Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/391

351 EDWARD MOXON. 351 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 West- minster Reviciv 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