After Dodsley’s death, though poetry was at times far from being an unprofitable speculation, the publishers seem to have shunned it as a speciality; and, accordingly, a Constable, a Murray, and a Longman, though gathering large incomes from the sale of the works of some one or two great poets, placed their main reliance upon the prose compositions that administered to either the pleasure or the necessities of their public. For a time, Taylor and Hessey almost adopted poetical publications as the mainstay of their business; and in their generous encouragement of Keats, and others of lesser note, including Clare, are to be gratefully remembered; but their trade-life as poetical publishers was brief, and it remained for Edward Moxon to identify his name with all the best poetry of the period in which he lived, to a greater extent than any previous bookseller at any time whatsoever. Edward Moxon, not unlike some others of his craft, began life with strong literary aspirations. His warm admiration for genius, his hearty good-fellowship, and his longings for a literary career, brought him into contact with some of the greatest writers of the day, and attracted their support and friendship. As early as 1824 he was made a welcome member of the brilliant circle that owned Charles Lamb as its chief, and to be a _protégé_ of Lamb’s was a passport into all literary society. In 1826, he published his first volume, “The Prospect; and other Poems;” and his friends received it with all possible kindness, as, perhaps, containing germs of something better. Even Wordsworth, usually very niggard of praise, wrote him a letter of encouragement--and warning:--“Fix your eye upon acquiring independence by an honourable business, and let the Muse come after rather than go before.” But advice of this nature, even when given with the practical illustrations that Wordsworth’s own career might have furnished, had little likelihood of being accepted by a young and impetuous poetaster; and in 1829 we find Moxon launching another venture on the world--“Christmas, a poem”--to be as coldly received by the “general public” as the former. What, however, the advice of a veteran poet could not effect, a stronger power was able to accomplish.