| "Or hail at once the patron and the pile |
| Of vice and folly, Greville and Argyle." |
One of James Smith's favourite anecdotes related to him. The Colonel requested his young ally to call at his lodgings, and in the course of their first interview related the particulars of the most curious circumstance in his life. He was taken prisoner during the American war, along with three other officers of the same rank; one evening they were summoned into the presence of Washington, who announced to them that the conduct of their Government, in condemning one of his officers to death as a rebel, compelled him to make reprisals; and that, much to his regret, he was under the necessity of requiring them to cast lots, without delay, to decide which of them should be hanged. They were then bowed out, and returned to their quarters. Four slips of paper were put into a hat, and the shortest was drawn by Captain Asgill, who exclaimed, "I knew how it would be; I never won so much as a hit of backgammon in my life." As Greville told the story, he was selected to sit up with Captain Asgill, under the pretext of companionship, but, in reality, to prevent him from escaping, and leaving the honour amongst the remaining three. "And what," inquired Smith, "did you say to comfort him?" "Why, I remember saying to him, when they left us, D—— it, old fellow, never mind;" but it may be doubted (added Smith) whether he drew much comfort from the exhortation. Lady Asgill persuaded the French minister to interpose, and the captain was permitted to escape.
Both James and Horatio Smith were also contributors to the Monthly Mirror, then the property of Mr. Thomas Hill, a gentleman who had the good fortune to live familiarly with three or four generations of authors; the same, in short, with whom the subject of this memoir thus playfully remonstrated: "Hill, you take an unfair advantage of an accident; the register of your birth was burnt in the great fire of London, and you now give yourself out for younger than you are."
The fame of the Smiths, however, was confined to a limited circle until the publication of the Rejected Addresses, which rose at once into almost unprecedented celebrity.
James Smith used to dwell with much pleasure on the criticism of a Leicestershire clergyman: "I do not see why they (the Addresses) should have been rejected: I think some of them very good." This, he would add, is almost as good as the avowal of the Irish bishop, that there were some things in Gulliver's Travels which he could not believe.
Though never guilty of intemperance, James was a martyr to the gout; and, independently of the difficulty he experienced in locomotion, he partook largely of the feeling avowed by his old friend Jekyll, who used to say that, if compelled to live in the country, he would have the drive before his house paved like the streets of London, and hire a hackney-coach to drive up and down all day long.
He used to tell, with great glee, a story showing the general conviction of his dislike to ruralities. He was sitting in the library at a country-house, when a gentleman proposed a quiet stroll into the pleasure-grounds:—
His bachelorship is thus attested in his niece's album:
| "Should I seek Hymen's tie, |
| As a poet I die, |
| Ye Benedicts mourn my distresses: |
| For what little fame |
| Is annexed to my name, |
| Is derived from Rejected Addresses." |