The foundation of the great publishing houses of London is co-temporary in date with the origin of the private banks and famous breweries; for, as in the case of these establishments, the connections requisite were so extensive, and the needful capital, to render venture a success, so large, that in many instances the present great publishing firms have been the work of three, in some cases even of five, generations. There have, of course, been isolated exceptions, as in the instance of Archibald Constable, of Edinburgh; but these rare cases, though often beneficial to the world at large, have seldom been individually successful.

John McMurray, the founder of the great London house of Murray, was born in Edinburgh about the year 1795, of very respectable parents, who not only gave him a good education, but enlisted for him the sympathies of Sir George Yonge, then an official in high favour. Through Sir George’s influence a commission was obtained in the Royal Marines, and in 1762, we find from the Navy List, that John McMurray joins his frigate full, probably, of hopeful anticipations of the promotion that sometimes came so speedily in the days of the old French wars. The Peace of Paris, however, was signed in the following year, and, spite of patronage and merit, McMurray was, in 1768, still a second lieutenant, and, in point of seniority, thirty-fourth on the list. Disgusted with a profession from which he could hope so little, and eager for a more useful career in life, in this same year he embraced an opportunity that seemed to give him a chance of exchanging the lounging idleness of Chatham barracks for the busy activity of London business, in a trade very congenial to his tastes, and not unaccompanied with hopes of solid emolument.

Among the friends he had made either afloat or at his Chatham quarters was William Falconer, who, a sailor boy “before the mast,” had in the very year of McMurray’s first entry into the service, published the beautiful poem of the “Shipwreck.” This poem attracted great attention, and the author was promoted to the more honourable than lucrative position of midshipman. Fellow-townsmen—and in those days blood was thicker than water—and in some degree fellow-students, for both were lovers of books, they became firm friends; and McMurray’s first thought, when the offer of a bookseller’s business was put before him, was to secure the aid of his literary friend in his new venture; and an interesting letter, still preserved, gives the history of his commencement as a bookseller. Addressed to “Mr. William Falconer, at Dover,” it runs as follows:—

“Brompton, Kent, 16th Oct., 1768.

“Dear Will,—Since I saw you, I have had the intention of embarking in a scheme that I think will prove successful, and in the progress of which I had an eye towards your participating. Mr. Sandby, bookseller, opposite St. Dunstan’s church, has entered into company with Snow and Denne, bankers. I was introduced to this gentleman about a month ago, upon an advantageous offer of succeeding him in his old business, which, by the advice of my friends, I propose to accept. Now, although I have little reason to fear success by myself in this undertaking, yet I think so many additional advantages would accrue to us both, were your forces and mine joined, that I cannot help mentioning it to you, and making you the offer of entering into company. He resigns to me the lease of the house; the goodwill ——; and I only take his bound stock, and fixtures, at a fair appraisement, which will not amount to more than £400, and which, if I ever mean to part with, cannot fail to bring in nearly the same sum. The shop has long continued in the trade; it retains a good many old customers; and I am to be ushered immediately into public notice by the sale of a new edition of Lord Lyttelton’s ‘Dialogues;’ and afterwards by a like edition of his ‘History.’ These works I shall sell by commission, upon a certain profit without risque; and Mr. Sandby has promised to continue to me, always, his good offices and recommendations. These are the general outlines; and if you entertain a notion that the conjunction would suit you, advise me, and you shall be assumed upon equal terms.

“Many blockheads in the trade are making fortunes; and did we not succeed as well as they, I think it must be imputed only to ourselves.... Consider what I have proposed, and send me your answer soon. Be assured in the meantime that I remain, dear Sir,

“Your affectionate and humble Servant,
“John McMurray.

“P.S.—My advisers and directors in this affair have been Thomas Cumming, Esq., Mr. Archibald Paxton, Mr. Samuel Paterson, of Essex House, and Messrs. J. and W. Richardson, printers. These, after deliberate reflection, have unanimously thought that I should accept of Mr. Sandby’s offer.”

From some reason or other the offer was declined; perhaps, as Falconer’s biographer asserts, he was at this time (though absent for a while at Dover) living with his pretty little wife in an attic in Grub Street, toiling at his “Marine Dictionary,” and with no prospect of raising the money requisite for the partnership proposed; perhaps he had already accepted the pursership of the “Aurora” frigate. At all events, immediately after the publication of the third edition of his “Shipwreck,” which was to have contained some lines addressed to McMurray, which, in the hurry of departure were omitted, he sailed in the “Aurora” for India. The Cape was safely reached, but after leaving it the “Aurora” was never heard of again. Ship, crew, and passengers were all lost, and, through the untimely death of the author, the “Shipwreck” acquired a melancholy and almost prophetic interest, which speedily exhausted the third and many future editions.

In the meantime John McMurray had commenced bookselling in earnest. It was at a time when, through Wilkes and Bute, national feeling seems to have run very high, and to be a Scotchman was hardly a recommendation to a beginner, and we find that, though McMurray headed all his trade bills with a ship, as a proud testimony to his naval antecedents, he found it convenient to drop the Scotch prefix of Mc. The following copy of a trade card issued at the time is the first record we have of this alteration of title.

JOHN MURRAY (successor to Mr. Sandby),
Bookseller and Stationer,
At No. 32, over-against St. Dunstan’s Church,
in Fleet Street,
London.

Sells all new Books and Publications. Fitts up Public or Private Libraries in the neatest manner with Books of the choicest editions, the best Print, and the richest Bindings.

Also,

Executes East India or Foreign Commissions by an assortment of Books and Stationary suited to the Market or Purpose for which it is destined; all at the most reasonable rates.

Murray found that Sandby’s connection at Fleet Street was a good one—Mr. William Sandby, indeed, could have been no ordinary bookseller, for his father was a prebendary of Gloucester, and his brother a master of Magdalen College, while he was accepted as partner in a wealthy banking firm—the trade were inclined to “back him up,” and he was able to extend his business considerably in India and Edinburgh, where he had many friends. The new edition of Lord Lyttelton’s “History” was brought out in stately quarto volumes, as befitted the rank of the author, and was completely issued in 1771–2, and, published “with a certain profit, without risque,” must have proved much more remunerative than the original “Henry II.” was to Sandby, who generously offered to pay for the author’s corrections, and who found to his cost that not a single line was left as originally printed.

