Smith, JAMES and HORACE, authors of The Rejected Addresses, were the sons of an eminent London solicitor, and were born, the former on 10th February 1775, the latter on 31st December 1779. Both were educated at Cligwell in Essex. James succeeded his father as solicitor to the Board of Ordnance; Horace adopted the profession of a stockbroker, and realised a handsome fortune, on which he retired with his family to Brighton. Both were popular and accomplished men—James remarkable for his gaiety and conversational powers, and Horace—the wealthier of the two—distinguished for true liberality and benevolence. Both had written for the Pic-nie (1802), the Monthly Mirror (1807-10), &c., when the committee of management advertised for an address to be spoken at the opening of the new Drury Lane Theatre in 1812, and the brothers adopted a suggestion made to them, that they should write a series of supposed 'Rejected Addresses.' They accomplished the task in six weeks—James furnishing imitations of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, Cobbett, &c., and Horace those of Scott, Byron (all but the first stanza), 'Monk' Lewis, Moore, W. T. Fitzgerald, and others. In point of talent the authors were about equally matched; for though James had the greatest number of successful imitations, the most felicitous of the whole is Horace's 'Tale of Drury Lane, by W.S.' ('I must have done this myself,' said Walter Scott, 'although I forget on what occasion.') It is a curious fact in literary history that the Rejected Addresses should themselves have suffered rejection, and that the copyright, offered originally to Murray for £20 and refused, was purchased by him for £131 in 1819, after the book had run through sixteen editions, and had brought its authors over £1000. James was afterwards an occasional contributor to the periodical literature of the day, and received £1000 for writing Charles Mathews' 'entertainments.' Horace between 1807 and 1845 produced more than a score of three-volume novels—Brambletye House, Tor Hill, &c. These are forgotten, but a new edition of his Tin Trumpet (1836) appeared in 1869, in which year also an édition de luxe of the Rejected Addresses was published at New York. Of Horace's Poems (2 vols. 1846) the best known is the 'Ode to an Egyptian Mummy.' James died in London on 24th December 1839, and Horace at Tunbridge Wells on 12th July 1849.
See PARODY; also vol. i. of Hayward's Biographical Essays (1858), Timbs's Lives of the Wits and Humourists (1862), and Beavan's James and Horace Smith (1899).