Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/397

357 EDWARD MOXON. 357 tion." 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 Pal- grave 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 with- drawn 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