Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/523

481 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. 481 Boeotian Cottle, rich Bristowa's boast, Imports old stories from the Cambrian coast, And sends his goods to market, all alive, Lines forty thousand, cantos twenty-five. Oh, Amos Cottle ! Phoebus ! what a name To fill the speaking trump of future fame ! Oh, Amos Cottle ! for a moment think What meagre profits spring from pen and ink ! When thus devoted to poetic dreams Who will peruse thy prostituted reams ? Oh, pen perverted, paper misapplied ! Had Cottle still adonied the counter's side, Bent o'er the desk, or, born to useful toils, Been taught to make the paper which he soils, Plough'd, delved, or plied the oar with lusty limb, He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him." Of course, this confusion of the names of the two brothers was intentionally meant to strengthen the gibe. Though Cottle was at best an indifferent poet his name would have survived as a generous friend even if Lord Byron had not honoured him with his satire. After having personally encouraged the youthful genius of such authors as Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, and after having enjoyed their friendship and esteem, it was natural that Cottle, when their names had become familiar words in every house- hold in England, should wish to preserve what he could of the history of their early days. In 1837 he published his "Early Recollections," but as he had felt compelled to decline to contribute them in any mutilated form to the authorised, and insufferably dull, life of Coleridge, the work was greeted by the Quarterly Review with a howl of contemptuous abuse, as consisting of the "refuse of advertisements and handbills, the sweepings of a shop, the shreds of a