Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/203

167 JOHN MURRAY. 167 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, com- plaining 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 connec- tion in a pleasant and friendly manner. By the formal deed of separation, dated 25th March, 1803,