Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/226

190 190 JOHN MURRA Y. tated to come forward with any eagerness to make a denial, which might have been interpreted as spring- ing from a wish to disclaim newspaper association, but when the story was passing into literature in such a book as the biography of an eminent British writer, it was time to protest against any further propagation of the story, once and for all." But this "best and only autho- rity " did nothing to render the question less intricate, for when Mr. Grant published the first instalment of his " History of the Newspaper Press," he thoroughly outdid Hannay, and with that ingenuous facility of arbitrating over moot points, and that mysterious power of catching rumours, as boys catch moths, and pinning them down in his collection under the general label of " facts," gave full details of Mr. Disraeli's con- nection with the Representative, the amount of his salary, together with a luxurious description of the splendours of his editorial offices ! Mr. Disraeli roused at last, replied curtly that the whole narrative was en- tirely imaginary, and utterly devoid of fact or founda- tion in any one point. He has since then in a letter, upon a similar question, written by his solicitor to the Leisure Hour, declared that : " Mr. Disraeli never in his life required or received any remuneration for anything he ever wrote, except for books bearing his name. " Mr. Disraeli never was editor of the Star Cham- ber, or any other newspaper, journal, review, or magazine, or anything else." To return, however, to legitimate book-publishing. About this time Campbell's old scheme of " Biogra- phies of the Poets" was revived, re-appearing under the title of " Specimens of the British Poets ;" and Murray was so pleased with the work that he made the