Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/194

160 l6o JOHN MURRAY. 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 pro- moted 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 :