Horace Smith

“ In the present publishing era, when books are like the multitudinous waves of the advancing sea, some of which make no impression whatever upon the sand, while the superficial traces left by others are destined to be perpetually obliterated by their successors, almost as soon as they are found, the authors of the Rejected Addresses may well feel flattered, after a lapse of twenty years, and the sale of seventeen large editions, in receiving an application to write a Preface to a new and more handsome impression. ”

“ Alas! it is painful to reflect, that of the twelve writers whom we presumed to imitate, five are now no more; the list of the deceased being unhappily swelled by the most illustrious of all, the clarum et venerabile nomen of Sir Walter Scott! From that distinguished writer, whose transcendent talents were only to be equalled by his virtues and his amiability, we received favours and notice, both public and private, which it will be difficult to forget, because we had not the smallest claim upon his kindness. ”

“ O why should our dull retrospective addresses
Fall damp as wet blankets on Drury Lane fire?
Away with blue devils, away with distresses,
And give the gay spirit to sparkling desire!
II.
Let artists decide on the beauties of Drury,
The richest to me is when woman is there;
The question of houses I leave to the jury;
The fairest to me is the house of the fair.
p. 26III.
When woman’s soft smile all our senses bewilders,
And gilds, while it carves, her dear form on the heart,
What need has New Drury of carvers and gilders? ”

“ To make Johnson call a doer ‘a ligneous barricado,’ and its knocker and bell its ‘frappant and tintinnabulant appendages,’ is neither just nor humorous; and we are surprised that a writer who has given such extraordinary proofs of his talent for finer ridicule and fairer imitation, should have stooped to a vein of pleasantry so low, and so long ago exhausted; especially as, in other passages of the same piece, he has shown how well qualified he was both to catch and to render the true characteristics of his original. The beginning, for example, we think excellent.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. ”

“ To embody the flying colours of folly, to arrest evanescence, to give to bubbles the globular consistency as well as form, to exhibit on the stage the piebald denizen of the stable, and the half-reasoning parent of combs, to display the brisk locomotion of Columbine, or the tortuous attitudinizing of Punch;—these are the occupations of others, whose ambition, limited to the applause of unintellectual fatuity, is too innocuous for the application of satire, and too humble for the incitement of jealousy. ”

“ And now, most thinking people, cast your eyes over my head to what the builder (I beg his pardon, the architect) calls the proscenium. No motto, no slang, no popish Latin, to keep the people in the dark. No veluti in speculum. Nothing in the dead languages, properly so called, for they ought to die, ay and be damned to boot! The Covent Garden manager tried that, and a pretty business he made of it! ”

“ Upon the whole, few have been the instances, in the acrimonious history of literature, where a malicious pleasantry like the Rejected Addresses—which the parties ridiculed might well consider more annoying than a direct satire—instead of being met by querulous bitterness or petulant retaliation, has procured for its authors the acquaintance, or conciliated the good-will, of those whom they had the most audaciously burlesqued.
In commenting on a work, however trifling, which has survived the lapse of twenty years, an author may almost claim the privileged garrulity of age ”

“ The event has proved both parties to be in a degree right, and in a degree wrong. One hundred and twelve Addresses have been sent in, each sealed p. viand signed, and mottoed, “as per order,” some written by men of great, some by men of little, and some by men of no talent.
Many of the public prints have censured the taste of the Committee, in thus contracting for Addresses as they would for nails—by the gross; but it is surprising that none should have censured their temerity. ”

“ One of this extraordinary man’s allegations was, that “fat is an oily dropsy.” To stave off its visitation, he frequently chewed tobacco in lieu of dinner, alleging that it absorbed the gastric juice of the stomach, and prevented hunger. “Pass your hand down my side,” said his Lordship to the writer; “can you count my ribs?” “Every one of them.” “I am delighted to hear you say so. I called last week on Lady —; ‘Ah, Lord Byron,’ said she, ‘how fat you grow!’ But you know Lady — is fond of saying spiteful timings!” ”

