The time of the panic, in 1826, was a season of severe trial, in domestic as well as pecuniary matters; and Tegg, though he maintained that few men were ever insolvent through mere misfortune, began to fear that despondency would deprive him of his reason. And now it was that he appreciated more than ever the brave qualities of his wife, who roused and manned him again to the struggle; till, in the end, he became a gainer rather than a loser by the crisis, for the best books were then sold as almost worthless; and at Hurst and Robinson’s sale he purchased the most popular of Scott’s novels at fourpence a volume. Among his other great “remainder” bargains we may mention the purchase of the remainder and copyright of “Murray’s Family Library” in 1834. He bought 100,000 volumes at one shilling, and reissued them at more than double the price. His greatest triumph of all was, however, the acquisition of “Valpy’s Delphin Classics,” in one hundred and sixty-two large octavo volumes, the stock amounting to nearly fifty thousand copies, the whole of which were sold off in two years. To return to his own publications, we find that, up to the close of 1840, he had issued four thousand works on his own account, and “not more than twenty were failures.” Tegg’s reputation as a bookseller chiefly rests upon his cheap reprints and abridgments of popular works; and, in connection with these, his name is mentioned in Mr. Carlyle’s famous petition on the Copyright Bill. Though we have failed to ascertain to what general or particular works Mr. Carlyle refers, the petition is of such curious interest to all concerned in the writing and selling of books, that we do not hesitate to quote it in extenso[29]:-- “To the honourable the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, the Petition of Thomas Carlyle, a Writer of Books, “Humbly sheweth, “That your petitioner has written certain books, being incited thereto by various innocent or laudable considerations, chiefly by the thought that the said books might in the end be found to be worth something. “That your petitioner had not the happiness to receive from Mr. Tegg, or any Publisher, Re-publisher, Printer, Book-buyer, or other the like men, or body of men, any encouragement or countenance in the writing of said books, or to discern any chance of receiving such; but wrote them by effort of his own will, and the favour of Heaven.