The family of Longman can trace a publishing pedigree back to a date anterior to that of any other house still represented amongst us—the Rivingtons only excepted. As in the previous chapter, we shall select one member—necessarily that one to whom most public interest is attached—as the typical representative of the firm, touching lightly, however, upon all. And, in accordance with the scheme of the present volume, our remarks will primarily be devoted to a narrative of their business connections with that branch of literature—classical and educational works—with which the name of Longman is more immediately associated.

For the whole of the seventeenth century the Longman family occupied the position of thriving citizens in the busy seaport town of Bristol, then the Liverpool of the day, and acquired some considerable wealth in the manufacture of soap and sugar, achieving in many instances the highest honours in civic authority. Ezekiel Longman, who is described as “of Bristol, gentleman,” died in the year 1708, leaving, by a second marriage, a little boy only nine years of age, who, as Thomas Longman, is afterwards to be the founder of the great Paternoster Row firm.

By a provision of his father’s will, Thomas was to be “well and handsomely bred and educated according to his fortune;” this, we presume, was duly accomplished, and in June, 1716, we find that he was bound apprentice for seven years to Mr. John Osborn, bookseller, of Lombard Street, London—a man in a good, substantial way of business, but not to be confused with the other Osbornes of the time. Unlike Jacob, Longman served his seven years, and reaped a due reward in the person of his master’s daughter; and, as at the expiry of his time, the house of William Taylor (known to fame as the publisher of Robinson Crusoe) had lost its chief, Osborn being appointed executor for the family, we find that in August, 1824 “all the household goods and books bound in sheets” according to valuation were purchased by Longman for £2,282 9s. 6d.—a very considerable sum in those days, and, towards the end of the month, £230 18s. was further paid for part shares in several profitable copyrights.

In acquiring this business Longman took possession of two houses, both ancient in the trade, the Black Swan and the Ship, which, through the profitable returns of Robinson Crusoe, Taylor had amalgamated into one; and here on the self-same freehold ground, the immense publishing establishment of the modern Longmans is still standing.

The first trade mention we find of his name occurs in a prospectus dated Oct., 1724, of a proposal to publish, by subscription, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. (the father of chemistry, and brother of the Earl of Cork), “to be printed for W. and J. Innes, at the West End of St. Paul’s Churchyard, J. Osborn, at the Oxford Arms, in Lombard Street, and T. Longman, at the Ship and Black Swan, in Paternoster Row.” In a few months after this Osborn followed his daughter to the Row, and, adding his capital to that of his son-in-law, remained in partnership with him until the end of his days.

In 1726, we find their names conjointly prefixed to the first edition of Sherlock’s Voyages, and between that date and 1730 to a great variety of school books.

All the works of importance, many even of the minor books, were, at that time, published not only by subscription in the first instance, but the remaining risk, and the trouble of a pretty certain venture, were divided amongst a number of booksellers: and the share system was so general that in the books of the Stationers’ Company there is a column ruled off, before the entries of the titles of works and marked “Shares,” and subdivided into halves, eight-twelfths, sixteenths, twenty-fourths, and even sixty-fourths. Much of the speculative portion of a bookseller’s business in those days consisted, therefore, not in the original publication of books, but in the purchase and sale of their shares, and to this business we find that Thomas Longman was especially addicted. As early as November, 1724, he bought one-third of the Delphin Virgil from Jacob Tonson, junior; in 1728 a twentieth of Ainsworth’s Latin Dictionary, one of the most profitable books of the last century, for forty pounds, and, much later on, one-fourth part of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment for the small sum of twelve pounds.

The chief interest of the career of the house at this period lies in their connection with the Cyclopædia of Ephraim Chambers, which was not only the parent of all our English encyclopædias, but also the direct cause of the famous Encyclopédie of the French philosophers. Longman’s share in this work, first published in 1728, cost but fifty pounds, and consisted, probably, only of one sixty-fourth portion; as, however, the proprietors died off, Longman steadily purchased all the shares that were thrown on the book-market, until, in the year 1740, the Stationers’ book assigns him eleven out of the sixty-four—a larger number than was ever held by any other proprietor.

One of the few direct allusions to Longman’s personal character relates to his kindness to Ephraim Chambers. A contemporary writes in the Gentleman’s Magazine:—“Mr. Longman used him with the liberality of a prince, and the kindness of a father; even his natural absence of mind was consulted, and during his illness jellies and other proper refreshments were industriously left for him at those places where it was least likely that he should avoid seeing them.” Chambers had received £500 over and above the stipulated price for this great work, and towards the latter end of his life was never absolutely in want of money; yet from forgetfulness, perhaps from custom, he was parsimonious in the extreme. A friend called one day at his chambers in Gray’s Inn, and was pressed to stay dinner. “And what will you give me, Ephraim?” asked the guest; “I dare engage you have nothing for dinner!” To which Mr. Chambers calmly replied, “Yes, I have a fritter, and if you’ll stay with me I’ll have two.”