Murray seems to have kept up his connection with Edinburgh, for in 1773 we find him London agent for the Edinburgh Magazine and Review, and in the following year, when it was proposed to separate the Magazine from the Review, Stuart writes to Smellie:—“Murray seems fully apprised of the pains and attentions that are necessary, has literary connections, and is fond of the employment; let him, therefore, be the London proprietor.” Murray consented to “take a share,” if his advice were attended to; but the scheme of a review came to nothing, and even the existing Edinburgh Magazine and Review died, in 1776, of a violent attack on Lord Monboddo’s “Origin of Language.” Murray offered his condolence in the following laconic note:—

“Dear Smellie,—I am sorry for the defeat you have met with. Had you praised Lord Monboddo instead of damning him, it would not have happened.

“Yours, &c.
“John Murray.”

Murray, now that the Edinburgh scheme had come to nothing, commenced in 1780 a volume of annual intelligence of his own under the title of the London Mercury; and in January, 1783, with the assistance of a staff of able writers, among whom were Dr. Whittaker and Gilbert Stuart, who had lately come from Scotland, he started the English Review.

A great portion of Murray’s retail stock was medical books, and for many years the house had a reputation in the medical world. Of the books, however, which he published, those more latterly issued proved by far the most successful, such as Langhorne’s “Plutarch’s Lives,” Mitford’s “Greece,” and, in 1791, a thin octavo in which the elder Disraeli first gave the public his “Curiosities of Literature”—all of them works which have since been annual sources of revenue to the firm.

Murray found time, however, amidst all this business, to indulge his own literary tastes and aspirations, which had at one time been strong. Some of his pamphlets—such as the “Letter to Mr. Mason on his Edition of Gray’s Poems, and the Practice of Booksellers” (1777); his “Considerations on the Freight and Shipping of the East India Company” (1786), and “An Author’s Conduct to the Public, stated in the Behaviour of Dr. William Cullen” (1784)—acquired much transient reputation.

After a career, as successful we imagine as his wishes could desire, John Murray died on the 6th November, 1793, leaving behind him a widow, two daughters, and an only son, and bequeathing to the latter a business which was destined to carry the name of John Murray wherever the English language was spoken, and wherever English books were read, as the most venturesome and yet the most successful publisher who has ever, in London at all events, encouraged the struggles of authorship and gratified the tastes of half a world of readers.

John Murray, the son, the more immediate object of our memoir, was born in 1778, and was consequently only fifteen at the time of his father’s death. He had been educated primarily at the High School of Edinburgh, doubtless with a view of keeping up the Scotch connection, and had afterwards been removed to “various English seminaries”—among others to Dr. Burney’s academy at Gosport, where, through the carelessness of a writing-master, while making a pen with a penknife, he lost the sight of one of his eyes. The founder of the house not only left the business to his son, but left also a council of regency to manage affairs until he came to the natural years of discretion. By a last will, dated about one month before his death, the elder John Murray appointed four executors—among them his widow, Hester Murray, and Archibald Paxton, who in his letter to Falconer he had named as one of his principal advisers in adopting the bookselling trade. For a year or two after 1793 the name of “H. Murray” figures at the top of the bills and trade circulars, and then disappears from them, Mrs. Murray having, it seems, in 1795, married “Henry Paget, Lieutenant in the West Norfolk Militia,” and retired entirely from the management of the business. Murray was still too young to carry on the shop unaided, so his guardians admitted Mr. Highley, for a long time chief factotum in the shop and manager of the medical department, to a partnership with him. By the agreement the title of the new firm was to be “Murray and Highley;” the latter was solely to conduct the business, and to receive half the profits until young John came of age, after which they were to enjoy equal powers and “share and share” alike.

Mr. Highley, who seems to have been a steady, plodding man with much latent exertion against all speculative venture, did little to increase the standing of the firm; probably he imagined that the trade in medical books, as it was attended with the least risk, was the most remunerative portion of the business. His worthy soul was vexed at the anger excited by Whitaker’s slashing articles in the English Review. “Enraged authors,” it appears, took to sending huge parcels of defiant, contemptuous, and, worse still, unpaid MSS. to the publisher of the Review, complaining of the treatment which their books suffered at the hands of his critics, and “enraged authors” seem at this time to have been about the only readers of the savage periodical in question. One of the last numbers contains a notice that all unpaid post parcels may be inquired for again at the General Post Office; and soon after Mr. Highley eased his shoulders of this burden by merging the English Review in the Analytical.

Young Murray was at this time of a very different temperament to his partner—full of youth, fire, and energy, and uncommonly gifted with that speculative spirit which must have caused the elder man many a time to shake his head sagely, and to lift his gravely deprecating eyebrows. In fact, youth and age can never see matters with the same eyes;—the one looks as through a telescope magnifying all things within vision some hundred-fold; the other peers cautiously through spectacles, misty and begrimed, more used in guiding immediate footsteps than in gazing far ahead. Murray had attained his majority in 1799, and in four years the two partners resolved to sever their connection in a pleasant and friendly manner. By the formal deed of separation, dated 25th March, 1803, Highley retained all the medical business. But the principal act of parting was of anything but a formal nature. They drew lots for the old house and Murray was fortunate enough to secure the winning prize. Highley moved to No. 24, Fleet Street, but was able afterwards, in 1812, when Murray migrated to Albemarle Street, to move back again, and here he increased his medical connection, leaving a thriving business to his son.

In this very year of separation the Edinburgh Review was started, and Murray was probably reminded of the scheme in which his father had once been concerned with Smellie to produce a periodical under a similar title, but the time was not yet ripe for his own projects.

In 1806, at the age of twenty-four, he married Miss Elliot of Edinburgh, a young lady descended from one of the best-known publishers in the Modern Athens, and this, perhaps, drawing his attention to household matters, led to the publication of Mrs. Rundell’s “Domestic Cookery Book.” It is said that the receipts came from the note-book of the mother of the late Admiral Burney, with whose family, be it remembered, he had been at school at Gosport. This was the first and one of the most lucrative “hits” that Murray made, and perhaps in the important items of £ s. d. rivalled “Childe Harold” itself. Byron sings of it in playful jealousy:—

Murray’s ambition however was not to be satisfied with the sop of a successful cookery book. His marriage may be supposed to have strengthened his interests in the Scotch metropolis, for in the following year we find Constable offering him a fourth share in Scott’s forthcoming poem of “Marmion.” “I am,” writes Murray on the 6th Feb., 1807, “truly sensible of the kind remembrance of me in your liberal purchase. You have rendered Mr. Miller no less happy by your admission of him; and we both view it as honourable, profitable, and glorious to be concerned in the publication of a new poem by Walter Scott.” For an account of the success of “Marmion” we must refer the reader to the life of Archibald Constable; it is enough for our present purpose to know that Murray afterwards said that this fourth share, for which he paid £250, brought him in a return of fifty-fold.

