constant writer in The Monthly Mirror'-wherein Henry Kirke White first attracted the notice of what may be termed the literary world-and in this work appeared a series of poetical imitations, entitled 'Horace in London,' the joint production of James and Horace Smith. These parodies were subsequently collected and published in one volume in 1813, after the success of the 'Rejected Addresses' had rendered the authors famous. Some of the pieces display a lively vein of town levity and humour, but many of them also are very trifling and tedious. In one stanza, James Smith has given a true sketch of his own tastes and character:

Me toil and ease alternate share,

Books, and the converse of the fair

(To see is to adore 'em);

With these, and London for my home,
I envy not the joys of Rome,
The Circus or the Forum!

To London he seems to have been as strongly attached as Dr. Johnson himself. 'A confirmed metropolitan in all his tastes and habits, he would often quaintly observe, that London was the best place in summer, and the only place in winter; or quote Dr. Johnson's dogma: "Sir, the man that is tired of London is tired of existence. At other times he would express his perfect concurrence with Dr. Mosley's assertion that in the country one is always maddened with the noise of nothing; or laughingly quote the Duke of Queensberry's rejoinder, on being told one sultry day in September, that London was exceedingly empty: "Yes, but it's fuller than the country. He would not, perhaps, have gone quite so far as his old friend Jekyll, who used to say, that "if compelled to live in the country, he would have the approach to his house paved like the streets of London, and hire a hackney-coach to drive up and down the street all day long;" but he would relate, with great glee, a story shewing the general conviction of his dislike to ruralities. He was sitting in the library at a country-house, when a gentleman, informing him that the family were all out, proposed a quiet stroll into the pleasure-grounds. Stroll! why, don't you see my gouty shoe?" 'Yes, but what then? You don't really mean to say that you have got the gout? I thought you had only put on that shoe to avoid being shewn over the improvements.""* There is some goodhumoured banter and exaggeration in this dislike of ruralities; and accordingly we find that, as Johnson found his way to the remote Hebrides, Smith occasionally transported himself to Yorkshire and other places, the country seats of friends and noblemen. The 'Rejected Addresses' appeared in 1812, having engaged James and Horace Smith six weeks, and proving one of the luckiest hits in literature.' The directors of Drury Lane Theatre had offered a premium for the best poetical address to be spoken on opening the new

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* Memoir prefixed to Smith's Comic Miscellanies, 2 vols. 1941.

edifice and a casual hint from Mr. Ward, secretary to the theatre, suggested to the witty brothers the composition of a series of humorous addresses, professedly composed by the principal authors of the day. The work was ready by the opening of the theatre, but, strange to say, it was with difficulty that a publisher could be procured, although the authors asked nothing for copyright. At length, Mr. John Miller, a dramatic publisher, undertook the publication, offering to give half the profits, should there be any. In an advertisement prefixed to a late edition (the twenty-second!), it is stated that Mr. Murray, who had refused without even looking at the manuscript, purchased the copyright in 1819, after the book had run through sixteen editions, for £131. The success of the work was indeed almost unexampled. The articles written by James Smith consisted of imitations of Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, and a few travesties. Some of them are inimitable, particularly the parodies on Cobbett and Crabbe, which were also among the most popu lar. Horace Smith contributed imitations of Walter Scott, Moore, Monk Lewis, W. T. Fitzgerald-whose 'Loyal Effusion' is irresistibly ludicrous for its extravagant adulation and fustian-Dr. Johnson, &c. The imitation of Byron was a joint effusion, James contributing the first stanza—the key-note, as it were-and Horace the remainder. The amount of talent displayed by the two brothers was pretty equal; for none of James Smith's parodies are more felicitous than that of Scott by Horace. The popularity of the 'Rejected Addresses' seems to have satisfied the ambition of the elder poet. He afterwards confined himself to short anonymous pieces in The New Monthly Magazine' and other periodicals, and to the contribution of some humorous sketches and anecdotes towards Mr. Mathews's theatrical entertainments, the anthorship of which was known only to a few. The Country Cousins,' Trip to France,' and Trip to America,' mostly written by Smith, and brought out by Mathews at the English Opera-house, not only filled the theatre, and replenished the treasury, but brought the witty writer a thousand pounds-a sum to which, we are told, the receiver seldom made allusion without shrugging up his shoulders, and ejaculating: A thousand pounds for nonsense!' Mr. Smith was still better paid for a trifling exertion of his muse; for, having met at a dinner-party the late Mr. Strahan, the king's printer, then suffering from gout and old age, though his faculties remained unimpaired, he sent him next morning the following jeu d'esprit :

Your lower limbs seemed far from stout
When last I saw you walk;

The cause I presently found out

When you began to talk.

The power that props the body's length,

In due proportion spread,

In you mounts upwards, and the strength
All settles in the head.

Mr. Strahan was so much gratified by the compliment that he made
an immediate codicil to his will, by which he bequeathed to the
writer the sum of £3000. Horace Smith, however, mentions that
Mr. Strahan had other motives for his generosity, for he respected
and loved the man quite as much as he admired the poet.
made a happier, though in a pecuniary sense, less lucky epigram on
Miss Edgeworth:

We every-day bards may 'anonymous' sign-
That refuge, Miss Edgeworth, can never be thine.
Thy writings where satire and moral unite,
Must bring forth the name of their author to light.
Good and bad join in telling the source of their birth;

The bad own their EDGE, and the good own their WORTH.

James

The easy social bachelor-life of James Smith was much impaired by hereditary gout. He lived temperately, and at his club dinner restricted himself to his half-pint of sherry: but as a professed joker and diner-out,' he must often have been tempted to over-indulgence and irregular hours. Attacks of gout began to assail him in middle life, and he gradually lost the use and the very form of his limbs, bearing all his sufferings, as his brother states, with an undeviating and unexampled patience.' One of the stanzas in his poem on Chigwell displays his philosophic composure at this period of his life:

World, in thy ever-busy mart
I've acted no unnoticed part-
Would I resume it? O no!

