Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/387



FTER 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 22—2