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While Dickens appears to have added the "smoking" to the name, the English literary critic George Saintsbury hypothesized in his 1920 "Notes on a Cellar-Book" that it was born at Oxford University.

It was through Saintsbury I came to read the French, especially Sainte-Beuve, and another critical line that interested me was Peacock/Meredith/Huxley.

Saintsbury was a terrible Tory, but good on the French.

I don’t remember that Saintsbury was ever funny.

But what really started me writing critical essays was my reading of George Saintsbury.