Chapter XI: Part 11

Then after the trial he was found guilty, and the sentence of deposition was about to be prefaced with prayer, when a loud voice was heard from behind a pew where Irving stood:--“Arise, depart! arise, depart! flee ye out, flee ye out of here! ye cannot pray! How can ye pray? How can ye pray to Christ whom ye deny? Ye cannot pray. Depart, depart! flee, flee!” The church was at this moment wrapped in silent darkness, and when this strange voice ceased, the 2000 sprang trembling to their feet as though the judgment day had come. On lighting a candle, however, it was ascertained that the speaker was a Mr. Dow, who had been lately ousted from the church for similar views. Irving rose grandly to obey the call, and pressing through the crowd that thronged the doorway and the aisles he thundered: “Stand forth! stand forth! what, will ye not obey the voice of the Holy Ghost? As many as will obey the voice of the Holy Ghost, let them depart!” Onward he went to the door, and then came to the last words:--“Prayer, indeed, oh!” and thus he left his church for ever.

Thousands and almost millions of tracts and small books did Nisbet scatter broadcast, freely to those who could not pay, with small charge to those who could. And at the period of the “Disruption” he circulated at his own expense, not only in Scotland and Ireland, but all over England, great multitudes of Dr. James Hamilton’s “Farewell.” But even in the midst of these labours the ungodly were busy, and a rumour was circulated that James Nisbet had gone over to the Church of Rome; and this, in spite of his well-known antipathies, gained considerable credence. The following is from a letter from Mr. Wolff:--“I, a few days ago, read in the _Morning Post_ that an eminent and successful bookseller had entered the Church of Rome. I thought that this bookseller must be one of the Tractarian party (the Rivingtons), but to my utter astonishment I heard it whispered that the bookseller was nobody else than Mr. James Nisbet, his whole family, and my old friend Mr. Murray, with the observation that ‘one extreme leads to the other extreme.’... My dear Nisbet and Murray, what could induce you to do such a spite to your John Knox, Chalmers, and Gordon, and join with a rotten church? Nobody is more impatient in acknowledging the good things to be found in the Church of Rome than myself, yet I would rather see the Pope and all his cardinals fly to the moon than become a Papist again. In fact I never was one.” (A curious way of putting it.)

This was not the only hoax by which James Nisbet was a sufferer. Later on, a practical joke was played upon him by some wag, who sent the following to a large number of country papers:--

“Nearly Ready, in Three Handsome Octavo Volumes,
“LITERARY PYROTECHNICS; or, Squibs, Pasquins, Lampoons, and other
Sparkling Pleasantries, by the best English Writers, from the
Reign of Elizabeth to the Present Day, with Philological Notes
by the Hon. the Vice-Chancellor Sir William Page Wood, Knt.
“James Nisbet and Co., Berners-street, London.”

This very advertisement was directed to be inserted in the next issue, and a copy of the paper containing the advertisement was to be sent to the publisher with the price of inserting it four or six times. About one hundred papers fell into the snare, to James Nisbet’s horror and amazement.

Nisbet was a very charitable man to all of his way of thinking. The “Saints” were freely welcomed to his hospitable house, which was used as a free hotel by travelling missionaries and preachers, who often said a grateful “grace for all the rich mercies of his table.” He was one of the chief supporters of the Fitzroy Schools, and one of the most zealous founders of the Sunday School Union. Nor was he wanting in generosity to general and more publicly useful charities; and, during a period of thirty years, his books show that he collected for more than five hundred institutions, and that the total amount that passed through his hands was £114,339 16_s._ 4_d._

It is pleasant, amid the farrago of religious cant and trash with which the “Lessons from his Life” are surrounded, to find some glimmering of the real man--the enterprising and successful bookseller. “From his energy of character, and from habit, he was more accustomed to lead others than to be led himself; therefore, any attempt to alter or set aside arrangements which he had himself devised ... was almost sure to meet with, on his part, a strenuous and determined resistance.”

In 1854, when the cholera was raging in London, his brave conduct was far above any party praise. The position of chairman of the Middlesex Hospital devolved temporarily upon him, and fearlessly he set about his difficult duty. Day after day he was at his post, directing all things, and alleviating, with every means in his power, the physical sufferings of the patients; and still, while adopting all that was proper to check the progress of the disease, not unmindful of administering the consolations of religion.

He died on the 8th November, 1854, having been seized with a violent illness on his return from a before-breakfast visit to the Orphan Working School at Haverstock Hill.

In a funeral sermon, preached by Dr. Hamilton at Regent’s Square church, his character is thus summed up, both sides of it being cautiously exhibited:--“With a sanguine temperament, he had strong convictions and an eager spirit; and, whilst he sometimes magnified into an affair of principle a matter of secondary importance, he was impatient of opposition, and did not always concede to an opponent the sincerity he so justly claimed for himself. Then, again, his openness was almost excessive, and his determination to flatter nobody sometimes led him to say things more plain than pleasant.... Those only could appreciate his excellence who either knew his entire mode of life, or whose casual acquaintance was confined to the walks of his habitual benevolence.”

As a publisher, he was eminently successful, and reaped a due reward for his honest industry; never had he a bad debt but once, and, on recovering that unexpectedly, he presented the amount of it, in a silver service, to a church. The books he issued were chiefly of an ephemeral religious class, and literature is certainly less indebted to his success than were the charitable institutions of the day.

