fortune in India from Indigo. Although Alexander's working hours at the university left time to write, that time was largely absorbed in entertaining his many friends and relatives. He contracted diphtheria in November 1866. That became compounded with typhoid fever. By the end of the year he seemed to be rallying but the combination was too much. He died at home on 5 January 1867 aged thirty-seven, and was buried five days later in Warriston Cemetery. Memorial His 16 feet (4.87m) tall red sandstone cross stands close to the old East Gate (now sealed) of Warriston Cemetery (access is by another gate). The memorial was designed by the artist James Drummond (1816–1877) in a Celtic cross design including a harp, poet's laurel bay leaf wreath, and a star, and the stonework was carved with thistles and bayleaves intertwining, by the sculptor John Rhind (1828–1892) and it also has a bronze head image of Smith in profile, added by William Brodie (1815 – 1881) who also sculpted Greyfriars Bobby. The inscription is: "Alexander Smith, poet and essayist. Born at Kilmarnock, 31st Dec. 1829; Died at Wardie, 5th Jan. 1867." And at the base it has carved 'Erected by some of his personal friends'. Works As a poet he was one of the leading representatives of what was called the "Spasmodic" School, now fallen into oblivion. Smith, P. J. Bailey and Sydney Dobell were satirized by W. E. Aytoun in 1854 in Firmilian: a Spasmodic Tragedy. In the year Sydney Dobell came to Edinburgh, an acquaintanceship sprang up between the two which resulted in their collaboration in a book of War Sonnets (1855), inspired by the Crimean War. Smith also published City Poems (1857) and Edwin of Deira (1861), a Northumbrian epic poem. Although his early work A Life Drama was highly praised, his poetry was later less well thought of and was ridiculed as being a Spasmodic. Edwin of Deira was also attacked, unjustly, as plagiarism. Smith turned his attention to prose, and published Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country (1863), noted especially for the essay A Lark's Flight, in which Smith describes the song of a lark breaking the silence just before the trapdoor is sprung under two condemned men. Two years later he published his most celebrated work, A Summer in Skye (1865). As well as these and many magazine articles, he edited the Golden Treasury edition of Burns,