After the death of his partner and father-in-law, who bequeathed him all his books and property, Thomas Longman seems to have prospered amazingly. In 1746 he took into partnership one Thomas Shenrell; but, except for the fact that this name figures in conjunction with his for the two following years, then to disappear for ever, little more is known. In 1754, however, he took a nephew into partnership, after which the title-pages of their works ran:—“Printed for T. and T. Longman at the Ship in Pater-Noster-Row.” Before this, however, he is to be found acting in unison with Dodsley, Millar, and other great publishers of the day, in the issue of such important works as Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. On the 10th of June, 1855, only two months after the publication of the dictionary, he died, and Johnson is obliged to put off his well-earned holiday-trip to Oxford. “Since my promise two of our partners are dead (Paul Knapton was the second) and I was solicited to suspend my excursion till we could recover from our confusion. Thomas Longman the first had no children, and left half the partnership stock to his nephew and namesake, the rest of the property going to his widow.”

Thomas Longman, the nephew, was born in 1731, and, at the age of fifteen, entered the publishing firm as an apprentice, and at the date of his uncle’s death was only five-and-twenty.

Under his management the old traditions were kept up—more copyrights of standard books were purchased, the country trade extended, and more than this the business relations of the house were very vastly increased in the American colonies. One of Osborn’s earliest books, by-the-way, had been entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1712 as Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testament. For the edification and comfort of the Saints in Public and Private, more especially in New England. The nephew probably followed up the colonial trade of his uncle and master, for at the first commencement of hostilities in that country he had a very large sum engaged in that particular business, and, to the honour of the succeeding colonists, several of his correspondents behaved very handsomely in liquidating their debts in full, even subsequent to amicable arrangements and to the peace of 1783.

As in the case of the founder of the house, the folio Cyclopædia, still the only one in the field, occupied the chief attention of the firm. Already in 1746 it had reached a fifth edition; “and whilst,” adds Alexander Chalmers, “a sixth edition was in question the proprietors thought that the work might admit of a supplement in two additional folio volumes. This supplement, which was published in the joint names of Mr. Scott and Dr. Hill, though containing a number of valuable articles, was far from being uniformly conspicuous for its exact judgment and due selection, a small part of it only being executed by Mr. Scott, Dr. Hill’s task having been discharged with his usual rapidity.” There the matter stood for some years, when the proprietors determined to convert the whole into one work. Several editions were tried and found wanting, and finally Dr. John Calder, the friend of Dr. Percy, was engaged, but provisionally only, for the duty. He drew up an elaborate programme, containing no less than twenty-six propositions. The agreement, as it illustrates, in some degree, the relative positions of authors and publishers, may be quoted. Dr. Calder agreed to prepare a new edition of Chambers’s Cyclopædia to be completed in two years. He received £50 as a retaining fee upon signing the agreement, and £50 a quarter until the work was finally out of the printer’s hands. In spite of this retaining fee the proprietors appear to have been smitten with fear, perhaps dreading a repetition of Dr. Hill’s inaccuracies, and sent round a specimen sheet to the eminent literati of the day, asking their opinions upon the matter and the style. All the verdicts were unfavourable, one contemptuous critic complaining that the author had twice referred favourably to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “a Scots rival publication in little esteem.” Dr. Johnson cut away a large portion of his sheet as worthless; but, at poor Calder’s request, who began to be perplexedly alarmed by all these adverse reviews, explained this superfluity as arising simply from trôp de zèle. “I consider the residuum which I lopped away, not as the consequence of negligence or inability, but as the result of superfluous business, naturally exerted in the first article. He that does too much soon learns to do less.” Then apologizing for Calder’s turbulence and impatience, the kindly doctor prays “that he may stand where he stood before, and be permitted to proceed with the work with which he is engaged. Do not refuse this request, sir, to your most humble servant, Samuel Johnson.” Again and again the doctor interposed his influence, but in vain, and Abraham Rees, a young professor in a dissenting college near town, was engaged, and a new issue of the Cyclopædia (still Chambers’s), in weekly parts, was commenced in 1778, running on till 1786, attaining a circulation of four or five thousand, then a large one, for each number; and Longman, as chief proprietor, must have profited exceedingly by the work.

In the books of the Stationers’ Company we find repeated entry of Longman as publisher or shareholder in such miscellaneous works as Gil Blas, Humphrey Clinker, and Rasselas; and, true to the old traditions of the firm, educational works were by no means neglected. Among others we note a record of Cocker’s Arithmetic, since proverbially and bibliographically famous.

Cocker was an unruly master of St. Paul’s School, twice deposed for his extreme opinions, but twice restored for his marvellous talents of teaching. “He was the first to reduce arithmetic to a purely mechanical art.” The first edition, however, was published only after his death by his friend “John Hawkins, writing master”—a copy sold by Puttick and Simpson, in 1851, realized £8 10s. The fifty-second edition was published in 1748, and the last reprint, though at that time the work was in Longman’s hands, bears “Glasgow, 1777,” on the title-page.

