Rejected Addresses; Or, The New Theatrum Poetarum. James Smith
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was more capable of exaggeration and distortion. To avoid politics and personality, to imitate the turn of mind as well as the phraseology of our originals, and, at all events, to raise a harmless laugh, were our main objects; in the attainment of which united aims, we were sometimes hurried into extravagance, by attaching much more importance to the last than to the two first. In no instance were we thus betrayed into a greater injustice than in the case of Mr. Wordsworth—the touching sentiment, profound wisdom, and copious harmony of whose loftier writings we left unnoticed, in the desire of burlesquing them; while we pounced upon his popular ballads, and exerted ourselves to push their simplicity into puerility and silliness. With pride and pleasure do we now claim to be ranked among the most ardent admirers of this true poet; and if he himself could see the state of his works, which are ever at our right hand, he would, perhaps, receive the manifest evidences they exhibit of constant reference and delighted re-perusal, as some sort of amende honorable for the unfairness of which we were guilty when we were less conversant with the higher inspirations of his muse. To Mr. Coleridge, and others of our originals, we must also do a tardy act of justice, by declaring that our burlesque of their peculiarities has never blinded us to those beauties and talents which are beyond the reach of all ridicule.
One of us [0d] had written a genuine Address for the occasion, which was sent to the Committee, and shared the fate it merited, in being rejected. To swell the bulk, or rather to diminish the tenuity of our little work, we added it to the Imitations; and prefixing the initials of S. T. P. for the purpose of puzzling the critics, were not a little amused, in the sequel, by the many guesses and conjectures into which we had ensnared some of our readers. We could even enjoy the mysticism, qualified as it was by the poor compliment, that our carefully written Address exhibited no “very prominent trait of absurdity,” when we saw it thus noticed in the Edinburgh Review for November 1812:—“An Address by S. T. P. we can make nothing of; and professing our ignorance of the author designated by these letters, we can only add, that the Address, though a little affected, and not very full of meaning, has no very prominent trait of absurdity, that we can detect; and might have been adopted and spoken, so far as we can perceive, without any hazard of ridicule. In our simplicity we consider it as a very decent, mellifluous, occasional prologue; and do not understand how it has found its way into its present company.”
Urged forward by hurry, and trusting to chance, two very bad coadjutors in any enterprise, we at length congratulated ourselves on having completed our task in time to have it printed and published by the opening of the theatre. But alas! our difficulties, so far from being surmounted, seemed only to be beginning. Strangers to the arcana of the booksellers’ trade, and unacquainted with their almost invincible objection to single volumes of low price, especially when tendered by writers who have acquired no previous name, we little anticipated that they would refuse to publish our Rejected Addresses, even although we asked nothing for the copyright. Such, however, proved to be the case. Our manuscript was perused and returned to us by several of the most eminent publishers. [0e] Well do we remember betaking ourselves to one of the craft in Bond-street, whom we found in a back parlour, with his gouty leg propped upon a cushion, in spite of which warning he diluted his luncheon with frequent glasses of Madeira. “What have you already written?” was his first question—an interrogatory to which we had been subjected in almost every instance. “Nothing by which we can be known.” “Then I am afraid to undertake the publication.” We presumed timidly to suggest that every writer must have a beginning, and that to refuse to publish for him until he had acquired a name, was to imitate the sapient mother who cautioned her son against going into the water until he could swim. “An old joke—a regular Joe!” exclaimed our companion, tossing off another bumper. “Still older than Joe Miller,” was our reply; “for, if we mistake not, it is the very first anecdote in the facetiæ of Hierocles.” “Ha, sirs!” resumed the bibliopolist, “you are learned, are you? So, sob!—Well, leave your manuscript with me; I will look it over to-night, and give you an answer to-morrow.” Punctual as the clock we presented ourselves at his door on the following morning, when our papers were returned to us with the observation—“These trifles are really not deficient in smartness; they are well, vastly well, for beginners; but they will never do—never. They would not pay for advertising, and without it I should not sell fifty copies.”
This was discouraging enough. If the most experienced publishers feared to be out of pocket by the work, it was manifest, à fortiori, that its writers ran a risk of being still more heavy losers, should they undertake the publication on their own account. We had no objection to raise a laugh at the expense of others; but to do it at our own cost, uncertain as we were to what extent we might be involved, had never entered into our contemplation. 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. So rapid and decided was its success, at which none were more unfeignedly astonished than its authors, that Mr. Miller advised us to collect some Imitations of Horace, which had appeared anonymously in the Monthly Mirror, [0f] offering to publish them upon the same terms. We did so accordingly; and as new editions of the Rejected Addresses were called for in quick succession, we were shortly enabled to sell our half copyright in the two works to Mr. Miller for one thousand pounds! We have entered into this unimportant detail, not to gratify any vanity of our own, but to encourage such literary beginners as may be placed in similar circumstances; as well as to impress upon publishers the propriety of giving more consideration to the possible merit of the works submitted to them, than to the mere magic of a name.
To the credit of the genus irritabile be it recorded, that not one of those whom we had parodied or burlesqued ever betrayed the least soreness on the occasion, or refused to join in the laugh that we had occasioned. With most of them we subsequently formed acquaintanceship; while some honoured us with an intimacy which still continues, where it has not been severed by the rude hand of Death. 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. “I certainly must have written this myself!” said that fine-tempered man to one of the authors, pointing to the description of the Fire, “although I forget upon what occasion.” Lydia White, [0g] a literary lady who was prone to feed the lions of the day, invited one of us to dinner; but, recollecting afterwards that William Spencer [0h] formed one of the party, wrote to the latter to put him off, telling him that a man was to be at her table whom he “would not like to meet.” “Pray, who is this whom I should not like to meet?” inquired the poet. “O!” answered the lady, “one of those men who have made that shameful attack upon you!” “The very man upon earth I should like to know!” rejoined the lively and careless bard. The two individuals accordingly met, and have continued fast friends ever since. Lord Byron, too, wrote thus to Mr. Murray from Italy—“Tell him I forgive him, were he twenty times over our satirist.”
It may not be amiss to notice, in this place, one criticism of a Leicestershire clergyman, which may be pronounced unique: “I do not see why they should have been rejected,” observed the matter-of-fact annotator; “I think some of them very good!” 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; yet even in a professedly gossiping Preface, we begin to fear that we are exceeding our commission, and abusing