Mr. James Murray, who had been Nisbet’s partner in business for many years, succeeded to the command of the firm; and, after his death at Richmond in June, 1862, Mr. Watson, the present manager, was appointed by the family to superintend the whole concern.

_BUTTERWORTH AND CHURCHILL_:

TECHNICAL LITERATURE.

In treating of “technical literature,” we shall encounter many works which were rightly described by Charles Lamb as “books which are not books;” and the present chapter will be interesting rather as containing biographical notices of men who thoroughly deserved, and thoroughly achieved, success, than for any bibliographical anecdotes we can lay before the reader.

The value of technical literature, in a publishing point of view, had been correctly estimated in the very earliest times of bookselling annals, and Richard Tottell (or Tothill), an original member of the Stationers’ Company, and eventually their chairman, had in Edward the Sixth’s reign, and subsequently in Queen Elizabeth’s, succeeded in obtaining a patent for law-books; and when, through the petition of the Stationers’ Company, he was compelled to forego some of the works which he had thus monopolised, he warily “kept his law-books to himself, and yielded ‘Dr. Wilson upon Usurie,’ and ‘The Sonnets of th’ Earle of Surrey.’” Tothill, however, did still publish other books than those relating to the very remunerative branch of law; for, in 1562, he produced “Stow’s Abridgment of the Chronicles of England;” and, in 1590, “Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry.” His name would, probably, have been unknown, at all events forgotten, had he not occupied the _Hands and Star_ in Temple Bar, the very same shop which, two-and-a-half centuries afterwards, Henry Butterworth again rendered famous as the great emporium of legal books.

Tothill was succeeded by John More (he had been previously represented, but only for awhile, by Barker and others), and we have already seen that Samuel Richardson, and Lintott’s granddaughter, had obtained the patent of King’s Printers for legal books; this brings us up in date to, at all events, the uncle of the subject of our present memoir.

Henry Butterworth, the most famous of all our law-publishers, was born on 28th February, 1786, in the city of Coventry. His father was a wealthy timber-merchant, and his ancestors fairly claimed alliance with the great county families, though Butterworth Hall, in the township of Butterworth, near Rochdale, in their possession since Stephen’s reign, had already fallen into alien hands. The Rev. John Butterworth, his grandfather, had removed from Rochdale to Coventry; he was well known as the author of a “Concordance to the Holy Scriptures,” which passed through several editions, and was the received work upon the subject until the appearance of Cruden’s more famous “Concordance.”

Young Henry Butterworth was educated at the Public Grammar School, in Coventry, and afterwards placed under the tutorial care of Dr. Johnson, of Bristol; but at the early age of fourteen, his education (inasmuch as book-learning was concerned) was considered at an end, and he entered the large sugar-refinery of Mr. Stock, of Bristol. But the hot atmosphere, and the incessant and laborious toil, proved too much for young Butterworth’s health, though the work had otherwise been rendered pleasant enough through his master’s kindness. As he had already shown much business talent and ability, Stock urged Mr. Joseph Butterworth, his own relation by marriage, and Henry Butterworth’s uncle, to do something for the lad. Joseph Butterworth accordingly made overtures to Henry’s family, and though they were loath to send their son to the distant trials and temptations of the metropolis, the offer was a tempting one, as it contained a tacit promise of admitting him, at some future time, to a partnership in the enormous business. Young Butterworth at once determined to accept the proposal; and on the 5th December, 1801, he arrived in London by the Bristol coach, having left Bristol straightway, without even having had an opportunity of bidding his relatives farewell.

The business carried on at No. 43, Fleet Street, was on a very extensive scale, and Joseph Butterworth was not only a well-known member of Parliament, but was an exceedingly wealthy and zealous philanthropist; and at his uncle’s dinner table young Henry Butterworth met many eminent and good men who were associated together to fight in a common cause--among others we may particularize Wilberforce, Teignmouth, Liverpool, Bexley, Zachary Macaulay, and Robert and Charles Grant--and from the time of his first introduction he enrolled his name among these ardent religious and social reformers.

Young Butterworth entered very heartily into the conduct of his uncle’s business, and, owing to his efforts, its relations were very vastly extended.

In 1813 he was in a position to marry a lady of birth and fortune, the daughter of Captain Whitehead, of the Fourth Irish Dragoon Guards, who not only afterwards entered fully into all his philanthropic projects, but possessed a refined and cultivated intellect, which found utterance in a volume of “Songs and Poems,” by E. H. B., published by Pickering in 1848, which are evidently, as the authoress says of another gift--

“An offering from a heart sincere.
Tho’ small and worthless, what I send,
’Tis hallowed by affection’s tear.”

In 1818, Butterworth found that there was little likelihood of his admission, as had been previously agreed upon, to a satisfactory share of his uncle’s business; and having now to consider not only his own interests, but the welfare of a wife and family, he determined, with a sense of disappointment, to seek an independent roof, and there to carry out, on his own account, the art and mystery of law printing.