In those days the publishers clave together in a manner undreamt of in these latter times of keener competition. Nichols, in speaking of James Robson (a Bond-street bookseller), and a literary club of booksellers, observes that Mr. Longman, with the late Alderman Cadell, James Dodsley, Lockyer, Davies, Peter Elmsley, Honest Tom Payne of the Mew’s Gate, and Thomas Evans of the Strand, were all members of this society. They met first at the “Devil’s Tavern,” Temple-bar, then moved to the “Grecian,” and finally from a weekly gathering, became a monthly meeting at the “Shakspeare.” Here was originated the germ of many a valuable production. Under their auspices Davies (in whose shop Boswell first met Johnson) produced his only valuable work, the Life of Garrick. Poor Davies had been an actor till Churchill’s satire drove him off the stage—

“He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.”

From this he fled to the refuge of a bookselling shop in Russell-street, Covent-garden. He is described variously as “not a bookseller, but a gentleman dealing in books,” and as “learned enough for a clergyman.” Here he strived indifferently well till we come upon his epitaph—

At this club meeting, too, Johnson’s Lives of the Poets were first resolved on, and by the club clique the work was ultimately produced.

William West, a bookseller’s assistant, who died at a great age at the Charter House, in 1855, has left in his Fifty Years’ Reminiscences, and in the pages of the Aldine Magazine, a number of garrulous, amusing, but sometimes incoherent stories of the old booksellers. West says he knew all the members of the club, and bears witness that “Longman was a man of the most exemplary character both in his profession and in his private life, and as universally esteemed for his benevolence as for his integrity.” He mentions in particular Longman’s generosity in offering George Robinson any sum he wished on credit, when his business was in a critical condition.

West adds, “I was in the habit of going to Mr. Longman’s almost daily from the years 1785 to 1787 or 1788, for various books for country orders, being what is termed in all wholesale booksellers’ shops ‘a collector.’ Mr. Norton Longman had been caused by his father wisely to go through this same wholesome routine of his profession; and I am informed that the present Mr. L. (Thomas Norton Longman), although at the very head of the book trade, has pursued a similar course with his sons.”

Longman—and this brings us to the subject—had married a sister of Harris, the patentee, and long the manager of Covent Garden Theatre. By her he had three sons, and of these Thomas Norton Longman, born in 1771, about 1792 began to take his father’s place in the publishing establishment; and about this time Thomas Brown entered the office as an apprentice. In 1794, Mr. Owen Rees was admitted a member, and the firm’s title was altered to “Longman and Co.;” and at this time, too, the younger Evans, “rating,” we are told, “only as third wholesale bookseller in England,” became bankrupt, and the whole of his picked stock was transferred to 39, Paternoster Row. The stock was further increased by a legacy from the elder Evans to Brown’s father in 1803. This elder Evans, as the publisher of the Morning Chronicle, had incurred the displeasure of Goldsmith, who, mindful of Johnson’s former valour, “went to the shop,” says Nichols, “cane in hand, and fell upon him in a most unmerciful manner. This Mr. Evans resented in a truly pugilistic method, and in a few moments the author of the Vicar of Wakefield was disarmed and stretched on the floor, to the no small diversion of the bystanders.”

Seven years, however, before this, Thomas Longman the second died, on the 5th February, 1797. Of the position to which he had attained it is sufficient to mention that when the Government were about to impose an additional duty on paper, subsequent to that of 1794, the firm of Longman urged such strong and unanswerable arguments against it and its impolicy that the idea was relinquished; and at this time the house had nearly £100,000 embarked in various publications.

Longman left his business to his eldest son, and to his second son, George, he bequeathed a handsome fortune, which enabled him to become a very extensive paper manufacturer at Maidstone, in Kent, and for some years he represented that borough in Parliament. As a further honour, he was drawn for Sheriff of London, but did not serve the office.

Edward Longman, the third son, was drowned at an early age in a voyage to India, whither he was proceeding to a naval station in the East India Company’s service.

At the time of Thomas Norton Longman’s accession to the chiefdom of the Paternoster Row firm, the literary world was undergoing a seething revolution. Genius was again let loose upon the earth to charm all men by her beauty, and to scare them for a while by her utter contempt for precedent. The torpor in which England had been wrapped during the whole of the foregone Hanoverian dynasty was changing into an eager feeling of unrest, and, later on, to a burning desire to do something, no matter what, and to do it thoroughly in one’s own best manner, and at one’s own truest promptings. No man saw the coming change more clearly than Longman; and anxious to profit by the first-fruits of the future, yet careful not to cast away in his hurry that ponderous ballast of dictionary and compilation, he soon gathered all the young writers of the day within the precincts of his publishing fold.

