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.