480 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. periodical press, and the subject of the poem, than to any intrinsic merit, other than as holding out vague hope of future promise, the young author acquired a sudden reputation, which was afterwards fully sus- tained by his prose if not by his poetry. Later on Cottle was introduced to Wordsworth, who read him portions of his " Lyrical Ballads." The venturous bookseller made him the same offer of thirty guineas for the first-fruits of his genius, saying that it would be a gratifying circumstance to issue the first volumes of three such poets, and (a veritable prophecy) "a distinction that might never again occur to a provincial bookseller." After mature con- sideration, Wordsworth accepted. the offer; but the " Lyrical Ballads," in which also Coleridge's " Ancient Mariner" first appeared, went off so slowly that he was compelled to part with the greater part of the five hundred copies to Arch, a London bookseller. We have already related how Cottle, and after him, Longman, rendered material assistance to Chatterton's sister, by an edition of the poems of the Sleepless Boy who perished in his Pride, and how in 1798 Cottle disposed of all his copyrights to Longman, and ob- tained his consent to return the copyright of the " Lyrical Ballads " to the author. Though Cottle henceforth gave up bookselling, he did not forego book-making. In 1798 he published his "Malvern Hills," in 1801 his "Alfred," and in 1809 the "Fall of Cambria." These last effusions attracted the venom of Lord Byron's pen, who writes in bitter prose, " Mr. Cottle, Amos, Joseph, I know not which, but one or both, once sellers of books they did not write, now writers of books that do not sell, have published a pair of epics," and in bitterer verse :