Down at Bristol, the ancestral town of both Longman and Rees, Joseph Cottle had been doing honest service—without, we fear, much profit—in issuing the earliest works of young men who were to take the highest rank among their fellows. Cottle had published Southey’s Joan of Arc in 1796, and in 1798 had issued the Lyrical Ballads, the joint composition of Coleridge and Wordsworth. When, in 1800, Longman purchased the entire copyrights of the Bristol firm, at a fair and individual valuation, the Lyrical Ballads were set down in the bill at exactly nothing, and Cottle obtained leave to present the copyright to the authors. In connection with Cottle and Longman, we must here mention a story that does infinite credit to both. At the very close of the eighteenth century, Southey and Cottle in conjunction prepared an edition of Chatterton’s works, to be published by subscription for the benefit of his sister, whose sight was now beginning to fail her. Hitherto, though much money had been made from the works of the “boy poet,” they had been printed only for the emolument of speculators.

The edition unfortunately proved a failure, but Longman and Rees entered into a friendly arrangement with Southey, and he was able to report in 1804 that Mrs. Newton lived to receive £184 15s. from the profits, when, as she expressed it, she would otherwise have wanted bread. Ultimately, Mary Ann Newton, the poet’s niece, received about £600, the fruits of the generous exertion of a brother poet, and of the good feeling of a kind-hearted publisher.

The first edition of the Lyrical Ballads did eventually sell out, and then Wordsworth, detaching his own poems from the others, and adding several new ones thereto, obtained £100 from Longman for the use of two editions, but the sale was so very slow that the bargain was probably unprofitable.

In this same year 1800 the house of Longman also published Coleridge’s translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein, written in the short space of six weeks. Very few copies were sold, but after remaining on hand for sixteen years, the remainder was sold off rapidly at a double price.

Southey (a Bristol man himself) met, too, with much kindness from the firm, but after his first poem with but little, as a poet, from the public. We have seen before that “the profits” on Madoc “amounted to exactly three pounds seventeen shillings and a penny.” No wonder that he writes to a friend, “Books are now so dear that they are becoming articles of fashionable furniture more than anything else; they who do buy them do not read, and they who read them do not buy them. I have seen a Wiltshire clothier who gives his bookseller no other instructions than the dimensions of his shelves; and have just heard of a Liverpool merchant who is fitting up a library, and has told his bibliopole to send him Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope, and if any of those fellows should publish anything new to let him have it immediately. If Madoc obtains any celebrity, its size and cost will recommend it to those gentry libros consumere nati, born to buy octavos and help the revenue.” Southey’s prose, however, proved infinitely more profitable, and for some years he was the chief contributor to Longman’s Annual Review started in 1802, the same year as the Edinburgh Review. About this time Longman first went to Scotland, paid a visit to Walter Scott, and purchased the copyright of the Minstrelsy then publishing; and in the following year Rees crossed the borders, and returned with an arrangement to publish the Lay of the Last Minstrel on the half-profit system, Constable having, however, a very small share in it. Scott’s moiety of profits was £169 6s., and success being then ensured, Longman offered £500 for the copyright, which was at once accepted. They afterwards added £100, “handsomely given to supply the loss of a fine horse which broke down suddenly while the author was riding with one of the worthy publishers” (Owen Rees).

Already in the first few years of the century we find the house connected with Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and Scott, but it was by no means entirely to poetry that Longman and Rees trusted. In 1799 they purchased the copyright of Lindley Murray’s English Grammar, one of the most profitable school books ever issued from the press—for many years the annual sale of the Abridgment in England alone was from 48,000 to 50,000 copies. Chambers’ Cyclopædia was entirely re-written, re-cast, and re-christened, and again, under the management of Abraham Rees, after whom it was named, came out in quarto form in parts, but at a total cost of £85. The ablest scientific and technical writers of the day were retained, and among them we find the names of Humphry Davy, John Abernethy, Sharon Turner, John Flaxman, and Henry Brougham. For the first twenty years of this century Rees’ New Cyclopædia filled the place that the Encyclopædia Britannica—“a Scots rival in little esteem”—was afterwards to occupy.

In 1803, we find the trade catalogue has extended so much in bulk and character that it is divided into no less than twenty-two classes. Among their books we note Paley’s Natural Theology (ten editions published in seven years), Sharon Turner’s Anglo-Saxon History, Pinkerton’s Geography, Cowper’s Homer, and Gifford’s Juvenal.

About this time too, they engaged very extensively in the old book trade, a branch of the business discarded about the year 1840. In a catalogue of the year 1811 we find some very curious books. Here are the celebrated Roxburgh Ballads, now in the British Museum; a Pennant’s London, marked £300; a Granger’s Biographical Dictionary, £750; Pilkington’s Dictionary of Painters, £420; two volumes of Cromwelliana, £250; an extraordinary assemblage of Caxtons, Wynkyn de Wordes, and other early printed books, one supposed to date from 1446; a unique assemblage of Garrickiana, and many other articles of a matchless character.9

