NOTES

[P. 1.] Rejected Addresses. First published anonymously in the autumn of 1812. The authors, James Smith (1775-1839) and Horace Smith (1779-1849) were brothers, the former a solicitor, the latter a stockbroker. James wrote a number of 'entertainments' for Charles Mathews, who described him as 'the only man in London who can write good nonsense.' Horace wrote more than a score of novels and collections of stories, of which, perhaps, Brambletye House is the best remembered. It was of him that Shelley wrote, in the Letter to Maria Gisborne:

Wit and sense,

Virtue and human knowledge; all that might

Make this dull world a business of delight,

Are all combined in Horace Smith.

How the Rejected Addresses came to be written is told in the authors' prefaces: