James Smith

Who was James Smith?

James Smith and Horace Smith, authors of the Rejected Addresses, sons of a solicitor.

The occasion of their happy jeu d'esprit was the rebuilding of Drury Lane theatre in 1812, after a fire in which it had been burnt down. The managers had offered a prize of 50 for an address to be recited at the reopening in October. Six weeks before that date the happy thought occurred to the brothers Smith of feigning that the most popular poets of the time had been among the competitors and assuing a volume of unsuccessful addresses in parody of their various styles. They divided the task between them, James taking William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and George Crabbe, while George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, Thomas Moore, Walter Scott and Bowles were assigned to Horace.

Seven editions were called for within three months. The Rejected Addresses are the most widely popular parodies ever published in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and take classical rank in literature. The brothers fairly divided the honors: the elder brother's Wordsworth is evenly balanced by the younger's Scott, and both had a hand in Byron. A striking feature is the absence of malice; none of the poets caricatured took offence, while the imitation is so clever that both Byron and Scott are recorded to have said that they could hardly believe they had not written the addresses ascribed to them.