'5fe*^ 
 
 ■><•> 
 
 WM 
 
 <*"';, 
 ^i^ 
 
 %-#*■ 
 
 !V*!«^ 
 
 .^*^rH.. 
 
 '^2^^ 
 
 •^^ ■.:>■ -C^ '^ 
 
 ■^ Ji*^ 
 
 ^^'■ 
 
 
 .:;V'^ 
 
(Jlatnell Mttiucraitg Slihrary 
 
 3tlfara, N»m ^ork 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arW9506 
 
 Memoir of John Murray. 
 
 3 1924 031 444 486 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031444486 
 
Engraved t^ BHl (Ijy-PermiBBiaiii fi:am a. Ilhoto&E^Ti ■-.- ^ it 
 
 ¥^E wi\^m 
 
 lllLDAKffl EWAITT (El^mSTiWE, M^P'^ 
 
MEMOIR OF JOHN MURRAY. 
 
 The Memoirs of Mr. Murray, very recently published, have 
 already had so favourable a reception from the public, that their 
 place among the successful publications of the year must before 
 this timfe have been fully assured. But they deserve much more 
 than a jpbmentary good fortune. For they form not only the 
 biographical record of a very able man, and of a most interesting 
 personality ; but a chapter of great impcM-tance in the history of 
 literature, especially but not exclusively on its industrial side. 
 
 Books are, after all, a product of manufacturing industry ; but, 
 among manufactures, theirs is surely the most interesting, and 
 the most peculiar, because it is based upon the reduction of a 
 mental product to a material form, and what was originally 
 intangible and ethereal, in this way, without losing its earlier 
 character, comes to be embraced within the same category as a 
 yard of calico or a bushel of wheat. 
 
 But while these have no value except what is exhibited by 
 their outward form, so that the independent producers of other 
 bushels of wheat or yards of calico meet them in " the market " 
 upon equal terms, the producer of the book exhibits to the world 
 a double entity, one material, the other mental ; and the author 
 pleads that, as the material thing which we call a book is pro- 
 tected by the law against abstraction, so the thoughts contained 
 in it, and wrought by him into a structure more or less elaborate, 
 should in like manner be protected from reproduction. For 
 reproduction, from his point of view, is theft. It is. offering to the 
 world, for such price as the world be willing to give, not only the 
 paper and print which the producer has to buy and pay for, but 
 the composition contained in them, which represents the time arid 
 labour, and therefore the food, and raiment, and lodging, and all 
 the lawful expenditure of the author. 
 
 On this basis has been erected that curious formation which 
 
Memoir of yohn Murray. 
 
 we call the law of copyright. The conditions of its birth and 
 history have been chequered and abnormal ; but the reasonable- 
 ness of the proposition that mental toil, on taking literary form, 
 should not be deprived of the remuneration enjoyed by bodily 
 labour, has brought it out into the light of day, and so secured 
 its acceptance. And it appears in this century of ours to take an 
 increasing hold on the intelligence of societies and the assent of 
 states. It has a train of satellites, such as the protection of 
 pictures from copying in the sphere of sight, and of music in the 
 sphere of sound, and again in the prohibition to convert the 
 contents of private letters into public property without the consent 
 of the writer. 
 
 But the author, when he has obtained an acknowledgment of 
 his right to protection, has not yet surmounted all his difficulties. 
 The grower of wheat, and the manufacturer of calico, produce 
 articles complete in themselves, and only requiring certain 
 manipulations before reaching the ultimate consumer. These 
 processes are performed by a multitude of persons ; and the 
 function of the intermediate distributors, being simple, is per- 
 formed by large numbers of persons. But the author has given 
 birth to a commodity which is perfectly unavailable for the 
 purpose of yielding him support, until he has contracted, as it 
 were, a marriage with a capitalist who will agree to become joint 
 partner of the book, giving it a body where the author has 
 supplied the soul, and thus at length constituting it a marketable 
 and productive commodity. The author cannot himself as a rule 
 be the publisher, and publishers are extremely few ; so few that, 
 until a very recent date, they might be counted on the fingers. 
 Practically, and as a general rule, the author in relation to his 
 customer is nobody, until his initial performance has been 
 capped by the accession of the publisher. Better would be the 
 position of a man who should ofTer for sale the stock and lock 
 of a rifle without the barrel to complete it. 
 