Before we follow him to his new abode, we will devote a few words to his uncle’s successful career. Joseph Butterworth, who had, in connection with Whieldon, founded a very large law-publishing business, realized, it is said, the largest fortune ever made by law publishing, and was one of the original founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society, its earliest meetings being held at his house in Fleet Street. His son died before him, and his business was sold to Messrs. Saunders and Benning; and after various fortunes, the shop became the Bible warehouse of Messrs. Spottiswoode.

Henry Butterworth, supported by his father’s capital, took a lease of No. 7, Fleet Street, a house which had been, as we have seen previously, occupied by Tothill and other ancient law publishers. And from this shop were issued the vellum-bound volumes whose contents are sacred to all but those assiduously apprenticed to the law. Butterworth’s position was still further improved by his appointment to the profitable post of Queen’s law publisher. To the general student the law-books of the period are as little known as they were to that worthy country justice who, wishing to learn something definite about the law he so zealously administered, told his bookseller to send him forthwith the “Mirror for Magistrates;” and the vastly popular law-books did not, of course, come within the province of the technical publisher. Butterworth, however, saw the decline of two works which had been regarded as time-honoured text-books on the subject--Burn’s “Justice” and Blackstone’s “Commentaries.” Many booksellers had made large fortunes out of Burn since the time when the author, wearied out with carrying his manuscript from shop to shop, had accepted a nominal fee to get it off his hands; and now Butterworth, by publishing Serjeant Stephen’s celebrated “Commentaries on the Laws of England”--the most successful law-work of modern times--erased Blackstone from the category of legal text-books.

Butterworth, however, though energetic as a publisher, found time to take part in the government of the city. In 1823 he was elected as representative of the ward of Farringdon Street Without, but he afterwards declined to be nominated to the office of sheriff. However, his connection with the city was still further strengthened by his appointment as Commissioner of Income and Property Tax, and Land and Assessed Taxes for London, and also as Commissioner of Roads. On his first arrival in town he had served in a light volunteer regiment, recruited to resist the aggression of the great Napoleon; and on his retirement from the corporation, about the year 1841, he received a captain’s commission in the Royal London Militia.

We gather something of Butterworth’s general kindness and consideration to those beneath him in station from the following anecdote:--Shortly after the passing of the new Poor Law Act in 1834, the guardians of the West Surrey Union ordered that the annual Christmas dinner for the workhouse inmates should consist, as wont, of roast beef and plum-pudding. The Poor Law Board--a new broom--was horrified at this munificence, and sent down their inspector, Dr. Kay, to inquire into the proposed extravagance. He offered a compromise by substituting boiled beef for roast, not that it would be in any degree cheaper, but that (a satisfactory object, we suppose, to the Board) it would not be quite so palatable. Butterworth, who was one of the guardians, was inflexible, and finally sent in his resignation; but as he was too useful a local authority to be spared, the Board sent back the resignation, and permitted the paupers to feast upon the disputed beef, roast.

In his later years Butterworth took much interest in church-building, and at Tooting, St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, and his native city of Coventry, he subscribed large sums for that purpose.

After the death of his wife, which occurred in 1853, he gradually withdrew from general society, though he still attended the congenial meetings of the Stationers’ Company. The day of his death was, curiously enough, the most important day in the law publishing year--the first day of term--2nd November, 1860. On the previous evening he had given his annual admonition to those around him in business to awake up from the lethargy of the long vacation, and on the following morning it was found that he had passed away, as if in sleep.

For nearly sixty years Butterworth had occupied a leading position as a publisher and as a citizen, and during that period had won the friendship and respect of all who came in contact with him. The alms which his industry enabled him to make were conscientiously, quietly, and discriminatingly bestowed: and the painted glass memorial window erected to him in the choir of the Cathedral of St. Paul’s was a fitting tribute from a very large number of friends and admirers, many of whom had experienced the kindly assistance of his friendship and advice.

* * * * *

As we have previously seen, divinity and education were among the first subjects to attract a special attention, and works relating to them would otherwise have come within our category of technical books. No sooner, however, were the lawyers fairly supplied with special text-books than the doctors began to clamour for the like, and the publisher who has of all others most zealously administered to their wants is still happily amongst us.

John Churchill was born about the commencement of the century, and was apprenticed in the year 1816 to Messrs. Cox and Son, medical booksellers in Southwark. “The house of business was,” he says, “immediately adjoining Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals, and became the daily resort of the lecturers and numerous students of the schools; I thus early in life became known to the celebrated men of the day, little anticipating that eventually I should become the publisher of Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital Reports, and of so large a proportion of the works that issued from the medical press.”

At the time when young Churchill entered the profession of medical publishing, the periodicals, and, of course, the standard technical works, presented a striking contrast to those at present in existence, for now the medical profession assert, with the greatest truth, that their special organs are of far higher intrinsic worth, and of far better “tone” of thought and expression, than those relating to any other purely technical subject. For years, however, after Churchill became a bookseller’s assistant the medical press was only on a par with the papers relating to the other professions, and was chiefly represented by the _Medico-Chirurgical Review_, founded by J. Johnson in 1820, and the _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_, a work we have already come across in our notice of Constable. These reviews contained no original reports, no strictures on the hospital appointments then jobbed, like everything else, to men of wealth, family, and interest. In fact, they consisted of little besides long and elaborate abstracts of new books.

