-

And this is perhaps the proper place to notice his concern in the foundation of the Quarterly Review.

Along with that review, Mr. Murray seems to have rather hardened in his Toryism with the lapse of years; but it was, in its inception, a literary undertaking. It followed the Edinburgh, founded in 1802, which has the honor of originality, and with which Murray came to be con nected, as part agent, and then as sole agent in London, about three years later. First in the field, "it appeared at the right time, and, as the first quarterly organ of the higher criticism, evidently hit the mark at which it aimed."*

work. It was in the case of the poet Cole- | strown, bear witness to his real literary ridge. This extraordinary man, though capacity. not in the full enjoyment of his fame, had at the time of the transaction executed his great translation of "Wallenstein," which has all the character of an original, and which some, it is believed, have preferred to the work of Schiller himself. In 1814 it was proposed to Coleridge that he should translate "Faust." But the price offered him by Mr. Murray for the translation, together with a preliminary analysis, was no more than £100, payable within two months after the work should have been placed complete in the hands of the publisher.† The explanation of what seems a marked deviation from his ordinary scale may have lain in his suspicions of Coleridge as a man of business, and in a consequent lukewarmness as to the formation of any relations with him. Poor Coleridge, probably under pressure of circumstances, sent what was meant to be an acceptance of the terms. But, very unfortunately, the matter did not proceed, and the world lost in this instance what is in literature a rare and very interesting phenomenon, the rendering by a great poet, in a tongue foreign to the original, of the thoughts of a poet greater still.

Mr. Murray exhibited his self-reliance and decision of character, when his years were still few, and his resources slender, by his peremptory dissolution of partnership with Mr. Highley, a sort of inherited partner whom he felt to be an incumbrance. His proposal, he says, he knows to be a fair one, and "I declare it to be the last with which I intend to trouble you." These qualities marked his whole career; and were shown in the promptitude of his offers, in his disposition to constant multiplication of engagements, and in the large share of work properly literary which he habitually took upon himself. He did not follow the practice common among publishers of employing a salaried reader, but obtained pro re nata the friendly aid of eminent men, who valued their relations with him, and gladly lent it. His private judgment could not but be considerably exercised in the choice of this or that adviser as occasion arose, and it has been seen that he withheld from them any servile deference, even to the increase of his own costs and charges. From their letters it is evident that they respected his judg. ment, and those letters of his, with which the volumes are thickly, but not too thickly

Memoirs, vol. i., p. 300.

† Vol. i., p. 297.

Vol. i., p. 31.

Differences with the Edinburgh publisher soon arose, we are told, out of his practice of drawing accommodation bills, that is to say bills not represented by values. Accordingly, before 1808 had expired, the agency was withdrawn from Mr. Murray. He was then left free to prosecute a plan for the establishment of a review in the southern capital, anticipated in this matter by the northern.

This plan seems to have been eminently and exclusively his own. The inception of the Quarterly was a matter far more arduous and complicated than had been that of the Edinburgh. In the case of the elder sister, a body of distinguished men appear to have framed their own literary scheme, and then to have found a publisher ready to undertake its mercantile counterpart, each party having its own province, and its own responsibility. There was not, in the case of the Quar terly, any such compact combination of writers, formed beforeband under an edi. torial head. The editor was appointed, the writers one by one attracted, the literary arrangements constantly considered, by Mr. Murray, who is evidently and exclusively entitled to the honors of a founder. Next to him comes Sir Walter Scott; and in the third place stands Gif ford, whose office in docking, trimming, adapting, and almost rewriting articles ap pears to have been one of great labor and anxiety, peremptorily and strongly, but ably and conscientiously performed. Although the Review had the aid of Scott from the first, although Southey, Croker, and other notable men came in, although it enjoyed in a few cases the brilliant superintendence of Canning, yet the want of a regular staff, and of undivided re

Memoirs, vol. i., p. 91.