“ Amid the general hum of gratulation which flatters us in front, it is fit that some regard should be paid to the murmurs of despondence that assail us in the rear. They, as I have elsewhere expressed it, “who live to please,” should not have their own pleasures entirely overlooked. The children of Thespis are general in their censures of the architect, its having placed the locality of exit at such a distance from the oily irradiators which now dazzle the eyes of him who addresses you. ”

“ Most thinking people, I have heard you much abused. There is not a compound in the language but is strung fifty in a rope, like onions, by the Morning Post, and hurled in your teeth. You are called the mob; and when they have made you out to be the mob, you are called the scum of the people, and the dregs of the people. I should like to know how you can be both. Take a basin of broth—not cheap soup, Mr. Wilberforce—not soup for the poor, at a penny a quart, as your mixture of horses’ legs, brick-dust, and old shoes, was denominated—but plain, wholesome, patriotic beef or mutton broth ”

“ Deviation from scenic propriety has only to vituperate itself for the consequences it generates. Let the actor consider the line of exit as that line beyond which he should not soar in quest of spurious applause: let him reflect, that in proportion as he advances to the lamps, he recedes from nature ”

“ When persons address an audience from the stage, it is usual, either in words or gesture, to say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, your servant.” If I were base enough, mean enough, paltry enough, and brute beast enough, to follow that fashion, I should tell two lies in a breath. In the first place, you are not Ladies and Gentlemen, but I hope something better, that is to say, honest men and women ”

“ In this dilemma, our Addresses, now in every sense rejected, might probably have never seen the light, had not some good angel whispered us to betake ourselves to Mr. John Miller, a dramatic publisher, then residing in Bow Street, Covent Garden. No sooner had this gentleman looked over our manuscript, than he immediately offered to take upon himself all the risk of publication, and to give us half the profits, should there be any; a liberal proposition, with which we gladly closed. ”

“ For Time would, with us, ’stead of sand,
Put filings of steel in his glass,
To dry up the blots of his hand,
And spangle life’s page as they pass.
Since all flesh is grass ere ’tis hay, [60]
O may I in clover live snug,
And when old Time mows me away,
Be stacked with defunct Lady Mugg! ”

“ George Crabbe.—The writer’s first interview with this poet, who may be designated Pope in worsted stockings, took place at William Spencer’s villa at Petersham, close to what that gentleman called his gold-fish pond, though it was scarcely three feet in diameter, throwing up a jet d’eau like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing both the hands of his satirist exclaimed with a good-humoured laugh, “Ah! my old enemy, how do you do?” In the course of conversation, he expressed great astonishment at his popularity in London; adding, “In my own village they think nothing of me.” ”

“ Finding on enumeration that they have, with a with-two-hands-and-one-tongue-to be-applauded liberality, contracted for more gunpowder than they want, they have parted with the surplus to the mattock-carrying and hustings-hammering high-bailiff of Westminster, who has, with his own shovel, dug a large hole in the front of the parish-church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, that, upon the least symptom of ill-breeding in the mob at the general election, the whole of the market may be blown into the air. ”

“ Busby, we can say very little more than that they appear to us to be far more capable of combining into good poetry than the few lines we were able to read of the learned Doctor’s genuine address in the newspapers. They might pass, indeed, for a very tolerable imitation of Darwin.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. ”

“ A park of artillery, provided with chain-shot, is to be stationed on the stage, and play upon the audience, in case of any indication of misplaced applause or popular discontent (which accounts for the large space between the curtain and the lamps) ; and the public will participate our satisfaction in learning that the indecorous custom of standing up with the hat on is to be abolished, as the Bow-street officers are provided with daggers, and have orders to stab all such persons to the heart, and send their bodies to Surgeons’ Hall. Gentlemen who cough are only to be slightly wounded. ”

“ A foreigner who had but slight knowledge of the English language might have concluded, from their cadences, that they were little better than fools—“just a born goose,” as Terry the actor used to say. Lewis died on his passage homeward from Jamaica, owing to a dose of James’s powders injudiciously administered by “his own mere motion.” He wrote various plays, with various success, he had admirable notions of dramatic construction, but the goodness of his scenes and incidents was marred by the badness of his dialogue. ”