The publication of “Marmion” was followed by a connection with Scott, who in the succeeding year edited for him Strutt’s “Queen Hoo Hall.”

Scott had before this been concerned with Campbell in a projected series of “Biographies of the Poets,” which had however come to nothing. Murray now thought that Scott’s talents, and more especially perhaps his name, would bestow certain success upon the project; and we find Campbell, who had just made a “poet’s marriage”—with love enough in his heart and genius enough in his brain, but “with only fifty pounds in his writing desk”—inditing to Scott as follows:—

“My dear Scott,—A very excellent and gentlemanly man—albeit a bookseller—Murray of Fleet Street, is willing to give for our joint ‘Lives of the Poets,’ on the plan we proposed to the trade a twelvemonth ago, a thousand pounds.... Murray is the only gentleman in the trade except Constable.... I may perhaps also except Hood. I have seldom seen a pleasanter man to deal with. Our names are what he principally wants, especially yours.... I do not wish even in confidence to say anything ill of the London booksellers beyond their deserts; but I can assure you that to compare this offer of Murray’s with their usual offers is magnanimous indeed. Longman and Rees and a few of the great booksellers have literally monopolized the trade, and the business of literature is getting a dreadful one indeed. The Row folks have done nothing for me yet; I know not what they intend. The fallen prices of literature—which is getting worse by the horrible complexion of the times—make me often rather gloomy at the life I am likely to lead. You may guess, therefore, my anxiety to close with this proposal; and you may think me charitable indeed to retain myself from wishing that you were as poor as myself, that you might have motives to lend your aid.”

Scott, however, was too busy on higher paid work and was obliged to decline the offer, and for the present Campbell went back to his “hack-work.” Poor Campbell had suffered much from the publishers. His “Pleasures of Hope” had been rejected by every bookseller in Glasgow and Edinburgh; not one of them would even risk paper and printing upon the chance of its success. At last Messrs. Mundell and Son, printers to the University of Glasgow, with much reluctance undertook its publication, upon the liberal condition of allowing the author fifty copies at trade price, and, in the event of its reaching a second edition, a gratuity of ten pounds. A few years afterwards, when Campbell was present at a literary dinner party, he was asked to give a toast, and without a moment’s hesitation he proposed “Bonaparte.” Glasses were put down untouched, and shouts of “The Ogre!” resounded. “Yes, gentlemen,” said Campbell gravely, “here is to Bonaparte; he has just shot a bookseller!” Amid shouts of applause, for the dinner was in “Bohemia,” the glasses were jangled and the toast was drank, for the news had but just arrived that Palm, a bookseller of Nuremburg, had been shot by the Emperor’s orders.

Constable scarcely thought, when he offered the fourth share of “Marmion” to Murray, that he was fostering a dangerous rival. Yet in the very year after the publication of “Marmion” he was projecting a rival quarterly, and the following letter to Canning, first printed in “Barrow’s Autobiography,” shows that Murray is entitled to the whole credit of the new scheme.

“September 25th, 1807.

“Sir,—I venture to address you upon a subject that is perhaps not undeserving of one moment of your attention.

“There is a work entitled the Edinburgh Review, written with such unquestionable talent that it has already attained an extent of circulation not equalled by any similar publication. The principles of this work are, however, so radically bad, that I have been led to consider the effect which such sentiments, so generally diffused, are likely to produce, and to think that some means equally popular ought to be adopted to counteract their dangerous tendency. But the publication in question is conducted with so much ability, and is sanctioned and circulated with such high and decisive authority by the party of whose opinions it is the organ, that there is little hope of producing against it any effectual opposition, unless it arise from you, sir, and from your friends. Should you, sir, think the idea worthy of encouragement I should, with equal pride and willingness, engage my arduous exertions to promote its success; but as my object is nothing short of producing a work of the greatest talent and importance, I shall entertain it no longer, if it be not so fortunate as to obtain the high patronage which I have thus, sir, taken the liberty to solicit.

“Permit me to add, sir, that the person who thus addresses you is no adventurer, but a man of some property, including a business that has been established for nearly half a century. I therefore trust that my application will be attributed to its proper motives, and that your goodness will at least pardon its intrusion.

“I have the honour to be, Sir, &c., &c.,
“John Murray.”

Canning read the letter, and though for the present it was put away in his desk unanswered, the contents were not forgotten, for a few years before this he had heard Murray’s name mentioned in a very honourable way. Some Etonians, among them Canning’s nephew, had started a periodical called the Miniature, which brought them some fame, but left them under a pecuniary loss. Murray, with his usual good nature, and with something of the tact which afterwards made him so many powerful friends, took all copies off their hands, paid all their expenses, and though he found little demand for the work, offered to print a new edition. This was a trait of character that, with a clear-headed, far-seeing man like Canning, would probably go far. As yet, however, the Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs, though he gave the matter careful consideration, did not care to commit himself upon paper.

Two months, however, before this letter Scott and Southey had been corresponding about the Edinburgh Review, Southey stating that he felt himself unable to contribute to a periodical of such political views, and Scott heartily agreeing in deprecating the general tone of the Review.

Early in 1808, a very severe article came out in the Review anent “Marmion.” Murray pricked up his ears, and, as he afterwards told Lockhart, “When I read the article on ‘Marmion,’ and another on general politics in the same number of the Review I said to myself, ‘Walter Scott has feelings both as a gentleman and as a Tory, which those people must now have wounded. The alliance between him and the whole clique of the Edinburgh Review, the proprietor included, is shaken,’” “and,” adds Lockhart, “as far at least as the political part of the affair was concerned, John Murray’s sagacity was not at fault.”