sponsibilities, resulted during the early years of the Review, from 1809 to 1817 or near it, in an unfavorable balance-sheet. But neither difficulty nor loss exhausted the courage, persistence, and assiduity of the publisher. It was rewarded after a costly and toilsome apprenticeship, by a career of marked and enduring success. Under the powerful direction of Gifford, and, after a short interval, of Lockhart, it equalled or surpassed the large circulation of some twelve thousand copies, to which the northern rival had more rapidly attained. It became in the hands of its publisher, an estate; and no estate was ever more honorably acquired by integrity, discernment, and munificent appreciation of literary service. Even when each number was a loss, every article supplied by the pen of Southey was paid for at the rate of a hundred pounds.

thirty years; but this was the year 1825, the year of "Prosperity Robinson," the year of dupes and dreams. It was also the time when Mr. Canning "called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the old." If Mr. Canning, when he made the boast, was perhaps a little influenced by the intoxication of the time, we may be the less surprised that its fumes found their way into the wellchambered brain of Mr. Murray. Then it is to be borne in mind that Disraeli the elder was a close personal friend, and was one of the advisers employed about the Quarterly. Intimacy had long been established between the families. But, after every allowance, our amazement can be but little abated when we contemplate the fascination exercised by the young magician. Nor was the publisher the only captive. Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, who had Mr. Murray had indeed something like already communicated with a financing a passion for periodical literature. He house in the city, and obtained the adherepeatedly entertained the idea of widen- sion of a certain Powles (afterwards shown, ing the market for this class of supplies in Carlyle's phrase, to be a windbag), twice by the establishment of a magazine of undertook a journey to Scotland. He was smaller price and more frequent appear- confident in the solidity of the arguments ance than those of the Quarterly. This he had to use. Lockhart, he writes,* propensity reached its climax at the junc-"must see that, through Powles, all Amerture when he undertook to face singlehanded, in addition to all his other engagements, the immense labor and responsibility of a daily newspaper.

ica and the commercial interest is at our beck," and that he is to be "the directorgeneral of an immense organ, and at the head of a band of high-bred gentlemen, There is not to be found a more curious and of important interests." Mr. Isaac or attractive chapter in the biography be- comments on the letters of his son. fore us, than that which recounts the ori-"His views are vast, but they are founded gin, foundation, and catastrophe of the on good sense." "Never did the finest Representative, that having been the title season of blossoms promise a richer gathof the ill-omened and all but ruinous jour-ering." The youth reported that though nal. It can, I think, hardly be denied that Lockhart eventually declined any per in this matter Mr. Murray conspicuously sonal share in the undertaking, yet both lost the balance of his judgment. It can he and Sir Walter Scott viewed it with not be considered prudent for a great approval. Seeking to win a correspondent publisher to found, own, and manage a in Germany, he represented § that- - the daily newspaper. For in the deed or paper would surely become "the focus of memorandum of partnership* we read, the information of the whole world." The "the paper to be published by, and to be phrase carries internal evidence of its under the management of, Mr. Murray." originality. But it is borrowed, in a letter He had already been partner with Mr. to another foreign gentleman, by the great Croker in the Guardian newspaper, pub-publisher himself. "I wish to make this lished at Windsor, and it had failed. He was led into the adoption of this larger scheme, says Dr. Smiles, through the influence of Mr. Benjamin Disraeli.t Does the history of commerce, or of letters, offer to us a more curious picture than that of the sagacious veteran of the book trade, drawn into a wild and impossible undertaking by the eloquence of a youth of twenty? He had been at his work for

* Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 186.

+ P. 182.

journal the focus of the whole world." A costly plagiarism! Mr. Murray, by the agreement, was to supply half the capital, Mr. Powles and Mr. Benjamin Disraeli were to furnish one quarter each. At last the Representative came to the birth. After a hard fight for existence, it succumbed. The financial history will be

Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 191.
† Pp. 193-5.
+ P. 191.
§ Pp. 202-3.

best read in the narrative of Dr. Smiles.* | Controversy arose upon Lockhart's treat Suffice it to say that the chapter containing it is one of those in which fact beats fiction; and that Mr. Murray lost £26,000 by the ill-starred adventure.

