pension of one hundred pounds, solicited by the united voice of English geologists, had been assigned him by the Government of His Majesty William the Fourth.
The meeting of the British Association was this year (1839) appointed to be held at Birmingham, on the 26th of August, and Mr. Smith received from Mr. Joseph Hodgson (one of the secretaries of the meeting) a special and very cordial invitation to be present. He stopped on his journey to Birmingham, at the house of friends at Northampton. Here the kindest welcome awaited him; and in addition to the pleasure of contemplating the beautiful series of Northamptonshire fossils which had been collected, he was gratified by several excursions into the neighbouring country, which had always been interesting to him since, in earlier days, he had opened the curious volume of Morton’s “Northamptonshire.” While thus tracing the boundaries of the minor divisions of the oolitic rocks which he had been the first to distinguish, a slight cold by which he was affected seemed to the eyes of his friends, to deserve more attention than he bestowed on it; medical assistance became immediately advisable. William Smith had for many years been successful in guarding his own usually robust health, and he was slow and reluctant to admit of advice better suited to the disorder which now attacked him, and which on a former occasion had so prostrated his strength that he recovered with difficulty. He began to feel the attack serious, and to perceive the alarm in the faces of his friends.
It was difficult to believe, that under that calm, thoughtful, and pleased expression of countenance, those animated descriptions of the country which he had visited a few days previously, those plans of further and strenuous exertion, which asked years of active life for completion, lurked pain and fatal disease. At first it seemed as if the remedies applied were producing beneficial effects, but this hope failed; the uncomplaining sufferer sank continually in each succeeding hour, till his eyes lost their bright and kindly light and the ever-varying features became fixed in serene and awful tranquility (Aug. 28, 1839).
His life, written by his distinguished relation the late Professor John Phillips, F.R.S. of Oxford, has been the source of these pages. William Smith’s portrait hangs in the most distinguished position, over the president’s chair at the Geological Society of London. He was a great genius, and suffered much toil and poverty, in order to produce the truth; but he led a very happy life on the whole for his thoughts about nature were his great and good riches. He proved that there is a regular succession of strata which are characterized by their fossils, each stratum being the burial ground of its time of collection.