On Sunday, 2nd October, 1823, the first number of a journal that was to cause a great revolution in medical literature, and to affect in no slight degree the whole medical profession, was issued from a small publishing shop in the Strand. The journal was, of course, the _Lancet_, and the publisher young Thomas Wakley. Wakley had walked the united hospitals of Guy’s and St. Thomas’s, and had taken his degree in 1817. He does not appear to have practised regularly till, about 1822, he took a small shop in the Strand, and with the assistance, in a pecuniary point of view, of Collard (now the senior partner of the famous piano factory) determined to start a thoroughly independent medical journal. The first number contained a report of a lecture by Sir A. Cooper, printed from memory. The professors and hospital officers fired up, and for long Wakley had to encounter the same difficulties and almost the same penalties which Cave had previously undergone in commencing his reports of Parliamentary proceedings. As a former student, Wakley attended the lectures, and, like other students, was seen to take occasional notes. Cooper could not, however, bring the charge home till he hit upon the device of calling at midnight at his lodgings, and asking to see the “doctor” upon urgent medical business, when he surprised him red-handed correcting a proof-sheet of a lecture. The discovery was so sudden and so undeniable that neither could refrain from laughter; and eventually Cooper, not ill-humouredly, offered to allow his lectures to appear if the proofs were first sent him for revision. Consequently, Cooper, though often criticised in the _Lancet_, never received a nickname, as did most of the other medical celebrities of the day. For instance, Brodie was known as the “little eminent;” Earle, the “cock sparrow;” Mayo, the “owl;” and Halford, the “eel-backed.”

The _Lancet_, for many years, was hated by that part of the profession interested in vested rights, and eagerly patronised by general surgeons and students. The language of the _Lancet_ was as violent as the many abuses it attacked could justify; and Cobbett, who was a friend and adviser of Wakley’s, was adopted as a model, while a barrister, named Keen, used to join the party on printing nights to see that the free strictures were not legally liable as libels. An active, though unpaid, member of the staff, was Lawrence, who, however, forsook his reforming principles when once he became a placeman, and was succeeded by Wardrop, whose scurrility, wit, and venom did much in giving the _Lancet_ a lasting reputation for raciness of style and satirical power. They were shortly afterwards joined by Mr. J. F. Clarke, who edited the periodical for upwards of forty years, and to whose amusing and graphic autobiography we are indebted for much of the preceding details. The success of the _Lancet_ soon enabled Wakley to enter Parliament as a representative of Finsbury, and he actually combined together the work of the legislator, the coroner, and the editor, often toiling unremittingly for eighteen consecutive hours.

By the time the _Lancet_ was thus firmly established, Churchill, long out of his apprenticeship, had commenced medical publishing on his own account; and from his famous shop, in New Burlington Street, issued most of the standard works upon the subject; and, encouraged by the success of the _Lancet_, he determined to make his establishment the centre of periodical, as well as more permanent, medical literature. In 1836, was started therefrom the _British and Foreign Medical Review_, conducted first by J. Forbes, and afterwards by J. C. Conolly. In 1848, it was merged into the _Medico-Chirurgical Review_, which, from 1824 to 1847, had been under the editorship of H. J. Johnson. These two were now amalgamated into the _British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review_, which, dating from Churchill’s establishment, has acquired a professional standing equal to that of the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_ in more general criticism. In 1839, appeared the first number of the _Medical Times and Gazette_, which, under the editorial care of T. P. Healey, and subsequently of J. L. Bushman, has found a very large and influential _clientèle_.

The medical writers have at present something in common with the early authors. Their works bring them in more remuneration through eventual patronage than from habitual sale, but their patronage is that of all the great public, who are waiting to have their ailments cured. As an instance of the way in which literature may improve the position of a medical man, it is stated by Mr. W. Clarke that, through Elliotson’s clinical reports in the _Lancet_, his income was raised, in one year, from £500 to £5000. And yet, on the other hand, when he openly gave in his adherence to the newly-imported doctrine of mesmerism, his large public and private practice almost entirely deserted him; and as the legitimate organs were closed to one so abandoned as even to experiment in “the unknown,” he started a medico-mesmeric journal of his own, the _Zoist_, which was, of course, not published by Mr. Churchill.

There is necessarily the same want of general interest in medical as in legal bibliography; and, as in the latter case, works more popularly known were almost invariably published by the usual popular publishers. For instance, Dr. Buchan’s “Domestic Medicine”--probably the most profitable medical book ever written (but not to the author, as he sold the copyright for five pounds), after being re-written by Smellie--was issued in 1770, by the ordinary booksellers. During the author’s lifetime, nineteen editions, each of five thousand, were published, and the volume was translated into all the modern languages.

If Mr. Churchill’s catalogue can show no book with a popularity like this, it displays many which, appealing only to a class audience, and necessarily obliged to keep pace with the discoveries of the day, have at once retained their high price and yet reached the honour of numerous editions.

It is probably owing chiefly to this fact of an incessant demand by a large section of, at all events, one branch of students, that technical publishing has proved so remunerative, and has escaped, in a great degree, the risk attached to other departments of the trade.

