James Smith (born 1775, died 1839), and Horace (born 1779, died 1849), sons of Robert Smith, solicitor to the Board of Ordnance, are chiefly to be remembered for their joint-work, “Rejected Addresses,” which appeared in 1812. They were suggested by the management of Drury Lane offering a prize of £20 for an address to be spoken on the re-opening of the theatre, and consisted of some wonderful parodies of the chief poets of the day. Scott said of his, “I must have done this myself, but I can’t remember when.” Their earliest literary efforts appeared in the Pic-Nic newspaper (1802), and Mirror (1807–10). James had followed in the footsteps of his father as a solicitor, receiving the latter’s business and official appointment. Horace, who joined the Stock Exchange, wrote some twenty novels, among them being “Gaieties and Gravities,” “Brambletye House,” “Reuben Apsley,” “Zillah,” and “Heads and Tails,” perhaps his best (1836).
Personal
A pleasant, twaddling, pun-making, epigram-manufacturing, extempore-grinding, and painstaking elderly joker. He made one hit, and that was a good one; on the strength of which he has lived ever since, as indeed he deserved to live. We cannot recollect that he wrote anything in the book line except his contributions to the “Rejected Addresses,” unless he had a hand in such stuff as “Jokeby,” or “Horace in London.” His magazine papers in the New Monthly were rather monotonous; and his continually quoting of them for years afterwards has contributed in a great measure towards getting him, so generally as he is, considered to be a bore. But let him have his praise. His single talent was a good talent, and there is no reason why he should wrap it up in a napkin. We have already alluded to the universal diffusion of his name among us English folk, and its trite and ordinary sound in our ears. It is perhaps more congruous on that account with the station which he has chosen to hold in our literature. His place there is of the Smiths, Smithish.
A fair, stout, fresh-coloured man, with round features,… he used to read us trim verses, with rhymes as pat as butter.
James Smith, was very different from his brother Horace in all the qualities and attributes of his mind and intellectual character, with the exception of his lively wit, amiable and popular manners, and singularly gentlemanly bearing and personal appearance. In this latter respect James Smith was all his life a model; and this, although he had been bred and brought up in the city, and passed nearly the whole of his life there. I have never seen a man on whom was more legibly and eloquently written that comprehensive title, “Gentleman.”… James Smith, though certainly not possessing a larger amount of wit and humour than his brother Horace, was essentially and emphatically “a wit”—in the old-fashioned sense of the age of Anne and her immediate successor. Had he lived in those days, he would have been among the favourite habitués of Button’s and Wills’s, and would have manfully asserted and maintained his station among the best of that brilliant day. As it was—though, like his brother, associating with the highest and most cultivated spirits of the day in which he lived, and fully qualified to take a distinguished place among them—unlike that gentle and genial spirit, he preferred those lower and more limited circles in which his intellectual pretensions were paramount and his supremacy undisputed: he preferred the green-rooms of Covent Garden and Drury Lane to Holland House; and so anxious and determined was he to succeed in establishing the social reputation at which he aimed in both these circles, that I’m afraid there is little doubt of his having made it no unimportant part of the business of his life to manufacture beforehand the appliances and means proper to his success; so that you could never be sure of any one of his droll anecdotes, lively sallies, bitter jests, or biting repartees, that it was not fait à loisir.
The nervous terror which I experienced when singing or playing before my mother was carried to a climax when I was occasionally called upon to accompany the vocal performances of our friendly acquaintance, James Smith (one of the authors of the “Rejected Addresses”). He was famous for his humorous songs and his own capital rendering of them, but the anguish I endured in accompanying him made those comical performances of his absolutely tragical to me; the more so that he had a lion-like cast of countenance, with square jaws and rather staring eyes. But perhaps he appeared so stern-visaged only to me; while he sang everybody laughed, but I perspired coldly and felt ready to cry, and so have but a lugubrious impression of some of the most amusing productions of that description, heard to the very best advantage (if I could have listened to them at all) as executed by their author.
General
A conversational wit of high rank, and beyond comparison the best epigrammatist of the day…. His reputation may well rest upon the “Rejected Addresses,” of which he contributed the larger portion; a series of poems, &c., which, as a fellow-traveller once gravely informed him, did not appear so very bad—he did not think that they ought all to have been rejected!
Spencer and Praed were not more felicitous in their poetry of fashion than James Smith. The topics show the man and his associations, and his poems are so many finished daguerreotypes of London society in the first half of the nineteenth century. In this light they will always be interesting and amusing—and may be admitted into collections of British poetry, from which similar sketches by Swift and Prior, of a grosser period, aught to be excluded.
The best of the thing was that there was no gall in the ink of which the happy parodists made use; their satire was of such genial character that it “procured for the authors,”—as they boasted,—“the acquaintance, and conciliated the good-will of those whom they had the most audaciously burlesqued.” Sir Walter Scott said to one of them that he certainly must have written himself the piece that bears his initials, “though he forgot on what occasion;” William Spencer, when warned by Lydia White, a notorious feeder of London lions, that he would meet at her table “one of those men who made that shameful attack,” replied that this “was the very man upon earth he should like to know;” and Lord Byron wrote to Murray from Italy, “Tell him we forgive him, were he twenty times our satirist,”—adding that the Imitations were “the best things after the ‘Rolliad.’” Indeed, the only people offended or discontented were, as Mr. Hayward says, those who were left out! Few books are better known, even at the present day, than this of which I have been speaking; and I should not have felt it necessary to say so much about it, if I had not learnt by experience that, in re literariâ at least, it is more satisfactory to assume the ignorance than the knowledge of one’s readers. The book, indeed, has more than one point of attraction. Collectors prize it for the exquisite woodcut illustrations by George Cruikshank which are to be found in the later editions; lovers of wit and humour for the truly attic salt wherewith it is savoured; while all that know it will readily endorse the opinion of Jeffrey, who says, “I take the ‘Rejected Addresses’ to be the very best imitations, and often of difficult originals, that ever were made.”
The honours of the authorship were pretty fairly divided between James and Horace. The parodies on Wordsworth, Crabbe, Southey, and Coleridge, and the first stanza of the parody on Byron, were contributed by James. He was especially happy in burlesquing Wordsworth and Crabbe…. James Smith wrote a number of verses, which were collected after his death by his brother, but he is only remembered for his parodies.
James Smith’s contributions to these famous parodies were perhaps the best, though not the most numerous, but he appeared contented with the celebrity they had brought him, and never again produced anything considerable. Universally known, and everywhere socially acceptable, “he wanted,” says his brother, “all motive for further and more serious exertion.”… He also produced much comic verse and prose for periodicals, not generally of a very high order, but occasionally including an epigram turned with point and neatness. His reputation rather rested upon his character as a wit and diner-out; most of the excellent things attributed to him, however, were, in the opinion of his biographer in the “Law Magazine,” impromptus faits à loisir.
