James and Horace Smith, Joint Authors of " Rejected Add:T:8es"
: a Family Karratirebasedupon Hitherto anpu.blished Plicate Diaries, Letters, and other Documents. By Arthur H. Beava.n. With 5 Portraits. (Hurst and Blackett. 6s.)—We have not had the fortune to be particularly amused by this compilation, although it is con- cerned with the doings and sayings of very witty and charming persons. James Smith and his brother were excellent company in their day, though Keats observed that they had wit rather than humour, and said things which make one start without making one feel" ; but the truth is that high literary genius (which Mr. Bea.van decidedly does not possess) might have failed to interest us in the career of a prosperous stockbroker and well-to-do solicitor. The world remembers "Rejected Addresses"—it would be an ungrate- ful world if it did not—but it has forgotten entirely the other fifty volumes which Horace Smith produced, and does not care in the least to know about the authors of a successful book of parodies. Still less does it crave particulars of Robert Smith, the respectable and Prosperous father of these respeetable and prosperous persons, although he too had quite a pleasant knack of versification, and saw Louis XV. eat his dinner. There are two interesting points about Horace Smith: first, that he was an Englishman and a stockbroker who left off money-making when he had attained a competence and retired, just as a Frenehmaa might have done ; secondly, that he was the business agent and the friend of Shelley. The journals 'contain Sortie interesting destriptions of the poet and his talk, which bear out what others have sairof his extraordinary personal charts aidthe impression of absolute refinement Which he conveyed:: Smith also speaks from firsthand khowledge of, his lavish generosity,esPecially, to necessitous men of letters. "No wonder," he writes, "-that rich curmudgeons maligned hire, for' there Was a daily beady in his life that made theirs ugly. No wonder that the writer of this rediiid, educated in the sordid school of mercantile life, could scarcely trust the evidence of his senses when he saw this extraordinary being living like the austerest anchorite, denying himself' all the luxuries appropriate to his birth and station that he might appropriate his savings to the relief of his fellow creatures." Of James Smith there is little to he said : , he rested on his laurels after "Rejected Addresses," and published no more books, though he wee, like 'Horace, greatly courted for his society. Several good things are recorded of him and of his brother, but most of them are somewhat mechanical, the kind that hits the ear rather than the intelligence. Mr. 13eavan's work is not particularly well done; the book is confusedly Put together ; and at one point he goes out of his way to: rail. at, Mr. Lang for malignant inaccuracy without making any attempt to substantiate.his charge..
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