 The publisher, then, stands in an immovable position between 
 the author and the public ; and it largely depends upon his 
 choice whether he shall starve or feed both the one and the other. 
 His office faces both ways. As to that side of it which regards the 
 author, I know of no reason to doubt that it has now reached, 
 in the main, its mature and final development In these volumes 
 of Mr. Smiles we find set before us for the first time a full and 
 systematic account of the manner in which this office, as towards 
 the author, was understood and discharged by a great London 
 
Memoir of yohn Murray. 
 
 publisher. Great, not in the limited beginnings of the business 
 inherited from his father, but in the qualities by which he 
 enlarged and converted it into a wide and complicated scale of 
 transactions, which were marked throughout by a treatment of 
 authors so full of enterprise, of liberality, and of considerateness, 
 as to entitle him not only to the acknowledgments of individuals, 
 but to the grateful recollections of the class. The fortune he 
 acquired was not, I believe, in full proportion to the magnitude 
 and apparent success of his undertakings. Undoubtedly the 
 perusal of these volumes tends to creates an impression that it 
 would have been larger, had he been somewhat more stinted in 
 the terms which he offered or allowed to authors. His large, 
 genial, sympathetic spirit sometimes permitted feeling for the 
 individual with whom he dealt, if not to colour his expectation 
 of a market, yet certainly to enter into the price he was to 
 allow for the commodity. It is even probable that by his 
 individual action he either permanently raised, or at least 
 accelerated the rise, of the standard of literary remuneration. 
 
 The 'process, by which the great profession of letters has 
 advanced to its present position, has been a slow one. It can 
 in my belief only become wholly satisfactory when the law of 
 copyright shall have been placed upon such a footing as to allow 
 the public, its true patron, earlier and more effective access to 
 the perusal of new and high-class works, than for the most part 
 it at present enjoys. But the progress actually effected has been 
 immense. Let us go back to the time when, in this country, 
 Milton accepted from a bookseller ;^ 5, with contingent payments 
 of ;^io more, for the privilege of issuing 'Paradise Lost.' We 
 are accustomed tacitly to commiserate the poet, and to hold 
 his publisher in small account fon liberality. But there is a 
 word to be said on the publisher's behalf Fifteen pounds, 
 even if we multiply it say by three, with reference to the altered 
 relation of value between cash and commodities, may be but a 
 small sum. Still it is a sum, and passes into the pocket, anfi the 
 question arises whether there had ever before been given among 
 us, by any publisher, for any work, any payment at all ? Such 
 cases may have existed, but I have never been able to discover 
 them. Take another instance. . Fifty years ago, America, as a 
 very young country, probably represented a much earlier stage 
 of development in the literary question than England, or than 
 the America of to-day with its huge and rapid development. 
 At any rate, we have before us in the revised ' Life of Mr. Dana,' 
 but just published, a curious account of his transactioiK with one^ 
 

 m 
 
 To\i{i*yt Hii-ort+iw 
 
 GLADSTONJi} IX HIS EIGHTIETH YEAR 
 
Memoir of yohn Murray. 
 
 of the first publishers of New York respecting his peculiarly 
 interesting work, ' Two Years before the Mast.' * As he was 
 not a rich man, considerable pains were taken to get the best 
 possible price for it. But this proved to be only 250 dollars, . 
 or ;^50. It was reprinted in England by Mr. Moxon without 
 the protection of copyright, and a larger sum was voluntarily 
 remitted to the author than he had obtained in America by 
 parting with his property in the work. Compare with these cases 
 the state of things in which ' Woodstock,' only in part composed, 
 had already in 1826 been set down by the House of Constable 
 as an asset at ;£'7S00, and another novel, not yet begun, but 
 to be written during the year, at £T^ca more.t Of the immense 
 advance thus effected on behalf of literary livelihood, the reader 
 of these volumes may be led to surmise that an appreciable share 
 is due to Mr. Murray. 
 
 Let me illustrate this general statement from the Biography, 
 by instances which shall not be associated with names so famous 
 as those of Scott and Byron. In 1820, for the ' Memoirs of Lord 
 Waldegrave,' together with Horace Walpole's ' Last Nine Years 
 of George II.,' he agreed to pay £2^<X), a price which no other 
 publisher would give, and which he did not recover from the 
 public. He gave Washington Irving 3000 guineas for the 
 ' Voyages of Columbus ; ' 2000 for the ' Conquest of Granada,' 
 losing on the two works ;^225o. He gave 1000 guineas for the 
 first volume of Napier's ' Peninsular War ; ' ;^ 1 200 for ' Franklin's 
 Second Expedition ; ' ;^30CX) for the copyright of ' Crabbe's 
 Poems ; ' 500 guineas for Milman's ' Fall of Jerusalem ; ' for the 
 ' Martyr of Antioch ' and ' Belshazzar ' the same sum in each case. 
 He gave Miss F. Kemble 400 guineas for ' Francis the First' % 
 In most of these cases (but not the last), he went against or 
 beyond the judgment of his, own literary advisers ; no inconsider- 
 able persons, for they were such as Gifford, Croker, Lockhart, 
 and Sharon Turner. 
 