Murray saw that the right way to approach Scott was through the Ballantynes’ printing press, in which Scott at this time was a secret partner, and in which he always expressed openly the greatest interest. So urgent did Murray’s tenders of work become that a meeting at Ferrybridge, in Yorkshire, was arranged; and here Murray received from Ballantyne the gratifying news that Scott had quarrelled with Constable, and that it was resolved to establish a rival firm. Murray, who never wasted an opportunity from lack of decision, posted on to Ashestiel and had an interview with Scott himself, and the proposal of a new quarterly Tory periodical was eagerly snatched at. Strangely enough Murray arrived just as Scott, after reading an article on Spanish matters, had written to have his name erased from the list of subscribers to the Edinburgh. Murray was able to announce, too, that Gifford, the editor of the late Anti-Jacobin, had promised co-operation, and in a letter to Gifford we see Scott’s satisfaction clearly enough:—

“John Murray of Fleet Street, a young bookseller of capital and enterprize, and with more good sense and propriety of sentiment than fall to the share of most of the trade, made me a visit at Ashestiel a few weeks ago, and as I found he had had some communication with you on the subject, I did not hesitate to communicate my sentiments to him on these and some other points of the plan, and I thought his ideas were most liberal and satisfactory.”

Soon after Canning wrote to the Lord Advocate on the subject, and the Lord Advocate communicated with Scott, who recommended that in all things save politics the Edinburgh should be taken as a model, especially in the liberal payment of all contributors, and in the unfettered judgment of the editor. Gifford was unanimously fixed on as fitted for the editorial chair. That he possessed vigour was apparent from his success—a plough-boy, a sailor, a cobbler, then a classical scholar, the translator of “Juvenal,” the biting satirist of the “Baviad and Mæviad,” the brilliant editor of the Anti-Jacobin, who so well suited to out-rival Jeffrey?

All the talent available was secured. Scott came to town to be present at the birth of the expected prodigy, and well he might, for three of the articles in the first number were his own. Rose, and young Disraeli, and Hookham Frere, and Robert Southey—the future back-bone of the Review—were all represented, and on 1st February, 1809, the first number of the Quarterly Review was published. According to tradition there were high jinks at Murray’s shop in Fleet Street when the first numbers arrived from the binders; a triumphal column of the books “was raised aloft in solemn joy in the counting-house, the best wine in the cellar was uncorked, and glasses in hand John Murray and assistants danced jubilant round the pile.” The pile, however, did not long remain, as so many famous columns have done to mock the hope of its builders, but the whole issue was sold almost immediately, and a second edition was called for.

To the second number Canning himself contributed, and received his payment of ten guineas per sheet. Barrow, too, was introduced, who contributed, in all, no less than one hundred and ninety-five articles, “on every subject, from ‘China’ to ‘Life Assurance.’” After Barrow and Croker, Southey was, perhaps, the most prolific; to the first hundred and twenty-six numbers he contributed ninety-four articles—many of them of great permanent value—and to him Murray uniformly exhibited a generosity almost without parallel. For an article on the “Lives of Nelson,” he received twenty guineas a sheet, double what Southey himself acknowledged to be ample, and he was offered £100 to enlarge the article into a volume, and having exceeded the estimated quantity of print, Murray paid him double the amount stipulated, adding another 200 guineas when the book was revised for the “Family Library.” For the review of the “Life of Wellington,” Southey got £100, and he thought the sum so large that he himself calls it “a ridiculous price;” yet this ridiculous price he continued to receive, and he was in the habit of saying that he was as much overpaid for his articles by Murray, as he was underpaid for the rest of his work for other publishers. “Madoc,” of which he had great hopes, brought him £3 19s. 1d. for the first twelvemonth, and the three volumes of the “History of the Brazils,” scarcely paid their expenses of publication.

Of the other contributors it is unnecessary to speak fully here; but the Review, now that it was established, gave Murray at once a pre-eminence in the London trade, by bringing him into connection with the chief Conservative statesmen, and with the principal literary men in England.

The alliance that Murray had formed with the Ballantynes was soon dissolved, for Murray, though venturous enough, was a man of business, and their loose, slip-shod way of general dealings, did not at all satisfy his requirements. William Blackwood, then a dealer in antiquarian books, was chosen instead as Edinburgh agent, and, in conjunction with him, Murray purchased the first series of the “Tales of My Landlord.” This was in 1816, and some payments for Quarterly Review articles was well-nigh the last business communication between Scott and Murray.

Now that Murray had so completely rivalled Constable in one line—that of the Review—he wished to rival him in another. Constable had made an apparent fortune out of Scott’s poetry, in which Murray had in one case, to the extent of one quarter, participated. Scott had, it is true, left Constable, but was for the present unalienable from the Ballantynes, who at this moment enjoyed the dubious services of a London branch.

Looking round among the young and rising writers of the day, for one who was likely to enhance the fame and increase the wealth of his house, Murray mentally selected Lord Byron, then known, not only as the noble poetaster of the “Hours of Idleness,” but as the bitterest satirist who had dipped pen in gall since Pope had lashed the hack-writers of his time in the “Dunciad.” Murray made no secret of his wish to secure Byron as a client, and the rumour of this desire reached the ears of Mr. Dallas, the novelist, who happened at that very moment to be seeking a publisher for a new poem in two cantos, by his distant cousin and dear college chum, Lord Byron. Byron had just arrived from the East, bringing with him a satire, entitled “Hints from Horace,” of which he was not a little hopeful, and also, as he casually mentions, a “new attempt in the Spenserian stanza.” Dallas read the “new attempt,” and, enthralled by its beauty, forthwith undertook securing its publication. But, even in those days of venturous publishers and successful poems, the matter looked easier than it proved. Longman declined to publish a poem by a writer who had so recently lashed his own favourite authors. Miller, of Abermarle Street, a notable man in his day, and generous withal (had he not given the widow of the late Charles James Fox £1500 for her defunct husband’s historical fragments, and did he not eagerly snatch at one-fourth share of “Marmion?”) would have none of it, his noble patron, Lord Elgin, being abused in the very first canto. Dallas then appears to have heard a rumour of Murray’s willingness; the manuscript was taken to him, and £600 was offered, there and then, for the copyright. Byron was at that time unwilling to receive money for work done solely for love and fame; he had lately attacked Scott in a directly personal manner, as “Apollo’s venal son:”—

and generously made a present of the copyright to Dallas—a brother author, less gifted in purse and brain—and thus the bargain was concluded. This was the commencement of a friendship between author and publisher which has, perhaps, only one parallel in literary annals—that of Scott and Constable. From the letters between Byron and Murray we can discern clearly that the connection, tinged as it was with much generous feeling on both sides, was far from being of a purely commercial nature.

