Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/200

166 166 JOHN MURRAY. 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 Edin- burgh, 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 care- lessness 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 execu- tors 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 partner- ship 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,