Longman was himself indefatigable in business, for fifty years unremittingly he came from and returned to Hampstead on horseback; but as the rious branches of the trade clearly prove, the superintendence of so vast a business was altogether beyond the power of any single man; and perhaps nothing tended more to raise the firm to the eminent position it soon attained than the plan of introducing fresh blood from time to time;—the new members being often chosen on account of the zeal and talent they had displayed as servants of the house. In 1804 Thomas Hurst, with the whole of his trade and connection, and Cosmo Orme (the founder of the hospital for decayed booksellers) were admitted. In 1811, Thomas Brown, whom we have already noticed as an apprentice, became a member of the firm, and until his retirement in 1859, took the sole management of the cash department, with so regular and just a system that an author could always learn what was coming to him, and when he was to receive it—a plan not invariably adopted in a publisher’s counting-house. The firm was in 1824 further strengthened by the admission of Bevis Green, who had been apprenticed to Hurst in 1807. The title of the firm at this, its best known, period was, therefore, “Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green.” When, however, Thomas Roberts entered, the title was changed to “Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green;” but we are anticipating, for Roberts died as recently as 1865, having acquired some distinction in private life as a Numismatist. For the sake of convenience, and for the sequence of the story, it will, perhaps, be as well to consider the firm as represented, as in fact from his leading position it was by Thomas Norton Longman, touching only upon the others individually when some directly personal interest arises. Before all these partnerships, however, were accomplished facts Longman had taken a much more precious, and even more zealous partner in the person of Miss Mary Slater of Horsham, Sussex, whom he had married as far back as the 2nd July, 1799.

Wordsworth of course continued his connection with the firm, though his profits were absolutely nil. Though a poetic philosopher he was not quite proof against the indifference of the public. In the edition of the Lyrical Ballads published in 1805 we find the significant epigraph, Quam nihil ad genium, Papinique tuum. In 1807, he published two new volumes, in which appeared many of his choicest pieces, and among them his first sonnets. Jeffrey, however, maintained that they were miserably inferior, and his article put an absolute stop to the sale. Wordsworth had, perhaps deprived himself of all right to complain, for his harshest reviewer did him far more justice than he was wont to deal out to his greatest contemporaries. In 1814, we find Longman announcing, “Just published, the Excursion, being a portion of the Recluse, by William Wordsworth, in 4to., price £2 2s., boards.” Jeffrey used the famous expression—“This will never do;” and Hogg wrote to Southey that Jeffrey had crushed the poem. “What!” retorted Southey, “Jeffrey crush the Excursion! Tell him he might as easily crush Skiddaw!” Wordsworth, who had invariably a high value of his own works, even of his weakest ones, writes also,—“I am delighted to learn that the Edinburgh Aristarch has declared against the Excursion, as he will have the mortification of seeing a book enjoy a high reputation to which he has not contributed.” For a while, however, Jeffrey’s curse was potent, and it took six years to exhaust an edition of only 500 copies. We need scarcely follow Wordsworth’s various publications (do their dates not lie on every table of every drawing-room in the land?), but the whole returns from his literary labours up to 1819 had not amounted to £140; and even in 1829 he remarks that he had worked hard through a long life for less pecuniary emolument than a public performer earns for two or three songs.

Longman had at one time an opportunity of becoming Byron’s publisher, but declined the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers on account of the violent attacks it contained upon his own poets—those of the Lake school. With Scott we have seen that he had had dealings, and in these, at all events, Sir Walter’s joke, that Longmanum est errare, did not hold good. Before the collective edition of 1830, 44,000 copies of the Lay of the Last Minstrel were sold. Though Longman was inclined to believe that Scott was not the author of Waverley, he was equally anxious to secure the publication of some of that extraordinary series of romances; and at a time when the Ballantynes were in trouble, purchased Guy Mannering by granting bills in advance for £1500, and taking a portion of their stock, to the extent of about £600 more. The Monastery was also published by him in 1820, and he is said, though the authority is more than dubious, to have paid Scott upwards of £20,000 in about fifteen years.

What Scott was to Constable, and Byron to Murray, that was Moore to Longman. “Anacreon Moore,” as he loved to be called, had gained a naughty reputation from Mr. Thomas Little’s Poems, and, in 1811, we find him writing to Longman—“I am at last come to a determination to bind myself to your service, if you hold the same favourable disposition towards me as at our last conversation upon business. To-morrow I shall be very glad to be allowed half-an-hour’s conversation with you, and as I dare say I shall be up all night at Carlton House, I do not think I could reach your house before four o’clock. I told you before that I never could work without a retainer. It will not, however, be of that exorbitant nature which your liberality placed at my disposal the first time.” Soon after this the Prince Regent threw over his old Whig friend, but Moore was so successful in his political warfare that he more than gained as a poet what he lost as a courtier, and his Two-penny Post Bag went through fourteen editions. He was, however, anxious to apply his genius to the creation of some work more likely to raise his reputation than the singing of lascivious songs, or the jerking off of political squibs. Accordingly Perry, the editor of the Morning Chronicle, was sent to discuss preliminary matters with Longman. “I am of opinion,” said Perry, “that Mr. Moore ought to receive for his poem the largest price that has been given in our day for such a work.” “That,” replied Longman promptly, “was £3000.” “Exactly so,” rejoined the editor, “and no smaller a sum ought he to receive.” Longman insisted upon a perusal beforehand:—

“Longman has communicated his readiness to terms, on the basis of the three thousand guineas, but requires a perusal beforehand; this I have refused. I shall have no ifs.”

