Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/390

350 350 EDWARD MOXON. 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 ap- pearance 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 Athenceum, 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 : Efnngham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830' (pp. 154) ; and it was these, of course, which were reviewed by Hallam in the EnglisJnnans 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. . ..