 He showed an enlightened judgment in preferring a system of 
 
 sharing profits to that of purchasing outright. But the largeness 
 
 o£-ihese prices was not the onj^ form in which he exhibited his 
 
 pecuniary disinterestedness. To Scott,, by whose genius he had 
 
 profited, he presented his fourth share of the copyright of 
 
 ' Marmion ' " as an act of grateful acknowledgment ; §" and when 
 
 * ' R. H. Dana ; a Biography,' vol. i. pp. 25-7. 
 t ' A Constable and his Literary Correspondents,' chap. vi. p. 405. 
 X ' Memoirsf vol. ii. pp. 89, 104, 106, 257, 258, 263, 283, 290, 385. 
 § Vol. ii. p. 275. 
 
6 Memoir of yohn Murray. 
 
 in the promptitude of his offers, in his disposition to constant 
 multiplication of engagements, and in the large share of work 
 properly literary which he habitually took upon himself He 
 did not follow the practice common among publishers of 
 employing a salaried reader, but obtained pro re nata the 
 friendly aid of eminent men, who valued their relations with 
 him, and gladly lent it. His private judgment could not but be 
 considerably exercised in the choice of this or that adviser as 
 occasion arose, and it has been seen that he withheld from them 
 any servile deference even to the increase of his own costs and 
 charges. From their letters it is evident that they respected his 
 judgment, and those letters of his, with which the volumes are 
 thickly, but not too thickly strown, bear witness to his literary 
 capacity. 
 
 And this is perhaps the proper place to notice his concern in 
 the foundation of the ' Quarterly Review.' 
 
 Along with that Review, Mr. Murray seems to have rather 
 hardened in his Toryism with the lapse of years ; but it was, in 
 its inception, a literary undertaking. It followed the ' Edinburgh,' 
 founded in 1802, which has the honour of originality, and with 
 which Murray came to be connected, as part agent, and then 
 as sole agent in London, about three years later. " It appeared 
 at the right time, and, as the first quarterly organ of the higher 
 criticism, evidently hit the mark at which it aimed." * 
 
 Differences with the ' Edinburgh ' publisher soon arose, we are 
 told, out of his practice of drawing accommodation bills, that is to 
 say bills not represented by values. Accordingly, before 1808 
 had expired, the agency was withdrawn from Mr. Murray. He 
 was then left free to prosecute a plan for the establishment of 
 a Review in the southern capital, anticipated in this matter by the 
 northern. 
 
 This plan seems to have been eminently and conclusively his 
 own. The inception of the ' Quarterly ' was a matter far more 
 arduous and complicated than had been that of the ' Edinburgh.' 
 In the case of the elder sister, a body of distinguished men 
 appear to have framed their own literary scheme, and then to 
 have found a publisher ready to undertake its mercantile counter- 
 part, each party having its own province, and its own responsibility. 
 There was not, in the case of the ' Quarterly,' any such compact 
 combination of writers formed beforehand under an editorial 
 head. The Editor was appointed, the writers one by one attracted, 
 
 * ' Memoirs,' vol. i. p. 91. 
 
\ Memoir of John Murray. 7 
 
 the literary arrangements constantly considered, by Mr. Murray, 
 who is evidently and exclusively entitled to the honours of a 
 founder. Next to him comes Sir Walter Scott ; and in the third 
 place stands Gififord, whose office in docking, trimming, adapting, 
 and almost rewriting articles appears to have been one of great 
 labour and, anxiety, peremptorily and strongly, but ably and 
 conscientiously performed. Although the ' Review ' had the 
 aid of Scott from the .first, although Southey, Croker, and other 
 able men came in, although it enjoyed in ja few cases the 
 brilliant superintendence of Carining, yet the want of a regular 
 staff, and of undivided responsibilities, resulted during the early 
 years of the 'Review,' from 1809 to 1817, or near it, in an un- 
 favourable balance-sheet.. But neither difficulty nor loss ex- 
 hausted the courage, persistence, and assiduity of the publisher. ' 
 It, was rewarded, after a costly and toilsome apprenticeship, by a 
 career of marked and ensuring success. Under the powerful 
 direction of Gifford, and after a short interval of Lockhart, it 
 equalled or surpassed the large circulation of some 12,000 copies, 
 to which the northern rival had more rapidly attained. It 
 became in the hands of its publisher, an estate ; and no estate:was 
 •ever more honourably acquired by integrity, discernment, and 
 munificent appreciation of literary service. Even where each 
 number was a loss, every article supplied by the pen. of Southey 
 was paid for at the rate of a hundred pounds. 
 