Again Moore writes, “To the honour and glory of romance, as well on the publisher’s side as on the poet’s, this very generous view of the transaction was without any difficulty acceded to;” and again, “There has seldom occurred any transaction in which trade and poetry have shone so satisfactorily in each other’s eyes.” So Moore left London to find a quiet resting-place “in a lone cottage among the fields in Derbyshire,” and there Lalla Rookh was written; the snows of two or three Derbyshire winters aiding, he avers, his imagination, by contrast, to paint the everlasting summers and glowing scenery of the East. The arrangement had hitherto been verbal, but on going up to town, in the winter of 1814, he received the following agreement from Longman.

“COPY OF TERMS WRITTEN TO MR. MOORE.

“That upon your giving into our hands a poem of yours of the length of Rokeby, you shall receive from us the sum of £3000. We also agree to the stipulation that the few songs which you may introduce into the work shall be considered as reserved for your own setting.”

Soon Moore writes to say that about 4000 lines are perfectly finished, but he is unwilling to show any portion of the work until the 6000 are completed, for fear of disheartenment. He requests Longman, however, “to tell our friends that they are done, a poetic licence to prevent the teasing wonderment of the literary quidnuncs at my being so long about it.” Longman replies that “we are certainly impatient for the perusal of your poem, but solely for our gratification. Your sentiments are always honourable.” At length, after very considerable delays on the part of the author, the poem appeared, and its wonderful success fully justified the publisher’s extraordinary liberality. Moore drew a thousand pounds for the discharge of his debts, and left, temporarily only, we fear, £2000 in Longman’s hands, the interest of which was to be paid quarterly to his father.

This was Moore’s greatest effort; nor did he attempt to surpass it. One substantial proof of admiration of the poet’s performance should not be overlooked: “The young Bristol lady,” says Moore in his diary, Dec. 23rd, 1818, “who inclosed me three pounds after reading Lalla Rookh had very laudable ideas on the subject; and if every reader of Lalla Rookh had done the same I need never have written again.”

As it was, however, he was soon obliged to set to work once more—this time as a biographer. The lives of Sheridan, Fitzgerald, and many others, bear testimony to his industry; but in spite, perhaps because, of their pleasant gossiping tone, they are far from accurate. At one time he had so many lives upon his hands together, that he suggested the feasibility of publishing a work to be called the Cat, which should contain nine of them. His Life of Byron we have already alluded to, but we must again call attention to Longman’s generosity in allowing him to transfer the work to Murray. Longman was not less eager in his kindness to his clients in private than in business relations. His Saturday “Weekly Literary Meetings” were about the pleasantest and most sociable in London. As early as 1804 we find Southey writing to Coleridge: “I wish you had called on Longman; that man has a kind heart of his own, and I wish you to think so; the letter he sent me was a proof of it. Go to one of his Saturday evenings, you will see a coxcomb or two, and a dull fellow or two; but you will, perhaps, meet Turner and Duppa, and Duppa is worth knowing.” Throughout the day the new publications were displayed in a separate department for the use of the literary men, and house dinners were of frequent occurrence; the whole of the “Lake School” were steady recipients of Longman’s hospitality whenever they came to town.

As, perhaps, the strongest proof of a man’s kindliness of heart, Longman is invariably represented as being “almost adored by his domestics, from his uniform attention to the comforts of those who have grown gray in his service.” He was a liberal patron of the “Association for the Relief of Decayed Booksellers,” and was also one of the “Court of Assistants of the Company of Stationers,” but, with the characteristic modesty of his disposition, paid the customary fine to be allowed to decline the offices of warden and master of the company.

For many years the “House” had been London agents and part proprietors of the Edinburgh Review, and when the commercial crash of 1826 destroyed Constable’s huge establishment, the property was virtually in their own hands, and the number for December, 1826, is printed for “Longman, Rees, Orme, Browne, and Green, London, and Adam Black, Edinburgh;” and if we “read between the lines” of the new designation we learn that Hurst had been concerned in some bill transactions, and had been this year compelled to retire (he died an inmate of the Charter House, in 1847), and we may also gather something of the strong connection that was to be formed with the house of Adam Black.

Jeffrey retired from the editorial chair in 1829, but Macney Napier, the editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica was appointed in his stead, and the literary management of the journal was still continued in Edinburgh. Sydney Smith ceased to write for the Review in 1827; but in 1825 an article was contributed on Milton, by a young man of five-and-twenty; and Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay, who, as Moore said, could do any mortal thing but forget, was destined to be, not only the most brilliant of the daring and talented band of Edinburgh Reviewers, but eventually, one of the most powerful contributors to Longman’s fortune and reputation.10

To return again to educational works, we find that in Mangnall’s Questions a property had been acquired that fully rivalled Murray’s Mrs. Markham. A type now of a hideously painful and parrot-like system of teaching (what negations of talent our sisters and mothers owe to this encyclopædic volume we shudder to sum up!) it was imitated and printed in every direction. Poor Miss Mangnall! who recollects now-a-days that in 1806 she commenced her literary life with a volume of poems? A very similar book, but on scientific questions, was Mrs. Marcet’s Conversations, which was not only profitable to Longman, but American booksellers, up to the year 1853, had reaped an abundant harvest from the sale of 160,000 copies.

