Note 49 — HORACE AND JAMES SMITH
Reading edition
Dr. Busby. This gentleman gave living recitations of his translation of Lucretius, with tea and bread-and-butter. He sent in a real Address to the Drury Lane Committee, which was really rejected. The present imitation professes to be recited by the translator's son. The poet here, again, was a prophet. A few evenings after the opening of the theatre, Dr. Busby sat with his son in one of the stage-boxes. The latter, to the astonishment of the audience, at the end of the play, stepped from the box upon the stage, his father's real rejected address in his hand, and began to recite it as follows:-
'When energising objects men pursue, What are the miracles they cannot do?'
Raymond, the stage-manager, accompanied by a constable, at this moment walked upon the stage, and handed away the juvenile dilettante performer.
The doctor's classical translation was thus noticed in one of the newspapers of the day, in the column of births:—'Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne Street, Dr. Busby of a still-born Lucretius.'