Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/228

192 192 JOHN MURRA K which until now I was not aware of, which would make it painful to me if I were to retain it longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required by the author, into whose hands it was spontaneously re- signed in the same instant that I read his request. " The share has been profitable to me fifty-fold beyond what either publisher or author could have anticipated, and, therefore, my returning it on such an occasion, you will, I trust, do me -the favour to consider in no other light than as a mere act of grate- ful acknowledgment, for benefits already received by " My dear Sir, " Your obliged and faithful Servant, " JOHN MURRAY." This noble act, we must remember, was performed at a time when the future was anything but bright, or at all events when the present was dismally gloomy. "Lydia Whyte," writes Tom Moore, "told me that Murray was very unsuccessful of late. Besides the failure of his Representative, the Quarterly did not look very promising, and he was about to give up the fine house he had taken in Whitehall, and return to live in Albemarle-street." Constable had, some years previous, hit upon the idea of appealing to a public that should be numbered, not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands, ay, and by millions ! and had just com- menced his " Miscellany." Murray, quick to receive a good idea, started at once into competition with his " Family Library," Lockhart commencing the series with a " Life of Napoleon " and the " Court and Camp of Bonaparte." Cunningham followed with his " Lives of the British Painters," and Southey revised his " Life