At the close of the year 1870, Mr. Churchill resolved to give up the active management of his large business, and issued a farewell circular to the trade: “After fifty-five years’ active and immediate association with your profession, I see it my duty to retire into private life. Be my future days few or many, I shall ever retain a lively sense of the many friendships I have formed, and of the unvarying proofs of confidence and regard shown to me through so long a series of years. My pathway of life has been a happy one, bringing me into daily correspondence with the _élite_ of the profession, and united with them in promoting the interests of science and literature, while the success of my many publications has both gratified and amply rewarded my exertions. My sons, John and Augustus Churchill, have been eight years associated with me. I may be influenced by a father’s feelings, but I believe I can honestly state that, by education, earnest purpose in the fulfilment of duty, a high sense of integrity guiding and regulating their transactions, they will be found worthy of your confidence, and thus maintain the character of the house whose reputation and business transactions have extended to all parts of the world.” To this honest expression of well-earned business contentment, we can only add our wishes that Mr. Churchill’s years of retirement may be as happy as his years of toil have been useful and beneficial.

Among other technical publishers, Mr. Henry Laurie, whose house dates from the commencement of English hydrography, and whose numerous publications are known wherever English navigation has extended, requires at least a mention here. The oldest existing house of this nature, but one, in Europe (Gerard Hulst Van Keulen & Co., of Amsterdam, being the exception), it was founded by R. Sayer, at the “Golden Busk” (53, Fleet Street), in conjunction with John Senex, the well-known cosmographer. Here Cook’s original charts were issued; and it says something for his accuracy that his “Survey of the South Coast of Newfoundland” has not yet been superseded. On Sayer’s death, the business was relinquished to Robert Laurie and James Whittle, and, in 1812, the former was succeeded by his son, R. H. Laurie, who, on the death of Whittle, became sole proprietor. In a short time, the business extended to the production of illustrations of all descriptions, whilst the maps produced, under the care of De la Rochette, John Purdy, and Mr. Findlay, still retained their pre-eminence; the business was, however, again restricted to hydrography. R. H. Laurie died as recently as January 19, 1858, leaving two daughters, and the establishment was continued under the direction of his sole executor, Mr. Findlay.

_EDWARD MOXON_:

POETICAL LITERATURE.

After Dodsley’s death, though poetry was at times far from being an unprofitable speculation, the publishers seem to have shunned it as a speciality; and, accordingly, a Constable, a Murray, and a Longman, though gathering large incomes from the sale of the works of some one or two great poets, placed their main reliance upon the prose compositions that administered to either the pleasure or the necessities of their public.

For a time, Taylor and Hessey almost adopted poetical publications as the mainstay of their business; and in their generous encouragement of Keats, and others of lesser note, including Clare, are to be gratefully remembered; but their trade-life as poetical publishers was brief, and it remained for Edward Moxon to identify his name with all the best poetry of the period in which he lived, to a greater extent than any previous bookseller at any time whatsoever.

Edward Moxon, not unlike some others of his craft, began life with strong literary aspirations. His warm admiration for genius, his hearty good-fellowship, and his longings for a literary career, brought him into contact with some of the greatest writers of the day, and attracted their support and friendship. As early as 1824 he was made a welcome member of the brilliant circle that owned Charles Lamb as its chief, and to be a _protégé_ of Lamb’s was a passport into all literary society. In 1826, he published his first volume, “The Prospect; and other Poems;” and his friends received it with all possible kindness, as, perhaps, containing germs of something better. Even Wordsworth, usually very niggard of praise, wrote him a letter of encouragement--and warning:--“Fix your eye upon acquiring independence by an honourable business, and let the Muse come after rather than go before.” But advice of this nature, even when given with the practical illustrations that Wordsworth’s own career might have furnished, had little likelihood of being accepted by a young and impetuous poetaster; and in 1829 we find Moxon launching another venture on the world--“Christmas, a poem”--to be as coldly received by the “general public” as the former. What, however, the advice of a veteran poet could not effect, a stronger power was able to accomplish.

During Lamb’s residence at Enfield, their acquaintance ripened into a very frequent intercourse, and eventually resulted in Moxon’s engagement to a young lady who spent most of her time under the protection of Lamb and his sister. Lamb had met Miss Isola some years before at Cambridge, and had taken so much interest in the little orphan girl, who was then living with her grandfather--an Italian refugee, and a teacher of languages--that by degrees he came to be looked upon as almost a natural guardian. Marriage, however, was out of the question until her lover had some more substantial manner of livelihood than the cultivation of the Muse seemed ever likely to afford him. In this strait, Rogers came forward and generously offered to start him in life as a publisher, and, with the goal of matrimony in view, the offer was eagerly accepted.

Accordingly, in 1830, Moxon opened a small publishing shop at 34, New Bond Street. The first volume he issued was “Charles Lamb’s Album Verses,” and the dedication sufficiently explains its purpose:--

“DEAR MOXON,--I do not know to whom a Dedication of these
trifles is more properly due than to yourself: you suggested
the printing of them--you were desirous of exhibiting a
specimen of the _manner_ in which the publications entrusted to
your future care would appear. With more propriety, perhaps,
the ‘Christmas,’ or some of your own simple, unpretending
compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget--you
have bid a long adieu to the Muse ... it is not for me nor you
to allude in public to the kindness of our honoured friend,
under whose auspices you are becoming a bookseller. May this
fine-minded veteran in verse enjoy life long enough to see his
patronage justified. I venture to predict that your habits of
industry, and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through the
world.

