Sir Richard Phillips rejected several famous books. It was to this bookseller and publisher that Robert Bloomfield offered the copyright of his "Farmer's Boy" in return for a dozen copies of the work when printed. He feared it would be a failure, and declined it. The poet issued it by subscription, and within three years 25,000 copies were sold. This publisher is said to have had offered to him Byron's early poems. He might have purchased the copyright of "Waverley" for thirty pounds, but declined it! He rejected other works which won favourable reception from the press and the public. It is only right to state that he gave to the world many valuable volumes, and that he was a man of decided literary ability. A paragraph went the rounds of the literary press after the death of Mr. J. H. Parker, the well-known Oxford publisher, stating that the copyright of Keble's "Christian Year" was offered to Joseph Parker for the sum of twenty pounds and refused. It was further stated that "during the forty years which followed the publication of this work nearly 400,000 copies were sold, and Mr. Keble's share of the profits amounted to fourteen thousand pounds, being one-fourth the retail price." The brothers Smith desired to sell for twenty pounds to Mr. Murray their celebrated "Rejected Addresses," but the great publisher declined the proposal with thanks. They resolved to bring out the book at their own risk. It hit the popular taste, and after sixteen editions had been sold, Mr. Murray paid for the copyright one hundred and thirty-one pounds. The poems yielded the authors over a thousand pounds. Editors of newspapers and magazines have often made ludicrous blunders in rejecting poems of sterling merit. It is generally known that the editor of the _Greenock Advertiser_ expressed his regret that he could not insert in his newspaper one of Thomas Campbell's best poems on account of it not being quite up to his standard. The Rev. Charles Wolfe submitted to the editor of a leading magazine his famous ode on "The Burial of Sir John Moore," but it was rejected in such a scornful manner as to cause the writer to hand it to the editor of _The Newry Telegraph_, an Ulster newspaper of no standing as a literary journal. It was published in 1817, in that obscure paper, with the initials of "C. W." It was reproduced in various publications, and attracted great attention. It is one of the best in our limited number of pieces of martial poetry. Epigrams on Authors.