In Mr. Upcott's album he wrote a playful account of himself, in which is the following paragraph. "I can boast of seven _events_, some of which _great_ men would be proud of. I received a kiss _when a boy_ from the beautiful Mrs. Robinson,--was patted on the head by Dr. Johnson,--have frequently held Sir Joshua Reynolds's spectacles,--partook of a pot of porter with an elephant,--saved Lady Hamilton from falling when the melancholy news arrived of Lord Nelson's death,--three times conversed with King George the Third,--and was shut up in a room with Mr. Kean's lion."[3]
Mr. Smith's last illness, an inflammation of the lungs, was but of one week's duration. He was fully conscious of his approaching dissolution, and died in the possession of all his faculties, surrounded by his family, on the 8th of March 1833, at No. 22, University Street, Tottenham Court Road. He was privately interred on the 16th in the burial ground of St. George's Chapel, near Tyburn Turnpike, attended to the grave by a few old friends and brother artists.
Besides his widow Mr. Smith left one son, who died at the Cape of Good Hope three months after his father; and two daughters; one of whom is married to Mr. Smith, the sculptor; the other to Mr. Fischer, the miniature-painter, a native of Hanover.
Of Mr. Smith there is a three-quarters portrait by J. Jackson, R.A.; and also a drawing of him by the same artist, from which the engraving given in this work, by Skelton, is copied.
There are few subjects, perhaps, so eagerly attended to by the young as those related by their venerable parents when assembled round the fire-side, but more particularly descriptions of the customs and habits of ancient times. Now as the Cries of London are sometimes the topic of conversation, the author of the present work is not without the hope of finding, amongst the more aged as well as juvenile readers, many to whom it may prove acceptable, inasmuch as it not only exhibits several Itinerant Traders and other persons of various callings of the present day, but some of those of former times, collected from engravings executed in the reigns of James I., Charles I. and during the Usurpation of Oliver Cromwell, and which, on account of their extreme rarity, are seldom to be seen but in the most curious and expensive Collections.