Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/454

414 414 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. time of his reason, and he died in the following year, 1815. Under Simpkin and Marshall, which was now, of course, the new title of the firm, the business soon began again to expand, for they retained most of their London connections, and following Crosby's example, attracted the attention of many country clients, whom they not only supplied with books, but for whose publications they became the London agents a busi- ness without speculative risk, and consequently profit- able. For instance, in 1827, an unpretentious little volume " Poems by Two Brothers," having the modest motto, Hcec nos novimns esse nihil, published by J. and J. Jackson, Louth, was also stamped with the imprimatur of Simpkin and Marshall, and thus they had the signal honour of being Mr. Tennyson's first London publishers, though very probably the honour in this case was greater than the profit. In 1828, Simpkin retired, or rather was bought out of the business by Mr. Miles, who immediately took the financial management of the whole concern, and the firm adopted the new title of " Simpkin, Marshall and Co." Simpkin, however, did not die until the 25th of December, 1854, and thus enjoyed a long period of peaceful superannuation. The practice of lending their names to the works published by their country clients, though free from business venture, was not unattended by legal risk, for in 1 834 they had an action brought against them for libel, which at the time attracted a very general and lively interest ; though they were indicted solely as the London agents of Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, in which a series of articles had appeared, reflecting on the conduct of Richmond, a man notorious as a spy,