“Childe Harold,” for this, of course, is the poem referred to, was “put in hand” at once. Quartos were then in vogue for all books likely to attract attention, and Murray insisted that profit as well as portliness was to be found therein. Byron was for octavos and popularity; but as he said wofully at the end of one of his letters, “one must obey one’s bookseller.” During the progress of the printing, Byron would lounge into the shop in Fleet Street, fresh from Angelo’s and Jackson’s. “His great amusement,” says Murray, “was in making thrusts with his stick, in fencer’s fashion, at the ‘sprucebooks,’ as he called them, which I had arranged upon my shelves. He disordered a row for me in a short time, always hitting the volume he had singled out for the exercise of his skill. I was sometimes, as you will guess, glad to get rid of him.” As for correction, Byron was willing enough to defer at any time to Murray’s advice, upon all questions but politics, though only to a limited extent: “If you don’t like it, say so, and I’ll alter it, but don’t suggest anything instead.” In one letter we find a strange absence of a young writer’s anxiety anent the importance of typography. “The printer may place the notes in his own way, or in any way, so that they are out of my way.” In another: “You have looked at it? to much purpose, to allow so stupid a blunder to stand; it is not ‘courage,’ but ‘carnage,’ and if you don’t want to see me cut my own throat see it altered!” Again, but later, “If every syllable were a rattlesnake, or every letter a pestilence, they should not be expunged.” “I do believe the Devil never created or perverted such a fiend as the fool of a printer.” “For God’s sake,” he writes in another place, “instruct Mr. Murray not to allow his shopman to call the work ‘Child of Harrow’s Pilgrimage!!!’ as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might!” To John Murray we imagine Lord Byron must have appeared as much of a contradiction as he did to the world outside.

Byron was extremely anxious that no underhand means should be used to foster the success of “Childe Harold.” “Has Murray,” he writes to Dallas, “shown the work to any one? He may—but I will have no traps for applause.” On receipt of a rumour from Dallas, he indites a stormy letter to Murray, absolutely forbidding that Gifford should be allowed to look at the book before publication. Before the letter arrived, however, Gifford had expressed a very strong opinion, indeed, as to the merit of the poem, which he declared to “be equal to anything of the present day.” Byron wrote again to Murray, “as never publisher was written to before by author:”—“It is bad enough to be a scribbler, without having recourse to such shifts to escape from or deprecate censure. It is anticipating, begging, kneeling, adulating—the devil! the devil! the devil! and all without my wish, and contrary to my desire.”

In the early spring of 1812, “Childe Harold” was ready, and three days before its appearance, Byron made his maiden speech in the House of Lords; a speech which was received with attention and hailed with applause, from those whose applause was in itself fame. It is needless here to recapitulate the success of “Childe Harold,” how, on the day after publication, Lord Byron awoke, and, as he himself phrased it, found himself famous.

The publication of “Childe Harold,” was not the only important event of this year, 1812, to the subject of our memoir. In this same year, Murray purchased the stock-in-trade of worthy Mr. Miller, of 50, Albemarle Street, and migrated thither, leaving the old shop, east of Temple Bar, to be re-occupied by-and-by (in 1832) by the Highley family.

Here it was, at Albemarle Street, that Murray attained the highest pinnacle of fame on which ever publisher stood. His drawing-room, at four o’clock, became the favourite resort of all the talent in literature and in art that London then possessed, and there were giants in those days. There it was his “custom of an afternoon,” to gather together such men as Byron, Scott, Moore, Campbell, Southey, Gifford, Hallam, Lockhart, Washington Irving, and Mrs. Somerville; and, more than this, he invited such artists as Laurence, Wilkie, Phillips, Newton, and Pickersgill to meet them and to paint them, that they might hang for ever on his walls. Famous tales, too, are told of the “publisher’s dinners;” of tables surrounded as never any king’s table but that of the “Emperor of the West’s” had ever been. As Byron makes Murray say, in his mock epistle to Dr. Palidori—

Mr. Planché, in his recently-published “Recollections,” gives us an amusing account of one of these literary réunions; this time, however, at the house of Horace Twiss. Murray, James Smith, and others remained in the dining-room very late, and the party grew noisy and merry, for Hook was giving some of his wonderful extempore songs. Pressed for another, he declared that the subject should be “John Murray;” but the “Emperor of the West” objected most vehemently, and vainly chased Hook round the table in furtive endeavours to stop a recitative, of which Planché only remembers the beginning:—

Among the many instances of Murray’s munificence was the offer of £3000 to Crabbe for his “Tales of the Hall,” and the copyright of his prior works. Some zealous friends, however, thought this too small a sum, and opened negotiations with another firm, but the other firm offered considerably less; and Crabbe, fearing that Murray might consider the bargain as out of his hands entirely now, went straightway to Albemarle Street with Rogers and Moore as mediators. Murray, however, assured them that he had from the first considered the matter as entirely settled.

Lord Byron’s personal connection with the Albemarle Street clique was of comparatively short existence, for, in 1816, he left England for the last time; but to the time of his death he kept up a regular correspondence with Murray of the frankest and most cordial kind. Now, Murray hearing that Lord Byron was in difficulties, sends him a draft for £1500, promising another for the same amount in the course of a few months, and offering to sell the copyright of his works for his use, if that were not sufficient. Then, again, in a freak, Byron presents Murray with “Parisina” and the “Siege of Corinth,” and returns the cheque for £1000 which the publisher had forwarded.

“Your offer is liberal in the extreme, and much more than the two poems can possibly be worth; but I cannot accept it, nor will not. You are most welcome to them as an addition to the collected volumes, without any demand or expectation on my part whatever.

“P.S.—I have enclosed your draft, torn, for fear of accidents by the way. I wish you would not throw temptation in mine; it is not from a disdain of the universal idol, nor from a present superfluity of his treasures, I can assure you, that I refuse to worship him; but what is right is right, and must not yield to circumstances.”