“ENFIELD, 1st June, 1830.”

An unfavourable notice of these “Album Verses” appeared in the _Literary Gazette_; but Lamb was too well loved to lack defenders, and some verses in reply, by Southey, were soon afterwards inserted in the _Times_.

In the following year the _Englishman’s Magazine_ came into Moxon’s hands, and to its pages Elia lent the charm of his pen. Although it only lasted from April till October, its columns still present us with matter of literary interest. In the same number we find a sonnet signed “A. Tennyson,” and a very long review upon “Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson,” written by his friend Arthur H. Hallam. This was almost Mr. Tennyson’s first avowed appearance in public; and as Mr. Moxon’s name was so intimately associated with the poet’s future works, we may be allowed to go back for a moment. In 1827 a little duodecimo volume of 240 pages, entitled “Poems, by Two Brothers,” was published by J. and J. Jackson, Market Place, Louth; and the “two brothers” were Charles and Alfred Tennyson, the latter being only seventeen years of age. In 1829 Mr. Tennyson gained the Chancellor’s gold medal at Cambridge for a prize poem on “Timbuctoo,” his friend Hallam being also one of the competitors. The prize poem was printed with his name, and, a thing quite unprecedented, was noticed at length in the _Athenæum_, as indicating “really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any man that ever wrote.... How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?” In the following year, 1830, appeared the “Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson;” London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830 (pp. 154); and it was these, of course, which were reviewed by Hallam in the _Englishman’s Magazine_. In the course of a very long notice, the writer says:--“The features of original genius are clearly and strongly marked. The author imitates nobody; we recognise the spirit of the age, but not the individual pen of this or that writer.... In presenting the young poet to the public as one not studious of instant popularity, and unlikely to attain it ... we have spoken in good faith, commending the volume to feeling hearts and imaginative tempers.” Even before this review, deeply interesting when we remember what a loving and loved friend he was who wrote it, the little volume was noticed in the _Westminster Review_ by, it is believed, Mr. John Stuart Mill, as demonstrating “the possession of powers, to the future direction of which we look with some anxiety. He has shown, in the lines from which we quote, his own just conception of the grandeur of a poet’s calling; and we look to him for its fulfilment.” Encouragement such as this led Moxon to publish a further volume of Mr. Tennyson’s poems in 1833, and the connection thus commenced lasted throughout his lifetime. In a letter addressed to him by Wordsworth, as a northern correspondent in the book-market, there is intelligence, neither pleasant for a veteran poet to indite, nor for a young publisher to receive:--“There does not seem to be much genuine relish for poetical publications in Cumberland, if I may judge from the fact of not a copy of my poems having been sold there by one of the leading booksellers, though Cumberland is my native county.” In this same year, too, Moxon published, for the first time, a collected edition of the “Last Essays of Elia;” but before this time he proved, by his attention to his business, that he was worthy of Miss Isola’s hand. Lamb’s letters to Moxon, in the few weeks preceding the marriage, are in his happiest, most delicately-bantering style--for instance: “For God’s sake give Emma no more watches--_one_ has turned her head. She is arrogant and insulting. She said something very unpleasant to our old clock in the passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he had made her no appointment. She takes it out every moment to look at the minute hand. She lugs us out into the field, because there the bird-boys cry out--‘You, pray, sir, can you tell us the time?’ and she answers them punctually. She loses all her time looking to see what the time is! I heard her whispering just now--‘so many hours, minutes, &c., to Tuesday; I think St. George’s goes too slow.’... She has spoilt some of the movements. Between ourselves, she has kissed away the ‘half-past twelve,’ which I suppose to be the canonical hour in Hanover Square.” On the 30th July they were married. Lamb, as long as he lived, regarded them with almost paternal affection, and, at his death, left Moxon his treasured collection of books.

Meanwhile the illustrated edition of Rogers’s “Italy” was in preparation, and with a view to its publication Moxon moved to Dover Street, Piccadilly.

Rogers spared no cost in the production of what was intended to be the most beautifully illustrated volume that had ever been published. £10,000 was spent on the illustrations and the engraving of them. There were fifty-six engravings in all by Turner, Stothard, and other eminent artists. Turner was to have received fifty pounds apiece for his drawings, but at one time the whole speculation threatened to turn out a failure, and he then offered the bard the use of them for five pounds each instead. To match this luxurious volume the illustrated edition of Rogers’s “Poems” was brought out, at a further cost of £5000, with seventy-two engravings by Turner, Stothard, Landseer, Eastlake, &c., and, in spite of the enormous outlay on the two works, their increasing popularity must have recouped the poet, for upwards of 50,000 copies are said to have been sold before the year 1847. Moxon was always proud of the share he had taken in the production of these works. All the volumes he issued were indeed remarkable for the beautiful manner in which they were “got up,” and in 1835 he published such an exquisite edition of his own sonnets that the beauty of this dandy of a book enraged and alarmed a writer in the _Quarterly_:--“Its typographical splendours led us to fear that this style of writing was getting into fashion,” but fortunately for the reviewer’s peace of mind he discovered “that Mr. Moxon the bookseller is his own poet, and that Mr. Moxon the poet is his own bookseller.... The necessity of obtaining an imprimatur of a publisher is a very wholesome restraint, from which Mr. Moxon--unluckily for himself and for us--found himself relieved.” Surely after a notice like this--indeed we have only quoted the kindlier portion, for often as publishers din the unsaleable nature of the drug poetry into the ears of young writers, the charm of retorting upon a bookseller seldom falls so temptingly before an author.--Moxon must have regretted that he did not cleave to a promise, held out in his first essay in 1826:--

“You’ll hear no more from me,
If critics prove unkind;
My next in simple prose must be;
Unless I favour find.”

