studentship there.

He passed through the exercises of the college, and the university,
with unusual applause; and tho' he often suffered his friends to call
him off from his retirement; yet his return to his studies was so much
the more passionate, and his love of reading and thinking being so
vehement, the habit grew upon him, and the series of meditation and
reflexion being kept up whole weeks together, he could better arrange
his ideas, and take in sundry parts of a science at one view without
interruption or confusion. Some of his acquaintance, who were
pleased to distinguish between the wit and the scholar, extoll'd him
altogether on account of the first of these excellencies; but others,
who were more candid, admired him as a prodigy in both. He had
acquired reputation in the schools, both as a philosopher and polemic
of extensive knowledge, and deep penetration, and went through all the
courses with a proper regard to the dignity, and importance of each
science. Mr. Smith had a long and perfect intimacy with all the Greek
and Latin Classics; with whom he had industriously compared whatever
was worth perusing in the French, Spanish, and Italian, and all the
celebrated writers in his own country. He considered the antients and
moderns, not as parties, or rivals for fame, but as architects upon
one and the same plan, the Art of Poetry. If he did not always commend
the compositions of others, it proceeded not from ill-nature (for that
was foreign to his temper) but a strict regard to justice would not
suffer him to call a few flowers elegantly adorned, without much art,
and less genius, by so distinguished a name as poetry. He was of Ben
Johnson's opinion, who could not admire,

----Verses, as smooth and soft as cream,
In which their was neither depth nor stream.