Horace Smith

Horace (born Horatio) Smith (December 31, 1779 - July 12, 1849) was an English poet and novelist, perhaps best known for his participation in a sonnet-writing competition with Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was of him that Shelley said: " Is it not odd that the Only truly generous person I ever knew who had money enough to be generous with should be a stockbroker? He writes poetry and pastoral dramas and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous."

On a Stupendous Leg of Granite

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows: -
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." - The City's gone, -
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,- and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Smith was born in London, the son of a London solicitor, and the fifth of eight children. He was educated at Chigwell School with his elder brother James Smith, also a writer. Horace first came to public attention in 1812 when he and his brother James (four years older than he) produced a popular literary parody connected to the rebuilding of the Drury Lane Theatre, after a fire in which it had been burnt down. The managers offered a prize of 50 pounds for an address to be recited at the Theatre's reopening in October. The Smith brothers hit upon the idea of pretending that the most popular poets of the day had entered the competition and writing a book of addresses rejected from the competition in parody of their Various styles. James wrote the parodies of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge and Crabbe, and Horace took on Byron, Moore, Scott and Bowles.

The book was a smash, and went through seven editions within three months. "The Rejected Addresses" still stands the most widely popular parodies ever published in the country. The book was written without malice; none of the poets caricatured took offence, while the imitation is so clever that both Byron and Scott claimed that they could scarcely believe they had not written the addresses ascribed to them. The only other collaboration by the two brothers was "Horace in London" (1813).

Smith went on to become a prosperous stockbroker. Smith knew Shelley as a member of the circle around Leigh Hunt. Smith helped to manage Shelley's finances. Sonnet-writing competitions were not uncommon; Shelley and Keats wrote competing sonnets on the subject of the Nile River. Inspired by Diodorus Siculus (Book 1, Chapter 47), they each wrote and submitted a sonnet on the subject to The Examiner. Shelley's Ozymandias was published on January 11, 1818 under the pen name Glirastes, and Smith's "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below" was published on February 1, 1818 with the initials H.S.

Smith's poem was later published under the title "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below". in his collection "'Amarynthus".

After making his fortune, Horace Smith produced a series of historical novels: "Brambletye House" (1826), "Tor Hill" (1826), "Reuben Apsley" (1827), "Zillah" (1828), "The New Forest" (1829), "Walter Colylon" (1830), among others. Three volumes of "Gaieties and Gravities", published by him in 1826, contain many clever essays both in verse and prose, but the only piece that remains much remembered is the " Address to the Mummy in Belzoni's Exhibition."

Horace Smith died at Tunbridge Wells on July 12, 1849.

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