“ But, leaving the Committee to encounter the responsibility they have incurred, the public have at least to thank them for ascertaining and establishing one point, which might otherwise have admitted of controversy. When it is considered that many amateur writers have been discouraged from becoming competitors, and that few, if any, of the professional authors can afford to write for nothing, and, of course, have not been candidates for the honorary prize at Drury Lane, we may confidently pronounce that, as far as regards number, the present is undoubtedly the Augustan age of English poetry. ”

“ There is an art of writing for the Theatre, technically called touch and go, which is indispensable when we consider the small quantum of patience which so motley an assemblage as a London audience can be expected to afford. All the contributors have been very exact in sending their initials and mottoes. Those belonging to the present collection have been carefully preserved, and each has been affixed to its respective poem. The letters that accompanied the Addresses having been honourably destroyed unopened, it is impossible to state the real authors with any certainty ”

“ Busby, whose supposed address is a translation called ‘Architectural Atoms, intended to be recited by the translator’s son.’ Unluckily, however, for the wag who had prepared this fun, the genuine serious absurdity of Dr. Busby and his son has cast all his humour into the shade. The Doctor from the boxes, and the son from the stage, have actually endeavoured, it seems, to recite addresses, which they call monologues and unalogues; and which, for extravagant folly, tumid meanness, and vulgar affectation, set all the powers of parody at utter defiance.”—Quarterly Review. ”

“ The Jove of the modern critical Olympus, Lord Mayor of the theatric sky, [54b] p. 55has, ex cathedrâ, asserted that a natural actor looks upon the audience part of the theatre as the third side of the chamber he inhabits. Surely, of the third wall thus fancifully erected, our actors should, by ridicule or reason, be withheld from knocking their heads against the stucco.
Time forcibly reminds me that all things which have a limit must be brought to a conclusion. ”

“ John Bull is the beef thrown into it; taxes are the hot water he boils in; rotten boroughs are the fuel that blazes under this same pipkin; parliament is the ladle that stirs the hodge-podge, and sometimes—. ”

“ Whose daughters are fair as the foam of the wave,
Whose sons, unaccustom’d to rebel commotion,
Tho’ joyous, are sober—tho’ peaceful, are brave. ”

“ Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is everything, and everything is nought. ”

“ He who is such a master of disguises may easily be supposed to have been successful in concealing himself, and, with the power of assuming so many styles, is not likely to be detected by his own. We should guess, however, that he had not written a great deal in his own character—that his natural style was neither very lofty nor very grave—and that he rather indulges a partiality for puns and verbal pleasantries. ”

“ This phrase is probably unintelligible to the untheatrical portion of the community, which may now be said to be all the world except the actors. Ticket-nights are those whereon the inferior actors club for a benefit: each distributes as many tickets of admission as he is able among his friends. A motley assemblage is the consequence; and as each actor is encouraged by his own set, who are not in general play-going people, the applause comes (as Chesterfield says of Pope’s attempts at wit) “generally unseasonably, and too often unsuccessfully.” ”

“ When a man says veluti in speculum, he is called a man of letters. Very well, and is not a man who cries O. P. a man of letters too? You ran your O. P. against his veluti in speculum, and pray which beat? I prophesied that, though I never told any body. I take it for granted, that every intelligent man, woman, and child, to whom I address myself, has stood severally and respectively in Little Russell Street, and cast their, his, her, and its eyes on the outside of this building before they paid their money to view the inside. Look at the brick-work, p. 23English Audience! ”

“ One hundred and eleven of the Addresses must, of course, be unsuccessful: to each of the authors, thus infallibly classed with the genus irritabile, it would be very hard to deny six stanch friends, who consider his the best of all possible Addresses, and whose tongues will be as ready to laud him as to hiss his adversary. These, with the potent aid of the bard himself, make seven foes per address ”

“ This, ladies and gentlemen, may at first make provisions rise, but we pledge the credit of our theatre that they will soon fall again, and people be supplied, as usual, with vegetables, in the in-general-strewed-with-cabbage-stalks-but-on-Saturday-night-lighted-up-with-lamps market of Covent Garden. ”