The following is in a somewhat different tone:—

“You offer 1500 guineas for the new canto of (”Don Juan“). I won’t take it. I ask 2500 guineas for it, which you will either give or not, as you think proper. If Mr. Moore is to have 3000 for “Lalla,” &c., if Mr. Crabbe is to have 3000 for his prose or poetry, I ask the aforesaid price for mine.” (“Beppo” was eventually thrown into the bargain.) “You are an excellent fellow, mio caro Murray, but there is still a little leaven of Fleet Street about you now and then—a crumb of the old loaf.... I have a great respect for your good and gentlemanly qualities, and return your friendship towards me; and although I think you are a little spoiled by ‘villanous company,’ with persons of honour about town, authors, and fashionables, together with your ‘I am just going to call at Carlton House, are you walking that way?’—I say, notwithstanding ‘pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses,’ you deserve the esteem of those whose esteem is worth having.”

Now, like a spoiled child, Byron wishes back all his copyrights, and intends to suppress all that he has ever written, and Murray has to chide him and coax him, with much disinterestedness, urging him to labour steadily for a few years upon some work worthy of his talents, and fit to be a true monument of his fame.

Some of Byron’s letters are in an earnest, many in a playful, mood, most in prose, but sometimes the poet breaks into a charming doggerel of delicious “chaff.” Here is one specimen:—

“TO MR. MURRAY.

There was no end to Byron’s wit and playfulness. Sometimes Murray would act as a mentor and adviser in more serious matters, but his advice would be pleasantly turned off with a jest. At the time when Byron was most calumniated, when there were cruel stories afloat about the life he led and the opinions he held (though none so cruel as have since been promulgated by a well-known American authoress), Murray’s soul was comforted by the present of a Bible—a gift from the illustrious poet. “Could this man,” he asked, “be a deist, an atheist, or worse, when he sent Bibles about to his publishers?” Turning it over in wonderment, however, some inquisitive member of his four-o’clock clique found a marginal correction—“Now Barabbas was a robber,” altered into “Now Barabbas was a publisher.” A cruel stab, a “palpable hit,” maybe, at some publishers, but, as regards Murray, an uproarious joke to be gleefully repeated to every comer. As a refutation of this playful libel, and as the clearest and most succinct way of showing what amounts of money Byron really did receive, we append the following account:—

Murray’s kindness to Byron may be said to have displayed itself even after his death. In 1821, Byron had given his friend Moore his autobiography, partly as a means of justifying his character, partly to enrich his friend. Moore, pressed as usual for money, made over the MS. to Murray for the sum of 2000 guineas, undertaking to edit it in case of survivorship. He subsequently intended to modify the transaction by a clause to be inserted in the deed, by which he, Moore, should have the option of redeeming it within three months after Byron’s death. When Byron did die, in 1824, the MS. was given to Gifford to read, and found to be far too gross for publication, and, spite of Moore’s wish to modify it, Sir John Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh insisted upon its being destroyed. Murray offered to give it up upon repayment of the 2000 guineas; and after an unpleasant scene in Murray’s shop, the MS. was destroyed by Wilmot Horton and Colonel Doyle, with the full consent of Moore, who repaid Murray the sum advanced by a draft on Rogers.

No sooner had it been burnt than it was found that, through the want of the clause above named, Moore’s interest in the MS. had entirely ceased at Byron’s death; and though Moore, nobly and firmly, refused to receive the money back from Byron’s friends, he chose to consider for a time that Murray had wronged him.

He took a proposal to Longman of a “Life of Byron,” and the matter was partially arranged, when Moore, urged on both by his feelings and his friends, seeing Murray in the street, started after him. “Mr. Murray, some friends of yours and mine seem to think that we should no longer continue on these terms. I therefore proffer you my hand, and most heartily forgive and forget all that has passed.” Murray’s face brightened into smiles, and on parting he said, “God bless you, sir, God bless you!” Longman agreed, upon this, that Murray was the publisher to whom a life of Byron most properly belonged, and Murray eventually gave £4200 for one of the most delightful and entertaining biographies in our literature—a companion volume, in every way, to Boswell’s “Johnson” and Lockhart’s “Scott.” Murray, in this transaction, seems to have behaved with generous firmness. Now that Byron was dead, the autobiography would certainly have proved the most remunerative of all his works; and Moore himself, in his Diary, ultimately confessed that “Murray’s conduct” had been admirable throughout.

In this year, 1824, not only did Murray lose the services and the friendship of his best client, Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi on the 19th of April, but Gifford, the able editor of the Quarterly, was incapacitated for further work, and resigned his post. Mr. John Coleridge, then a young barrister, succeeded, but though accomplished, clever, and able, he was “scarcely strong enough for the place;” Southey found out his incapacity for saying “no,” and under his auspicious reign began to make the Review a quarterly issue of his own miscellaneous works. Strangely enough in the mourning coach that followed Gifford to his grave Murray drove with the man who was destined as an editor to rival the powers of the upbuilder of the Quarterly’s reputation—this of course was John Gibson Lockhart, a young Edinburgh advocate, the son-in-law of Scott, and more than that, the author of “Peter’s Letters,” of “Valerius,” of “Reginald Dalton,” the translator of “Frederick Schlegel,” and the “Ancient Spanish Ballads,” and the noted contributor to Blackwood. Moore first heard of the arrangement down at Abbotsford, when Scott, after dinner, hopeful of his daughter’s interests, and proud, may be, of his son-in-law, grew confidential. “Lockhart was about to undertake the Quarterly, has agreed for five years; salary £1200 a year, and if he writes a certain number of articles it will be £1500 a year.” In this year, though the prospects of the Quarterly were ably secured, Murray met with the only really adverse turn of fortune, to which through a long career, and a bold one, he was ever subject. The terrible commercial crisis which had been so long overhanging, burst at last into a deluge of ruin—Constable’s house was swept away, the Ballantynes were for the moment overthrown, and Scott had to give up his lordly estates of Abbotsford, and generously work his life out to redeem a name on which he deemed a commercial slur had been cast. Murray, though he suffered by the panic, as all must suffer in the time of a general epidemic, was not severely hurt. Still, looking back now with the wisdom of wiseacres, who think we could have prophesied easily the actual events that did occur, the time does seem a strange one in which to start a new venture. This was nothing less than the establishment of a new Conservative journal, which was to rival the Times as the Quarterly rivalled the Edinburgh. According to the current rumour, it was young Disraeli (now the wily and veteran leader of the Conservative party) who first proposed the scheme; and, according to current rumour still, it was under his editorship, and with Dr. Maginn as chief foreign correspondent, that the Representative (price sevenpence daily) was started on the 26th of January, 1826. The journal was able, well-informed, and well-written, but the Times had a monopoly, and the Conservative party were not strong enough to support a first-rate organ of their own, and after a brief existence of six months, the Representative gave up the struggle. Murray was wont in future days, when rash young speculators urged the necessity of embracing some opening for a new daily paper, to point to a ledger on his book-shelves and say grimly, “Twenty thousand pounds lie buried there!”

