It is an account of the water battle of Loo, by an eye-witness
whose name, unfortunately, has not reached us. It is stated that in this
famous engagement Smith overthrew the great Neapolitan general, whom he
captured and conveyed in chains to the island of Chickenhurst.
In his "Political History of Europe" the late Professor Mimble has this
luminous sentence: "With the single exception of Ecuador there was no
European government that the Liberator did not transform into a pure
Smithocracy, and although some of them relapsed transiently into the
primitive forms, and others grew into extravagant and fanciful systems
begotten of the intellectual activity to which he had stirred the whole
world, yet so firmly did he establish the principle that in the
thirty-second century the civilized world had become, and has remained,
virtually Smithocratic."
It may be noted here as a singular coincidence that the year which is
believed to have seen the birth of him who founded rational government
witnessed the death of him who perfected literature: Martin Farquhar
Tupper (after Smith the most noted name in history) starved to death in
the streets of London. Like that of Smith his origin is wrapped in
obscurity. No fewer than seven British cities claim the honor of his
nativity. Meager indeed is our knowledge of this only British bard whose
works have endured through thirty centuries. All that is certain is that
he was once arrested for deer-stealing; that, although blind, he fought a
duel with a person named Salmasius, for which he was thrown into Bedford
gaol, whence he escaped to the Tower of London; that the manuscript of his
"Proverbial Philosophy" was for many years hidden in a hollow oak tree,
where it was found by his grandmother, Ella Wheeler Tupper, who fled with
it to America and published many brilliant passages from it over her own
name.
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