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 business without speculative risk, and consequently profitable. For instance, in 1827, an unpretentious little volume--“Poems by Two Brothers,” having the modest motto, _Hæc nos novimus 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 1834 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, and who, as an instrument of the Government, had procured the execution of Hardie and his companion at Glasgow in the winter of 1819-20. Richmond laid the damages that his character had sustained at the absurd figure of five thousand pounds, but Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, to whom the defence was entrusted, so thoroughly exposed the antecedents and present means of livelihood of the plaintiff that before the trial was over he was absolutely fain to withdraw his action and elect to be non-suited. In 1837 Baldwin and Cradock failed, and handed over the country connection they had derived from Crosby, to Simpkin, Marshall and Company. This occurred on the October “Magazine day” of that year; for three days and three nights the partners and their assistants never left the establishment at Stationers’ Hall Court, and Baldwin’s country clients were so pleased that they had been spared so much expected delay and annoyance that one and all resolved to keep their business in the hands of their new agents; and with this addition to their trade, the business relations of Simpkin, Marshall and Company were now infinitely beyond anything that even Crosby had before experienced.