Next comes in this collection the series of burlesques of the styles of poets famous and popular in 1812, published in that year as "Rejected Addresses," by Horace and James Smith. Of these brothers, sons of an attorney, one was an attorney, the other a stockbroker, one aged thirty-seven, the other thirty-three, when the book appeared which made them famous, and of which the first edition is reprinted in this volume. The book went through twenty-four editions. James Smith wrote no more, but Horace to the last amused himself with literature. "Is it not odd," Leigh Hunt wrote of him to Shelley, "that the only truly generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, was a stockbroker! And he writes poetry too; he writes poetry, and pastoral dramas, and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous." The Fitzgerald who is subject of the first burlesque used to recite his laudatory poems at the annual dinners of the Literary Fund, and is the same who was referred to in the opening lines of Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:" "Still must I hear?--shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl His creaking couplets in a tavern hall, And I not sing." This Miscellany closes with some of the "Odes and Addresses to Great People," with which Thomas Hood, at the age of twenty-six, first made his mark as a wit. The little book from which these pieces are taken was the joint work of himself and John Hamilton Reynolds, whose sister he had married. It marks the rise of the pun in burlesque writing through Thomas Hood, who, when dying of consumption, suggested for his epitaph, "Here lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any other man." H. M. _June, 1885._ Burlesque Plays and Poems. THE RIME OF SIR THOPAS. PROLOGUE TO SIR THOPAS. When said was this mirácle, every man As sober was, that wonder was to see, Till that our host to japen he began, And then at erst he lookéd upon me, And saidé thus: "What man art thou?" quod he. Thou lookest, as thou wouldest find an hare, For ever upon the ground I see thee stare. "Approché near, and look up merrily. Now ware you, sirs, and let this man have place. He in the waist is shapen as well as I: This were a popet in an arm to embrace For any woman, small and fair of face. He seemeth elvish by his countenance, For unto no wight doth he dalliance. "Say now somewhat, sin other folk han said; Tell us a tale of mirth, and that anon." "Hosté," quod I, "ne be not evil apaid, For other talé certes, can I none, But of a Rime I learnéd yore agone." "Yea, that is good," quod he, "we shullen hear Some dainty thing, me thinketh by thy cheere." THE RIME OF SIR THOPAS.