The question as to who was the actual editor of the Representative has never been definitely settled. Mr. Disraeli, until the last year, never disclaimed the supposed connection, and silence was considered as proverbially affirmative. Lockhart, too, has been put forward as a claimant. The nearest approach to any opinion that might have been final was given by the late James Hannay in the pages of the Edinburgh Courant. “We had the best authority for what we said—nay, the only authority—since even to Mr. Murray the question of the Representative’s editorship is not a personal one. We now add that Mr. Disraeli’s long silence in the matter admits of an explanation which will gratify his admirers of all parties. He hesitated to come forward with any eagerness to make a denial, which might have been interpreted as springing from a wish to disclaim newspaper association, but when the story was passing into literature in such a book as the biography of an eminent British writer, it was time to protest against any further propagation of the story, once and for all.” But this “best and only authority” did nothing to render the question less intricate, for when Mr. Grant published the first instalment of his “History of the Newspaper Press,” he thoroughly outdid Hannay, and with that ingenuous facility of arbitrating over moot points, and that mysterious power of catching rumours, as boys catch moths, and pinning them down in his collection under the general label of “facts,” gave full details of Mr. Disraeli’s connection with the Representative, the amount of his salary, together with a luxurious description of the splendours of his editorial offices! Mr. Disraeli roused at last, replied curtly that the whole narrative was entirely imaginary, and utterly devoid of fact or foundation in any one point. He has since then in a letter, upon a similar question, written by his solicitor to the Leisure Hour, declared that:—

“Mr. Disraeli never in his life required or received any remuneration for anything he ever wrote, except for books bearing his name.

“Mr. Disraeli never was editor of the Star Chamber, or any other newspaper, journal, review, or magazine, or anything else.”

To return, however, to legitimate book-publishing. About this time Campbell’s old scheme of “Biographies of the Poets” was revived, re-appearing under the title of “Specimens of the British Poets;” and Murray was so pleased with the work that he made the stipulated sum of £500 into double that amount. To Allen Cunningham, too, he gave £50 per volume additional for his “Lives of the British Artists,” and made the payment retrospective.

We could repeat five hundred anecdotes of his liberal and kindly generosity, but our space only permits us to record another, which it is very pleasant to read about.

It was twenty-two years since the obscure Fleet Street bookseller had embraced the “glorious and profitable” opportunity of taking a fourth share in “Marmion,” and since then Sir Walter Scott had achieved an unparalleled position in the world of English letters, had written innumerable works, and had earned unheard-of sums—and had been completely ruined. With the aid of his creditors, Scott was now seeking to recover all his copyrights for a final edition of his collected works. All had been bought back save this fourth share of “Marmion.” Lockhart was commissioned by his father-in-law to inquire on what terms the share might be re-purchased, and this was Murray’s immediate reply:—

“Albemarle Street, June 8th, 1829.

“My dear Sir,—Mr. Lockhart has this moment communicated your letter respecting my fourth share of the copyright of ‘Marmion.’ I have already been applied to by Messrs. Constable and Messrs. Longman to know what sum I would sell this share for; but so highly do I estimate the honour of being, even in so small a degree, the publisher of the author of this poem, that no pecuniary consideration whatever can induce me to part with it.

“But there is a consideration of another kind, which until now I was not aware of, which would make it painful to me if I were to retain it longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required by the author, into whose hands it was spontaneously resigned in the same instant that I read his request.

“The share has been profitable to me fifty-fold beyond what either publisher or author could have anticipated, and, therefore, my returning it on such an occasion, you will, I trust, do me the favour to consider in no other light than as a mere act of grateful acknowledgment, for benefits already received by

“My dear Sir,
“Your obliged and faithful Servant,
“John Murray.”

This noble act, we must remember, was performed at a time when the future was anything but bright, or at all events when the present was dismally gloomy. “Lydia Whyte,” writes Tom Moore, “told me that Murray was very unsuccessful of late. Besides the failure of his Representative, the Quarterly did not look very promising, and he was about to give up the fine house he had taken in Whitehall, and return to live in Albemarle-street.”

Constable had, some years previous, hit upon the idea of appealing to a public that should be numbered, not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands, ay, and by millions! and had just commenced his “Miscellany.” Murray, quick to receive a good idea, started at once into competition with his “Family Library,” Lockhart commencing the series with a “Life of Napoleon” and the “Court and Camp of Bonaparte.” Cunningham followed with his “Lives of the British Painters,” and Southey revised his “Life of Nelson,” and expanded another review article into a “Life of Wellington,” on terms equally munificent with the other.

Cheap editions of Byron were multiplied by the score; Landor received a thousand guineas for his “Journals of African Travel,” and Napier another thousand for his first volume of the “History of the Peninsular War.” If Murray neglected opportunities, he generally managed to retrieve them. He might have had the “Bridgewater Treatises;” and he says, “The ‘Rejected Addresses’ were offered me for ten pounds, and I let them go by as the kite of the moment. See the result! I was determined to pay for my neglect, and I bought the remainder of the copyright for 150 guineas.” Murray might have added that he generously gave the Smiths a handsome share in the ultimate profits.

Sometimes, too, he had the sagacity to buy the failures as well as the successes of other publishers. Constable produced a little “History of England,” in one small volume, which fell still-born from the press. Murray purchased it for a trifle, re-christened it with his usual happiness, and as “Mrs. Markham’s History of England” the work has been an annual source of revenue to the house, as the present Mr. Murray’s last trade sale list would tell us.