This will perhaps suffice as a specimen of the productions of Moxon’s muse, though the first lines in the volume, a “Sonnet to a Nightingale,” are inviting. They had been the cause of much pleasantry among the author’s friends, as having been penned by one who had never heard the song of the bird to which they were addressed, and the internal evidence upon this point is indubitably strong; the sonnet perhaps, to state it in proportion, is to Keats’s “Ode to the Nightingale,” as the owl’s screeching “too-whit” to “Sweet quired Philomela.”

By this time, however, Moxon, in spite of his bad poetry, had made a wide reputation as a poetical publisher, and from his establishment was issued, not only all that was most valuable of contemporary poetical literature, but with true catholic taste, the works of our older dramatic poets, edited for the most part by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. By degrees, too, Moxon was enabled to add to his catalogue the works of many of the poets who had shed a lustre upon the two first decades of this century, especially the works of Keats, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt.

In 1839 he brought out Mrs. Shelley’s edition of her husband’s poems--the first “complete edition” that had been published. In the following year a bookseller in the Strand named Hetherington was indicted for selling a work entitled “Haslam’s Letters to the Clergy of all Denominations,” and was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, as having published in this volume sundry “libels” against the Old Testament. While the trial was pending, Hetherington commissioned a servant of his, named Holt, to purchase copies of “Shelley’s Poems” from the publisher, and from the retail dealers, and then obtained a similar indictment against Moxon. The celebrated trial the “Queen _v._ Moxon” was of course the result. The prosecution relied chiefly upon certain passages in “Queen Mab,” more especially in the notes, and these were read in order to prove the charge of blasphemy. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd was engaged for the defence. “I am called,” he commenced, “from the bar in which I usually practise, to defend from the odious charge of blasphemy one with whom I have been acquainted for many years--one whom I have always believed incapable of wilful offence towards God or towards man--one who was introduced to me in early days, by the dearest of my friends who has gone before--by Charles Lamb--to whom the wife of the defendant was an adopted daughter.” After a magnificent oration in which he asked, with a fitting indignation, “if the publisher of any penny blasphemy is to have the right of prescribing to us legally that such and such pages are to be torn from the treasured volumes of our choicest literature,” he left in the hands of the jury “the cause of genius--the cause of learning--the cause of history--the cause of thought,” and concluded by a tribute to Moxon’s character--“beginning his career under the auspices of Rogers, the eldest of a great age of poets, and blessed with the continued support of that excellent person, who never broke by one unworthy line the charm of moral grace which pervades his works, he has been associated with Lamb, whose kindness ennobled all sects, all parties, all classes, and whose genius shed new and pleasant lights on daily life; with Southey, the pure and childlike in heart; with Coleridge, in the light of whose Christian philosophy the indicted poems would assume their true character, as mournful, yet salutary, specimens of powers developed imperfectly in this world; and with Wordsworth, whose works, so long neglected and scorned, but so long silently nurturing tastes for the lofty and the pure, it has been Mr. Moxon’s privilege to diffuse largely throughout this and other lands, and with them the sympathies which link the human heart to nature and to God, and all classes of mankind to each other.” Lord Denman, before whom the case was tried, instructed the jury, in his summing up, to administer the law as it undoubtedly stood, though he himself was of opinion that the best and most effectual method of acting in regard to such doctrines was to refute them by argument and reasoning rather than by persecution. The jury accordingly returned a verdict of guilty, unaccompanied by any observation whatsoever. The illegal passages were eliminated for a time; and thus the matter ended. The trial took place in June, 1841, at a time when Moxon was in great sorrow for the loss of his eldest son, and much sympathy was exhibited towards him.

