Smith exemplifies the 18c role of the cleric as scholar, in his case classical scholar and translator. But he also seems, unlike e.g. Joseph Warton, to have been a seriously pious Anglican as well. Certainly the poems published posthumously in a short (53 p) volume have at least some overtly pious content. Poetry seems to have been a tertiary adjunct both to sermon-writing and translating Longinus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.