Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/219

183 JOHN MURRA Y. 1 83 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 1 500 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 doggrel of delicious " chaff." Here is one specimen ;