Shelley’s name, however, was designed to be associated with further publishing vexations. In 1852, Moxon issued a volume entitled “Letters of P. B. Shelley,” with an introductory essay by Mr. Robert Browning. The usual presentation copies were sent to the papers, the “Letters” were generally noticed as being essentially characteristic, but the discretion shown in printing them was much questioned. Naturally Mr. Browning’s essay attracted a large share of attention, though consisting of but forty-four pages, for it is his only acknowledged prose work (why, by the way, has it never been reprinted?). He describes Shelley as a man “true, simple-hearted, and brave; and because what he acted corresponded to what he knew, so I call him a man of religious mind, because every audacious negative cast up by him against the Divinity was interpreted with a mood of reverence and adoration.” An early copy of the volume was sent to Mr. Tennyson, and Mr. Palgrave, who was then paying him a visit, turned over its pages until he came to a passage in a letter which he at once recognised (with a most dutiful and filial remembrance), as a portion of an article upon “Florence,” which Sir Francis Palgrave had contributed to the _Quarterly Review_. He immediately communicated with his father, who, after comparing the printed letter with the printed article, wrote to Moxon and informed him that this letter was cribbed bodily from the _Quarterly Review_. Moxon replied that the original was in Shelley’s handwriting and that it bore, moreover, the proper dated postmark. Even the experts pronounced the letters genuine, and the detectives were then set to work--the book having, of course, been immediately withdrawn from publication. The MSS., which had been bought at public auction, were traced to Mr. White, a bookseller in Pall Mall. He alleged that in 1848, two women began to bring him letters of Byron’s for sale, at first in driblets and impelled by poverty, they then offered him other letters by Shelley, and books with Byron’s autograph and MS. notes. His suspicions were aroused, he followed them home, and insisted upon seeing the real owner of the letters. This person was introduced to him as Mr. G. Byron, a son of the poet, and thus he thought the mystery satisfactorily explained. He then sold the letters relating more purely to family matters to Shelley’s relatives; Murray became the eventual purchaser of Byron’s, and Moxon of Shelley’s letters--and Murray, who only had his volume in the press, at once stopped it. The letters are now believed to have been the forgeries by G. Byron, and are indeed indexed under his name in the British Museum Catalogue. The system upon which he had obtained money for them appears to have been very extensive and well organised, and as some few were probably genuine, and others based upon a substratum of truth, the difficulty of judging those which in various ways have got into print, was extreme. Altogether, this is one of the most notable literary forgeries of modern times.

To return, however, to Moxon, we find that in 1835, conjointly with Longman, he published Wordsworth’s “Yarrow Revisited,” and shortly after this the poet transferred all his works from the Messrs. Longman, and we believe that Moxon purchased the copyrights of the past poems for the sum of one thousand pounds.

Mr. Browning’s earlier volumes, like Mr. Tennyson’s “Lyrical Poems,” had been published by Effingham Wilson, but in 1840 Moxon issued “Sordello.” This was followed by “Bells and Pomegranates,” published in numbers between 1842 and 1845, and by a “Blot in the Scutcheon,” (acted at Drury Lane in 1843), and which, though unsuccessful on the stage, was in the opinion of Charles Dickens “the finest poem of the century.” In 1848, however, Mr. Browning removed his works to the care of Messrs. Chapman and Hall.

Among the other authors whose productions were issued by Moxon somewhere at this period, and whom we cannot do more than mention, were Talfourd, Monkton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Tom Hood, Barry Cornwall (Proctor), Sheridan Knowles (who was by turn an usher, a journalist, a dramatic poet, and a dissenting minister), Quillinan (whose works Landor wittily, though unjustly, described as Quillinanities), Mr. Browning (for a brief period only), Haydn, and Dana.

Mr. Tennyson had been silent for ten years, had been maturing his talents, been mourning for the death of his friend Hallam, and probably during the whole of this time not a thousand copies of his poems had been sold. But he was already acknowledged as one of our greatest living poets by a small and ardent band of admirers, and in 1842 he was induced to break his long silence and publish an edition of his poems in two volumes, of which the second was composed entirely of new pieces, and in the first some were new, and many had been re-written. By this time his success was publicly and generally acknowledged, and fresh editions were called for in 1843, 1845, 1847, and from that date in still more rapid succession. The beauty and purity of his poems attracted royal favour, and in 1846 he received a pension from the crown, and this unfortunately gave offence to some rivals in the divine art, and Lord Lytton in the “New Timon” attacked “Schoolmiss Alfred.” To this Mr. Tennyson replied by a poem published in _Punch_ (February, 1846), which may be summed up in the two words, “Thou bandbox.” In 1843, Wordsworth, in a letter to Reed, says, “I saw Tennyson when I was in London several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets (_sic_), and I hope will live to give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed, in the strongest terms, his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I should myself most value in my attempts, viz., the spirituality with which I have endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances.” Again, in 1848, Mr. Emerson, in describing a visit to Wordsworth, says, “Tennyson, he thinks, a right poetic genius, though with some affectation. He had thought an elder brother of Tennyson at first the better poet, but must now reckon Alfred the true one.”

When Wordsworth died in 1850, the laureateship was offered to Mr. Rogers, and the letter conveying the offer was written by Prince Albert. The poet, however, was now eighty-seven years of age, and he felt that his years and his wealth should prevent him from interfering with the claims of younger and poorer men, and he generously felt impelled to decline the honour, which was then conferred upon Mr. Tennyson, who received, as he says so beautifully, in reference to Wordsworth, the

“Laurel, greener from the brows
Of him who uttered nothing base.”

Before this, however, the “Princess” and “In Memoriam” had appeared. For a time Mr. Tennyson was again silent, breaking his silence only by four poems contributed to the _Examiner_, and by the “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington” (Moxon, 1852). One of the four poems in the _Examiner_, however, was “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and of this Moxon published a quarto sheet of four pages.--“Having heard that the brave soldiers before Sebastopol, whom I am proud to call my countrymen, have a liking for my ballad on the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ at Balaclava, I have ordered a thousand copies of it to be printed for them.--ALFRED TENNYSON.”[26]

In 1855 appeared another poem resulting from the war--“Maud,” one of the most beautiful and least understood of all Mr. Tennyson’s compositions.