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:
“Bœotian Cottle, rich Bristowa’s boast,
Imports old stories from the Cambrian coast,
And sends his goods to market, all alive,
Lines forty thousand, cantos twenty-five.
* * * * *
Oh, Amos Cottle!—Phœbus! what a name
To fill the speaking trump of future fame!—
Oh, Amos Cottle! for a moment think
What meagre profits spring from pen and ink!
When thus devoted to poetic dreams
Who will peruse thy prostituted reams?
Oh, pen perverted, paper misapplied!
Had Cottle still adorned the counter’s side,
Bent o’er the desk, or, born to useful toils,
Been taught to make the paper which he soils,
Plough’d, delved, or plied the oar with lusty limb,
He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him.”
Of course, this confusion of the names of the two brothers was intentionally meant to strengthen the gibe. Though Cottle was at best an indifferent poet his name would have survived as a generous friend even if Lord Byron had not honoured him with his satire.
After having personally encouraged the youthful genius of such authors as Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, and after having enjoyed their friendship and esteem, it was natural that Cottle, when their names had become familiar words in every household in England, should wish to preserve what he could of the history of their early days. In 1837 he published his “Early Recollections,” but as he had felt compelled to decline to contribute them in any mutilated form to the authorised, and insufferably dull, life of Coleridge, the work was greeted by the Quarterly Review with a howl of contemptuous abuse, as consisting of the “refuse of advertisements and handbills, the sweepings of a shop, the shreds of a ledger, and the rank residuum of a life of gossip.” This is certainly “slashing criticism” with a vengeance: Cottle based the value of his book upon the ground of his having been a bookseller, and to taunt him with the fact is as unmanly as the whole description of the work is false. He lays the slightest possible stress upon the assistance he had been able to render the illustrious authors pecuniarily, and only brings it forward at all as furnishing matter for literary history; and to most students the literary history of the early struggles of genius does possess the highest interest. Cottle was certainly unskilled in the art of composition, and was undoubtedly garrulous, but the gossip anent such writers, when prompted, as in this case, by truth and affection, is worth tomes of disquisitions upon their virtues or their faults. Joseph Cottle died as recently as 1854, and his memory is already half-forgotten, and yet had we wished to close our annals of the “trade” by tributes paid by illustrious writers to the worth and integrity of its members, we could find none more fitting than the letters of two famous poets to an obscure provincial bookseller.
“Dear Cottle,—On the blank leaf of my poems I can most appropriately write my acknowledgments to you, for your too disinterested conduct in the purchase of them.... Had it not been for you none, perhaps, of them would have been published, and some not written.
“Your obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.”
Again:—
“Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and most essential acts of friendship which you showed me when I stood most in need of them? Your house was my house when I had no other.... Sure I am that there never was a more generous or kinder heart than yours, and you will believe me when I add that there does not live that man upon earth whom I remember with more gratitude and affection.... Good-night, my dear old friend and benefactor.
“Robert Southey.”