The attempts already made by Constable and Murray to promote the sale of cheap and yet excellent books, led Longman to establish his Cabinet Encyclopædia. The management was given to Dr. Lardner, then a professor at the London University, and all, or nearly all, Longman’s literary connections were pressed into service on his staff of contributors. In the prospectus we see the names of Scott, Moore, Mackintosh, Coleridge, Miss Edgeworth, Herschell, Long, Brewster, De Morgan, Thirlwall, and, of course, Southey. The Times gave more than a broad hint that some of the names were put forward as lures, and nothing else. Southey was anxious that this “insinuation” should be brought before a court of law, where the writer may be “taught that not every kind of slander may be published with impunity.” The proprietors, however, contented themselves with publishing books, most indubitably written by the authors whose names they bore. The first volume was published in 1829, and at the close of the series, in 1846, one hundred and thirty-three volumes had been issued, the whole of which were eminently successful, and some few of them, such as Sir John Herschell’s Astronomy, in particular, have since been expanded into recognised and standard works.

Another valuable work which has been a constant source of wealth to the firm, somewhat similar in scope to the preceding, was McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary, first published in 1832; in which year the present Mr. Thomas Longman was admitted a partner, being joined by his brother, Mr. William Longman, in 1839. With young Mr. Thomas Longman, Moore appears to have been particularly friendly, addressing him always as “Dear Tom.” As far back as 1829, we see the poet requesting that some one might be sent over to have “poor Barbara’s” grave made tidy, for fear that his wife Bessy, who was about to make a loving pilgrimage thither, might be shocked, and we read afterwards that “young Longman kindly rode over twice to Hornsey for the purpose.” In Moore’s diary, too, for 1837, we find many regrets for the loss of Rees—a man “who may be classed among those solemn business-ties, the breaking of which by death cannot but be felt solemnly, if not deeply.” And again, later on, in 1840: “Indeed, I will venture to say that there are few tributes from authors to publishers more honourable (or I will fairly say more deserved) than those which will be found among my papers relative to the transactions for many years between myself and my friends of the ‘Row.’”

Thomas Longman the third was now an old man, but still constantly attentive to business. In his time he had seen many changes, but none more striking than those that occupied his latter days. Madoc was still lying on his shelves, but Southey was poet-laureate. Scott and Byron had in succession entranced the world. They had now withdrawn, and no third king arose to demand recognition. It was in the calm that followed that Wordsworth obtained a hearing. In 1839, the University of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, amid the enthusiastic applause of a crowded theatre. Younger men were coming to the fore, and though his contemporaries were fast dying off, still Longman was as eager for business as ever, and as ready, when it was over, for his chief pleasure—the enjoyments of domestic life; for his favourite pursuits—the love of music and the culture of fruits and flowers. As far as health and activity went, though in his 72nd year, he was still in the prime of life, when, on his usual ride to town, his horse fell, near the Small-pox Hospital, St. Pancras, and he was thrown over the animal’s head and struck the ground with such violence as to fracture his skull and injure his spine; and in a few days afterwards he died at his residence, Greenhill House, Hampstead, on 28th August, 1842—leaving a blank, not only in his own family circle, but in the hearts of all who had known him as a master, or had reaped a benefit from the uniform generosity of his business dealings.

Mr. McCulloch and many of his literary clients erected a monument, the bust of which, by Mr. Moore, is said to be a good likeness, to his memory—an affectionate tribute seldom paid by men-of-letters to a publisher—now standing in Hampstead church.

His personalty was sworn under £200,000, and was principally left to his widow and family. The former, however, did not long survive her sorrow, but died some ten weeks after her husband.

Their second son, Mr. Charles Longman, of Two Waters, joined Mr. Dickenson, in the trade of wholesale stationers and paper-makers, in which they have since then attained a pre-eminence. Their eldest daughter married Mr. Spottiswoode, the Queen’s printer, and the third daughter is the wife of Reginald Bray, Esq., of Shere.

The succession of a Thomas Longman to the chiefdom of the house is, Mr. Knight says somewhere, as certain as the accession of a George was in the Hanoverian dynasty: and the present Mr. Longman, aided by his brother William, took command of the gigantic firm in Paternoster Row. The very year of their father’s death was a year to be long remembered in the annals of the firm for an unusually successful “hit,” in the production of the Lays of Ancient Rome. Not even in the palmy days of Scott and Byron was such an immediate and enormous circulation attained. In 1844, Macaulay ceased to contribute to the Edinburgh Review—nearly twenty years from the date of his first contributions; receiving latterly, we believe, £100 as a minimum price for an article. A collective edition of these essays was published in America; and within five years sixty thousand volumes were sold, and, as many of these were imported into England, Macaulay authorised the proprietors of the Review to issue an English edition, which certainly proved the most remunerative collection of essays ever published in this or any other country. The English edition contains twenty-seven essays, in some editions twenty-six. The Philadelphia edition contains eleven additional essays.11