An impartial reader will, I think, conclude from the perusal, that Mr. Murray's miscarriage was by no means due to mere pecuniary greed; that a spirit of enter prise, true though pushed into exaggera tion, had more to do with it; and that strong personal sympathy, perhaps even affection, was a main factor in the undertak. ing. He comes out of it smaller, perhaps, as a calculator, but more than ever a man. And it is in truth the strong and genuinely human element, marking and following the whole course of his career, which height ened its interest, but from time to time endangered its success; and which has impressed much of the stamp of chivalry on a trading career.

ment of Constable in his great biography. However, in a letter of the year 1827, Lockhart says * all literary men know the debt they owe to him personally "for hav. ing thrown so much of new life and vigor into the conduct of the profession." And he seems to be entitled to some share of the praise which has been earned by Murray on a larger scale, and through a surer sagacity, and a closer adherence to sound principles of business.

In the grand enterprise of cheapening literature, and making it accessible to the public at large, Mr. Murray, Mr. Charles Knight, and Mr. Constable had their respective shares.† The "Family Library and "The Library of Entertaining Knowledge" began in 1829. But Constable had been beforehand with them, and had brought out his "Miscellany" in the beginning of 1827.‡ Mr. Murray had long been pondering his own scheme, which he at length brought into beneficial operation. And it seems no improbable conjecture that this delay was owing to the pre-occupation, first of his mind by the fascinations of the Representative, and then of his resources by the disastrous liquidation.

Many of the side-lights of this biography open subjects of great interest; for instance, the origin and character of Gifford. But there is one of them which cannot be passed by, by reason of its probable bearing on Mr. Murray's commercial education. Constable, whose large and enterprising business came to a disastrous I must not close these remarks without end in 1826, and made place for that great referring to the literary court of Mr. Murepic presented to us in the heroic close of ray.§ His hospitality was large and conthe life of Scott, was, if not the tutor, yet stant. It was not confined to authors of certainly the foreshadower of Murray. He standing and repute, for I myself, without had something of the same boldness of the smallest pretension to such a charac conception, and largeness of liberality ter, shared it half a century ago. His towards authors; with the disadvantage of drawing-room, open from day to day, bad a less central position, and a narrower the attractions of a most refined literary market at his doors. Their relations were club, minus the subscription. His relaclose for a considerable time, and their tions with the distinguished circle did not sentiments of reciprocal regard were merely represent what Carlyle calls "the warm. The tie was weakened by Mur-cash-nexus between man and man." The ray's distrust of his friend's finance, which company which so freely went in and out he thought dangerously mixed up with had no limit of nationality, and was of no reliance on accommodation bills. In 1807 sect in politics or letters. In another dethe junior entered on a course of remon- velopment of his munificent spirit, he strance with the senior trader. But the coveted and contrived the formation of a bond between them was not then broken, gallery of portraits. The hand of Lawand Mr. Murray most warmly acknowl- rence was to be traced there; and, when edges the value of pecuniary support he had not long passed the middle of received from him in 1810,† when his his career, it already included Byron, own resources may have been seriously Scott, Coleridge, Southey, Moore, Gifford, strained by the heavy charges attending the first establishment of the Quarterly Review. This is related in the memoir of Constable by his son; a work which is unduly swollen with much padding, but which contains no small amount of valuable information, and forms a portion of what may be called the Scott literature. * Memoirs, vol. ii., chap. xxvi. † Archibald Constable, vol. i., p. 384.

Croker, Barrow, Hallam, Irving, Campbell,
Lockhart, Crabbe, among men of letters,
besides the chief voyagers to the North
Pole and to Africa.||

The scope of human life is indeed wide,

Archibald Constable, vol. iii., p. 439.