Four acts are done, the jest grows stale;
The waning lamps burn dim and pale,

And reason asks-Cui Bono?

He held it a humiliation to be ill, and never complained or alluded to his own sufferings. He died on the 24th December 1839, aged sixty-five. Lady Blessington said: 'If James Smith had not been a witty man, he must have been a great man.' His extensive information and refined manners, joined to an inexhaustible fund of liveliness and humour, and a happy uniform temper, rendered him a fascinating companion. The writings of such a man give but a faint. idea of the original; yet in his own walk of literature James Smith has few superiors. Anstey comes most directly into competition with him; yet it may be safely said that the Rejected Addresses' will live as long as the 'New Bath Guide.'

He

HORACE SMITH, the latest surviving partner of this literary duumvirate-the most constant and interesting, perhaps, since that of Beaumont and Fletcher, and more affectionate from the relationship of the parties-afterwards distinguished himself by various novels and copies of verses in The New Monthly Magazine.' was one of the first imitators of Sir Walter Scott in his historical romances. His Brambletye House,' a tale of the civil wars, published in 1826, was received with favour by the public, though some of its descriptions of the plague in London were copied too literally from

6

Defoe, and there was a want of spirit and truth in the embodiment of some of the historical characters. The success of this effort inspired the author to venture into various fields of fiction. He wrote Tor Hill;' Zillah, a Tale of the Holy City;' 'The Midsummer Medley; Walter Colyton;' The Involuntary Prophet;' Jane Lomax;'The Moneyed Man;' 'Adam Brown;' The Merchant;' &c. None of these seem destined to live. Mr. Smith was as remarkable for generosity as for wit and playful humour. Shelley said once: 'I know not what Horace Smith must take me for sometimes; I am afraid he must think me a strange fellow; but is it not odd, that the only truly generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker! And he writes poetry too,' continued Mr. Shelley, his voice rising in a fervour of astonishment -'he writes poetry and pastoral dramas, and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous.' The poet also publicly expressed his regard for Mr. Smith:

Wit and sense,

Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in H. S.

This truly estimable man died July 12, 1849, aged seventy. Apart from the parodies, James Smith did nothing so good as Horace Smith's Address to the Mummy,' which is a felicitous compound of fact, humour, and sentiment, forcibly and originally expressed:

6

The Theatre.-By the Rev. G. C. [Crabbe.]

"Tis sweet to view, from half-past five to six,
Our long wax-candles, with short cotton wicks,
Touched by the lamplighter's Promethean art,
Start into light, and make the lighter start:
To see red Phoebus through the gallery pane
Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane,
While gradual parties fill our widened pit,
And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit.

What various swains our motley walls contain!
Fashion from Moorfields, honour from Chick Lane;
Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort,
Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court:
From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain,
Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane;
The lottery cormorant, the auction shark,

The full-price master, and the half-price clerk;

Boys who long linger at the gallery door,

With pence twice five, they want but twopence more,

Till some Samaritan the twopence spares,

And sends them jumping up the gallery stairs.
Critics we boast who ne'er their malice balk,

But talk their minds, we wish they'd mind their talk;
Big worded bullies, who by quarrels live,
Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give;
Jews from St. Mary Axe, for jobs so wary,
That for old clothes they'd even axe St. Mary;
And bucks with pockets empty as their pate,
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait;

Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse
With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house.

Yet here, as elsewhere, chance can joy bestow,
Where scowling fortune seemed to threaten woe.
John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polished Stubb's shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter-a safe employ;

In Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred→→
At number twenty-seven, it is said-

Facing the pump, and near the Granby's head.
He would have bound him to some shop in town,
But with a premium he could not come down;
Pat was the urchin's name, a red-haired youth,
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.
Silence, ye gods! to keep your tongues in awe,
The muse shall tell an accident she saw.

Pat Jenning in the upper gallery sat;
But leaning forward Jennings lost his hat;
Down from the gallery the beaver flew,
And spurned the one, to settle in the two.
How shall he act? Pay at the gallery door

Two shillings for what cost when new but four?
Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait,
And gain his hat again at half-past eight?

Now, while his fears anticipate a thief,

John Mullins whispers: Take my handkerchief."

"Thank you,' cries Pat, but one won't make a line.

"Take mine,' cried Wilson; And,' cried Stokes, 'take mine.'

A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties,

Where Spitalfields with real India vies

Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted hue,

Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue,

Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new.

George Green below, with palpitating hand,

Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band;

Upsoars the prize; the youth, with joy unfeigned,

Regained the felt, and felt what he regained,
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat
Made a low bow, and touched the ransomed hat.

The Baby's Debut.-By W. W. [Wordsworth.]

Spoken in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of age, who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter.

My brother Jack was nine in May,
And I was eight on New-Year's Day;
So in Kate Wilson's shop
Papa (he's my papa and Jack's)
Bought me, last week, a doll of wax,
And brother Jack a top.

Jack's in the pouts, and this it is,
He thinks mine came to more than his,
So to my drawer he goes,
Takes out the doll, and, O my stars!
He pokes her head between the bars,
And melts off half her nose!

Quite cross, a bit of string I beg,
And tie it to his peg-top's peg,

And bang, with might and main,
Its head against the parlour-door:
Off flies the head, and hits the floor,
And breaks a window-pane.

This made him cry with rage and spite;
Well, let him cry, it serves him right.
A pretty thing, forsooth!
If he's to melt, all scalding hot,
Half my doll's nose, and I am not
To draw his peg-top's tooth!