These essays were all very excellent, but Macaulay’s admirers regretted with Tom Moore, “that his great powers should not be concentrated upon one great work, instead of being scattered in Sibyl’s leaves,” and great was the satisfaction in 1841, when it was known that he was engaged upon a History of England, and the publication of the work was looked forward to with the greatest eagerness; and in 1849 the first two volumes appeared. Success was immediate—“Within six months,” says the Edinburgh Review, “the book has run through five editions, involving an issue of above 18,000 copies.” By 1856, the sale of these two volumes had reached nearly 40,000 copies, and in the United States 125,000 copies were sold in five years. For the privilege of publication for ten years, it is said that Mr. Longman allowed the author £600 per annum; the copyright remaining in Macaulay’s possession.

This success, however, was nothing to that achieved by the third and fourth volumes; and the day of their publication, 17th Dec., 1855, will be long remembered in the annals of Paternoster Row. It was presumed that 25,000 copies would be quite sufficient to meet the first public demand; but this enormous pile of books, weighing fifty-six tons, was exhausted the first day, and eleven thousand applicants were still unsatisfied. In New York one house sold 73,000 volumes (three different styles and prices) in ten days, and 25,000 more were immediately issued in Philadelphia—10,000 were stereotyped, printed, and in the hands of the publishers within fifty working hours. The aggregate sale in England and America, within four weeks of publication, is said to have exceeded 150,000 copies. Macaulay is also stated to have received £16,000 from Mr. Longman for the copyright of the third and fourth volumes.12

Upon the death of Mr. Macney Napier, the editorship of the Review was transferred to Mr. Empson, Jeffrey’s son-in-law; while he in turn was succeeded by Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who finally gave place to Mr. H. Reeve.

In the way of cheap literature the “Travellers’ Library,” commenced in 1851, is deservedly worthy of notice. In this year occurred the unusual phenomenon of a pamphlet, bearing on its title-page the joint names of Mr. Longman and Mr. Murray. This was a reprint of some correspondence with Earl Russell, in his official capacity, as to the injustice of the State undertaking the publication of school-books at the national expense, and compelling the government schools to adopt them—thus creating a perfect monopoly and interfering with private enterprise. The books in question were published by the Irish Educational Commissioners, but more than three-quarters of them were eventually sold in England—many of them, especially the collection of poetry, were, it was further urged, pirated from copyright works. The correspondence was long and protracted on the side of the publishers; and as is often the case in an important public question, Earl Russell’s replies consisted of the merest acknowledgment. Mr. Longman had, however, an opportunity of a pleasant revenge. Tom Moore had left all his papers, letters, and journals to the care of his friend, Earl Russell—a man who, as Sydney Smith said, thought he could do anything—“build St. Paul’s, cut for the stone, or command the Channel Fleet.” The one thing apparently he could not do was the editorship or composition of a Poet’s Life. The material, indeed, was ample, and seems to have been printed pretty much as it came to hand. However, the sum which Mr. Longman gave for the papers appeared, together with the pension, an ample provision for the devoted “Bessy.”

Among the later efforts of the firm we may here mention the issue of many finely illustrated works, and we must also chronicle the fact that in 1863—the business connections and stock of the Parkers were added to the enormous trade of the leviathan firm. Giving a glance at the changes that have taken place in the members of the firm, we have merely space to note that at Cosmo Orme’s death in 1859 Mr. Brown retired, and at his decease on the 24th of March, 1869, left an immense fortune, more than £100,000 going in various legacies, of which the Booksellers’ Provident Retreat and Institution each received £10,000, the Royal Literary Fund £3000, and the Stationers’ Company in all £10,000, the balance after the various legacies, and there were no less than sixty-eight legatees, going to the grandchildren of Thomas Norton Longman. The personalty of Mr. B. E. Green, who died about the same date, was sworn under £200,000. Two of the former assistants, Mr. Dyer and Mr. Reader, have, on the good old system, been admitted to the firm, which now stands “Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer.” Mr. Roberts, as before stated, died in 1865.

Both the Messrs. Longman are well known for their literary talents—Mr. Thomas Longman as editor of a magnificent edition of the New Testament; and Mr. William as an historical author. The first of his works was, we believe, privately printed, A Tour in the Alps, by W. L. Mr. William Longman has always been an enthusiastic Alpine traveller. He has, however, more recently published a History of the Life and Times of Edward III., in two volumes, and at our present writing a new work has just appeared in which he says playfully, “I trust authors will forgive me, and not revenge themselves by turning publishers;” and he adds heartily and generously, “There is, nevertheless, some advantage in a publisher dabbling in literature, for it shows him the difficulties with which an author has to contend—the labour which is indispensable to produce a work which may be relied on—and it increases the sympathy which should, and which in these days does, exist between author and publisher.” These latter lines surely form a very fitting sentence with which to conclude our short history of the house of Longman.