† Memoirs, vol. ii.. pp. 295-6.
Archibald Constable, chap. vii., p. 440.
Vol. ii., p. 83.

Vol. ii., p. 317.

and its aspects multitudinous. On some, | signature, in fragmentary moods of grief
and the very highest, of them, I have not or jesting, of anger, or hate, or love-
presumed to touch. But Murray raised moods deep and light, serious and volatile,
the tone of his profession; and every man where are found records of tears long for-
who does that, is among the benefactors gotten by the mourner; of wrongs un-
of his race.
I have therefore sought to righted, forgotten by their champions; of
mark the work as a literary life which is jests from which the laughter has faded,
entitled to the rare and solid distinction and anecdotes robbed by time of their
of a permanent place in the history of point, or, it may often be more accurately
letters. My own title so to mark it is to described, of their edge.
be found simply in the fact that, though
two distinguished ladies * still survive,
one of whom preceded me, I am the only
man now living, who has had Mr. Murray,
second of his race, for his publisher. His
saltem accumulem donis. And may that
race long continue.

Mrs. Butler and Lady Eastlake.

From Longman's Magazine.
ON AUTOGRAPHS.
I.

GRAY has written his elegy. He has
commemorated the memento mori in the
country churchyard of those who have
gone over to the majority," as men put
it, with the presumptuous numerical spec-
ulation which ignores the possibilities of
a present and a future, of whose limit of
life no man holds the measuring line.
But it remains for some poet, perhaps un-
born, to write a new elegy, and in the light
of his inspiration to interpret the pathos
and the humor and the irony of those other
mementoes, of the great, or at least of the
notorious, which lie collected in those
literary cemeteries in which the autograph
collector buries his possessions or adver-
tises his spoils.

It is true that the squalid and rapacious character which too often belongs to the collectors of such memorials has obscured the picturesque aspect of his chase, and that the lists of "autograph letters" for sale have intruded ideas into our minds which have desecrated the resting-places of these relics, faded or fresh, and have transformed them into precincts where anatomists drive their bargains for skeletons and physiologists select subjects for dissection not infrequently for vivisec

tion.

But, however that may be, the fact nevertheless remains that, to those who look below, a great part of the strange humor of life's relations is epitomized in these motley assortments, where the dramatis persona are represented, each by his own

Take, for example, the collection of manuscript letters, rather than autographs, which lie before us. They are, it is true, bound together by one link, and possess one characteristic in common; for, with comparatively few exceptions, they are addressed to a single correspondent, and the reflection of his personality lies mirrored, in varying degrees of strength, across the whole collection. It is the transitory principle of cohesion which unites for the time elements so various, sometimes so antagonistic- the rallyingpoint round which the assemblage gathers. For a moment they meet, like the personages represented at a fancy ball; then the kaleidoscope is shaken; its broken splinters of color separate to unite again in fresh patterns; the crimson triangle detaches itself from the blue star to join the yellow octagon, and the green square mingles with what once formed the crystallized design of a radiating diamond.

It is a heterogeneous procession that passes us by in irregular order, or, more properly speaking, in no order at all, except that of the alphabet. No precedence is here given, none demanded; the living and the dead, the old and the young, the comparatively insignificant and the illus trious, men and women, mingle together in the crowd, whilst the memorials of each are as various in their nature and character as those they represent. Here and there we meet with a letter important enough in subject and treatment to claim attention on its own merits, independently of the name which stands below it, whilst as frequently it is the personality of the writer alone which lends an interest to the triv ialities he registers. Nothing is added by these last to the sum of human knowledge or wisdom, they were never intended for publication, would be out of place in any serious collection of letters, and would never, as the phrase goes, be included in a man's "remains ;" and yet this driftwood of literature possesses a value altogether its own. In the more serious achievements of the literary artist he leaves behind him a monument in which we see him as philosopher, poet, scientist - what