Old Ocean's Bauble
Horace Smith (1779-1849) was a poet, novelist, and successful stockbroker, friend of Shelly, and originator of the phrase, and epithet for Brighton: old ocean's bauble. It was used as the title of a history of mid Victorian Brighton by EW Gilbert, first published in 1954.
The phrase aptly epitomises the Victorian image of Brighton, one which, incidentally, Queen Victoria didn't like.
Smith was a friend of the dinosaur hunter, Gideon Mantell, and of the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelly. Shelley wrote a famous poem Ozymandias of Egypt. Below is Smith's poem on the same theme.
Ozymandias.
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.
