Chapter Sludge to Smilinda of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Bart., i.e. Bartholomew Smallweed, a youth who moulds himself on the model of Mr. Guppy, the lawyer’s clerk in the office of Kenge and Carboy. He prides himself on being “a limb of the law,” though under 15 years of age; indeed, it is reported of him that his first long clothes were made out of a lawyer’s blue bag.—Dickens: Bleak House (1852).

Smart (Christopher), a poet of the last century, whose poem, A Song to David, was produced in a mad- house, and indented, for want of writing materials, with a key. Rossetti said of this production that it was “a masterpiece of rich imagery, exhaustive resource, and reverberant sound” (Athenœum, February 19, 1887). (Browning introduces Smart in his Parleyings with Certain People.)

Smatrash (Eppie), the ale-woman at Wolf’s Hope village.—Sir W. Scott: Bride of Lammermoor (time, William III.).

Smauker (John), footman of Angelo Cyrus Bantam. He invites Sam Weller to a “swarry” of “biled mutton.”— Dickens: The Pickwick Papers (1836).

Smectymnuus, the title of a celebrated pamphlet containing an attack upon episcopacy (1641). The title is composed of the initial letters of the five writers, SM (Stephen Marshall), EC (Edmund Calamy), TY (Thomas Young), MN (Matthew Newcomen), UUS (William Spurstow). Sometimes one U is omitted. Butler says the business of synods is—

To find, in lines of beard and face,
The physiognomy of “Grace;”
And by the sound and twang of nose,
If all be sound within disclose…
The handkerchief about the neck
(Canonical cravat of Smeck,
From whom the institution came
When Church and State they set on flame…)
Judge rightly if “regeneration”
Be of the newest cut in fashion.
   —S. Butler: Hudibras, 1. 3 (1663).

Smelfungus. Smollett was so called by Sterne, because his volume of Travels through France and Italy is one perpetual snarl from beginning to end.

The lamented Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on; but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but ’twas nothing but the account of his own miserable feelings.—Sterne: Sentimental Journey (1768).

Smell a Voice. When a young prince had clandestinely visited the young princess brought up in the palace of the Flower Mountain, the fairy mother Violenta said, “I smell the voice of a man,” and commanded the dragon on which she rode to make search for the intruder.—Comtesse D’Aulnoy: Fairy Tales (“The White Cat,” 1682).

Bottom says, in the part of “Pyramus”—

I see a voice, now will I to the chink,
To spy an I can hear my Thisbe’s face.

Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream, act v. sc. 1 (1592).

Smelling Sins. St. Hilarian had the gift of detecting what vices or sins any one indulged in simply by the smell of their persons or garments. By the same instinctive faculty he could discern their good feelings and virtuous desires. —St. Jerome: Life of St. Hilarian (A.D. 390).

Do you smell a fault?
   —Shakespeare: King Lear, act I. sc. 1 (1605).

(This may mean something more than discern.)

Oh! my offence is rank; it smells to heaven.
   —Shakespeare: Hamlet, act iii. sc. 3 (1596).

(That is, its smell reaches heaven or goes up to heaven.)