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| Horatio (or Horace) Smith (1779-1849) English writer, poet and parodist, he published his first book in 1800. He was also a businessman, and he made his fortune in the stock market. With his brother, James Smith (1775-1839), he wrote the famous Rejected Addresses, or the New Theatrum Poetarum (1812). The book burlesqued such contemporary poets as Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, and Byron, who had been invited to compete in writing an opening address to the reopening Drury Lane Theatre (the secretary of the Theatre had communicated to the brothers how silly the entries all were). Smith was a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and was his guest when Shelley was living at Marlow in 1817, before he left England. When Shelley had a problem with his father over money, Smith wrote to intercede. In Shelley's poem-letter to Maria Gisborne (July 1820), which included descriptions of people in London whom he admired, he included a mention of Smith: "Wit and sense, / Virtue and human knowledge, all that might / Make this dull world a business of delight, / Are all combined in Horace Smith". Smith was on the way to visit Shelley in Italy when the news reached him of Shelley's death. Among his poems, the most popular is the serio-comic An Address to a Mummy. Among his numerous novels, the most known is Brambletye House, or Cavaliers and Roundheads (1826), an imitation of the historical novels of Scott. Horace in London (1813) is a collection of his early work. |