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

Smike (I syl.), a poor, half-starved, half-witted boy, the son of Ralph Nickleby. As the marriage was clandestine, the child was put out to nurse, and neither its father nor its mother ever went to see it. When about seven years old, the child was stolen by one Brooker, out of revenge, and put to school at Dotheboys Hall, Yorkshire. Brooker paid the school fees for six years, and being then transported, the payment ceased, and the boy was made a sort of drudge. Nicholas Nickleby took pity on him, and when he left, Smike ran away to join his friend, who took care of the poor half-witted creature till he died (see pp. 594, 595, original edition). — Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby (1838).

Smile, and be a Villain.—Shakespeare: Hamlet, act i. sc. 5 (1596).

Smiler, a sheriff’s officer, in A Regular Fix, by J. M. Morton.

Smilinda, a lovelorn maiden, to whom Sharper was untrue. Pope, in his eclogue called The Basset Table (1715), makes Cordelia and Smilinda contend on this knotty point, “Who suffers most, she who loses at basset, or she who loses her lover?” They refer the question to Betty Lovet. Cordelia stakes her “lady’s companion made by Mathers, and worth fifty guineas,” on the point; and Smilinda stakes a snuff-box, won at Corticelli’s in a raffle, as her pledge. When Cordelia has stated the iron agony of loss at cards, and Smilinda the crushing grief of losing a sweetheart, “strong as a footman and as his master sweet,” Lovet awards the lady’s companion to Smilinda, and the snuff-box to Cordelia, and bids both give over, “for she wants her tea.” Of course, this was suggested by Virgil: Eclogue, iii.