Rejected Addresses; Or, The New Theatrum Poetarum — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Wind and the Puff: Mock-Heroic Structure

The opening poem of the excerpts adopts the epic invocation, addressing the wind as a deity: “Thee I invoke! Oh puff my bold design.” This is a direct parody of the classical epic tradition, but the “puff” is also a contemporary term for exaggerated advertisement. The poem weaves together references to Aeolus, Ulysses, and the lottery, creating a sustained analogy between wind and commercial hype. The language is deliberately inflated: “Swell thy loud lungs and wave thy wings of air.” The effect is to deflate pretension by applying high style to low subjects—patent blacking, lottery tickets, and quack medicines. The mock-heroic mode allows the Smiths to critique the culture of puffery while displaying their own technical skill. The reader is invited to recognize the gap between the grandiloquent form and the trivial content, a gap that generates both humor and social commentary.

Atomic Burlesque: Parody of Lucretian Philosophy

Another poem in the excerpts parodies Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, applying atomic theory to the rebuilding of Drury Lane. The lines “Self-form’d of atoms, sprang the infant world: / No great First Cause inspired the happy plot” mock materialist philosophy by reducing creation to random collisions. The poem then applies this logic to architecture: “Not to the labours of subservient man, / To no young Wyatt appertains the plan.” The reference to Wyatt, the actual architect, is a sly jab at the idea that design could be accidental. The parody works on two levels: it mimics the scientific diction of Lucretian verse, and it satirizes the notion that a building could arise without human intention. The humor lies in the absurd application of grand cosmic principles to a mundane theatrical renovation. The Smiths show their familiarity with philosophical poetry while undercutting its solemnity.

Legal Puns and Parchment: Satire of the Professions

The mock-heroic poem also contains a sustained legal metaphor, comparing lawsuits to wind and parchment to the skins of Aeolus. The lines “Mysterious skins of parchment meet our eyes; / On speeds the smiling suit” transform legal documents into objects of epic peril. The hero is “doom’d to toss / In legal shipwreck and redeemless loss.” This punning extends the wind theme: “to raise the wind” was slang for obtaining money, and the poem conflates financial speculation, legal chicanery, and puffery. The satire targets lawyers, quacks, and advertisers as a single class of wind-bag operators. The specificity of the references—Day and Martin’s blacking, the lottery—anchors the parody in the material culture of 1812. The Smiths use the epic framework to expose the absurdities of professional jargon and commercial greed, all while maintaining a playful tone.

The Rejected Addresses reward a reader who knows the originals being parodied, but they also work as independent comic poems. The volume’s structure—a series of imitations framed as rejected submissions—creates a running joke about literary competition and public taste. The Smiths never settle into a single target; they shift voices from poem to poem, keeping the reader alert to stylistic cues. For the modern reader, the book offers a window into the literary culture of Regency London, where poetry was a public performance and parody a form of criticism. Approach each poem as a puzzle: identify the original author, then enjoy the precision of the mimicry.

Years on the shelf, the Smiths' parodic mischief felt like a warm rumble of laughter, yet their fondness for the very poets they mimicked stayed with me. It is that same affectionate observation I find in Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters — A Closer Reading; a gentle eye, not a sharp one. Both hold up a mirror with a soft, knowing smile.