Alexander Smith is a remarkable example of the young poet who meets with great initial success but then fades into obscurity. His first major poem, "A Life-Drama," was overrated by its earliest critics and readers, then condemned as "Spasmodic." Smith spent the rest of his career trying to shake off the derogatory label but never succeeded, and he is largely and undeservedly forgotten today.

Alexander was born in Kilmarnock, in the Scottish Lowlands southwest of Glasgow. His father, Peter Smith, a Lowlander, was a designer of calico printing and sewed muslins. His mother, Helen Murray Smith, a Highlander, was a woman of considerable mental endowment and tenderest maternal feeling. The deep love between mother and son was "the real sunshine of his youth," according to Smith's biographer, Thomas Brisbane. She and a Highland servant girl first introduced the boy to Gaelic songs and Ossianic legends. It was perhaps...