Murray was never dazzled by the fame of his Byrons, his Moores, his Campbells, and his Crabbes, but always recollected that “taste” is flitting, while works that only aid the necessities of mankind are always saleable. The “Army and Navy List” and the “Nautical Almanack” are every whit as profitable to-day as in the first year of their publication. Moore tells a story that shows he could still occupy his mind as well as fill his purse with “Mrs. Rundell’s Cookery Book.” “Called at Murray’s,” he writes in his “Diary,” for 1831: “mentioned to him Lady Morgan’s wish to contribute something to his ‘Family Library,’ and that she has materials ready for the lives of five or six Dutch painters. ‘Pray, isn’t Lady Morgan a very good cook?’ I answered I didn’t know; but why did he ask? ‘Because,’ said he, ‘if she would do something in that line—’ ‘Why, you don’t mean,’ said I, ‘that she should write a cookery book for you?’ ‘No,’ answered John, coolly, ‘not so much as that; but that she should re-edit mine’ (Mrs. Rundell’s, by which he had made heaps of money). Oh, that she could have heard this with her own ears! Here ended my negotiations for her Ladyship.”

It was not merely to Englishmen that Murray extended a helping and a generous hand. When the first volume of the “Sketch Book,” originally published in America, made its appearance in London, it was declined by Murray, and Irving was about to publish it on his own account; but after all arrangements had been made the printer failed. Lockhart had praised the book in Blackwood; and Scott, seeing at once its sterling worth, with his usual kindliness, pressed its merits upon Murray, who gave Irving £200 for it, afterwards more than doubling the amount. Murray’s transactions with Irving exhibit a singular phase of the international copyright law. This is how their account stands—

These sums of money having been paid, Mr. Bohn reprinted the volumes in a cheap edition. A law suit was of course the result, in which Murray’s expenses ran up to £850, and Mr. Bohn’s were probably as heavy. The question, however, was settled amicably, without being fought to the bitter end, and Irving received no more money from this side the Atlantic.

Most of the famous men with whom Murray had been connected had by this time disappeared, many of them having shed their rays meteor-like, and having done the duty unto which they were created in a momentary flash. The seething excitement called into being by the throes of the first French Revolution had subsided, and there were neither readers left to appreciate true poetry, nor true poets remaining, with strength of voice left in them to bring back memories in passion-laden melodies of the troublous times they sprung from. All, on the contrary, was quiet and easeful—a happy time for commerce, but a barren hour for art.

Murray, skilled as any pilot in watching the direction of the wind, turned his attention to the publication of travels and expeditions—the very books for a fireside afternoon, when the wind is howling outside, and the snow-storm beating on the windows—and very soon Albemarle Street was as famous for its “Travels” as it had previously been for its “Belles-Lettres.” Among the most valuable and successful of these were the expeditions of Mungo Park, Belzoni, Parry, Franklin, Denham, and Clapperton.

Murray had just launched his “Classical Handbooks,” under the editorship of his son—had just made, in trade parlance, “another great hit” in Lady Sale’s “Journal in Afghanistan”—when an attack of general debility and exhaustion compelled him to leave business and success alone—and for ever. He rallied so often that no serious results were anticipated by his family or physician; but after a very short illness he died suddenly on the 27th June, 1843, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, leaving three daughters and one only son. To his widow, in a will dated only seven days before his death, he bequeathed the whole of his estate.

A gentleman by manners and education; generous and open-handed, not for purposes of display, often not from mere trade motives, but from a true desire to return to genius and industry something of what he derived from them; an excellent man of business, with more powers of work than most men, understanding better than any how to measure the calibre of an author’s genius, and to gauge the duration of his popularity; skilful in timing a publication, so as to ensure a favourable reception, and yet honestly abhorring any recourse to the low art of puffing—such was John Murray as a publisher; the best representative of an honourable calling, and one who by his own influence tended not a little to make the years of his own working life the best representative period of English literature.

Mr. John Murray, who succeeded at once to his father’s business, was born in the year 1808, and was consequently, in 1843, admirably fitted, by years and professional training, to take the management of so important a concern. He was educated at the Charterhouse and at Edinburgh University, and had had, moreover, all the advantages that foreign travel could bestow. As early as 1831, we hear of “Mr. John Murray, Jun.,” at Weimar, presenting Goethe with the dedication of Byron’s “Marino Faliero,” and being received, together with that mocking and yet reverent tribute, in a gracious, kindly manner.

Mr. Murray thoroughly followed his father’s idea, that the age had now come for the cheap publication of useful and practical books, and in the first year of his accession, issued the prospectus of his “Home and Colonial Library,” which, being published at half the price of the “Family Library,” was at least twice as successful, and was continued for upwards of six years. During these early years Mr. Murray made one mistake, and achieved one great success. The mistake was, however, in common with every publisher in London, for “Eöthen” went the rounds of the metropolitan book market, and was eventually published by a personal friend of Mr. Kinglake’s. Mindful of his father’s precedents, Murray soon secured the copyright. The success, on the contrary, consisted in accepting what other publishers had refused, and issued from Albemarle Street, Campbell’s “Lives of the Lord Chancellors” has proved one of the most successful biographical works of the time. In travel, biography, history, and science, the present Mr. Murray has fully sustained the name of the old house, and it is sufficient here to mention only the names of Hallam, Barrow, Wilkinson, Lyell, Gordon Cumming, Layard, Murchison, and Sir Robert Peel, to see how much we owe him.

On Lockhart’s death, in 1854, the Reverend Whitwell Elwin was selected to fill the editorial chair of the Quarterly, and since that date the political opinions of the periodical have been considerably modified; at any rate, men of all parties have been allowed to write conscientiously in its pages, and it is even rumoured, that before this, its old opponent, Lord Brougham, contributed at least one article (that on Chesterfield, in vol. lxxvi.).

Among the most successful library books that Mr. Murray has recently published, we must instance those by Mr. Smiles and Dr. Livingstone, and, more especially, those by Mr. Darwin.

Mr. Murray’s name is, however, most familiar to us now as the publisher of the famous Handbooks for travellers, the series now extending, not only through the outer world, but embracing our English counties; these latter, it is said, owing much to Mr. Murray’s personal editorship.

In closing our short sketch of the “House of Murray,” we cannot refrain from re-echoing a wish that has been often uttered before, that the present representative may find time amidst his professional labours, to edit the letters and to write a worthy life of the great John Murray. No book that has ever been issued from Albemarle Street could be more popular or more welcome.