Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/400

360 360 EDWARD MOXON. son, in describing a visit to Wordsworth, says, " Tenny- son, 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, how- ever, 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 "InMemoriam" had appeared. For a time Mr. Tennyson was again silent, breaking his silence only by four poems con- tributed 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 country- men, 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."* works, showing the various changes which the poems have undergone, see " Tennysoniana," by R. H. Shepherd (1856).
 * For a very interesting bibliographical account of Mr. Tennyson's