 Mr. Murray had indeed something like a passion for periodical 
 literature. He repeatedly entertained the idea of widening the 
 market for this class of supplies by the establishment of a 
 magazine of smaller price and more frequent appearance than 
 those of the ' Quarterly.' This propensity reached its climax at 
 the juncture he undertook to face single-handed, in addition to 
 all his other engag'fements, the immense labour arid responsibility 
 «of a daily newspaper. -There is no more curious or attractive 
 chapter in the biography before us, than that which recounts the 
 origin, foundation, and catastrophe of the ' Representative,' that 
 having been the title of the ill-omened and disastrous journal. 
 It can, I think, hardly be denied that in this matter > Mr. 
 Murray conspicuously lost the balance of his judgment. It can 
 hardly be considered prudent for a great publisher to found, 
 own, and manage a daily newspaper. For in the deed or 
 memorandum of partnership * we read, " the paper to be pub- 
 lished by, and to be under the management of, Mr. Murray." 
 * ' Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. i86. 
 
8 Memoir of John Murray. 
 
 He had already been partner with Mr. Croker in the Guardian 
 newspaper published at Windsor, and it had failed. He was led 
 into the adoption of this larger scheme, says Mr. Smiles, ' through 
 the influence of Mr. Benjamin Disraeli.* Does the history of 
 commerce, or of letters, offer to us a more curious picture than 
 that of the sagacious veteran of the book trade drawn into a wild 
 and impossible undertaking by the eloquence of a youth of 
 twenty ? He had been at his work for thirty years ; and this 
 was the year 1 825, the year of ' Prosperity Robinson,' the year of 
 dupes and dreams. It was also the time when Mr. Canning 
 " called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of 
 the old." If Mr. Canning, when he made the boast, was perhaps 
 a little influenced by the intoxication of the time, we may be the 
 less surprised that its fumes found their way into the well- 
 chambered brain of Mr. Murray. Then it is to be borne in 
 mind that Disraeli the elder was a close personal friend, and was 
 one of the advisers employed about the ' Quarterly.' Intimacy 
 had long been established between the families. But, after every 
 allowance, our amazement can be but little abated when we 
 contemplate the ifascination exercised by the young magician. 
 Nor was fhe publisher the only captive. Mr. Benjamin 
 Disraeli, who had already communicated with a financing 
 house in the City, and obtained the adhesion of a certain 
 Powles (afterwards shown in Carlyle's phrase to be a windbag) 
 'twice undertook a journey to Scotland. He was confident in 
 the solidity of the auguments he had to use. Lockhart he 
 writes, t " must see that, through Bowles, all America and the 
 commercial interest is at ,our beck," and that he is to be " the 
 Director-General of an immense organ, and at the head of a 
 band of high-bred gentlemen, and of important interests." 
 Mr. Isaac comments % on the letters of his son. " His views are 
 vast, but they are founded on good sense." "Never did the 
 finest season of blossoms promise a richer gathering." He 
 reported § that, though Lockhart eventually declined any 
 personal share in the undertaking, yet both he and Sir Walter 
 Scott viewed it with approval. Seeking to win a correspondent 
 in Germany, he represented || that — the paper would surely 
 become " the focus of the information of the whole world." The 
 phrase carries internal evidence of its originality. Buf it is 
 borrowed, in a letter to another foreign gentleman, by the great 
 
Memoir of John Murray. 
 
 publisher himself. " I wish to make this journal the focus of the 
 information of the whole world." A costly plagiarism ! Mr. 
 Murray by the agreement was to supply half the capital, 
 Mr. Powles and Mr. Benjamin Disraeli were to furnish one 
 quarter each. At last the Representative came to the birth. 
 After a hard fight for existence it succumbed. The financial 
 history will be best read in the narrative of Mr. Smiles.* 
 Suffice it to say that the Chapter containing it is one of those in 
 which fact beats fiction; and that Mr. Murray lost ;f 26,000 by 
 the ill-starred adventure. 
 
 An impartial reader will, I think, conclude from the perusal, 
 that Mr. Murray's miscarriage was by no means due to mere 
 pecuniary greed : that spirit of enterprise, true though rushed 
 into exaggeration, had more to do with it ; and that strong 
 personal sympathy, perhaps even affection, was a main factor in 
 the undertaking. He comes out of it smaller, perhaps, as a 
 calculator, but more, than ever a man. And it is in. truth the 
 strong and genuinely human element, marking and following the 
 whole course of his career, which heightened its interest, but 
 from time to time endangered its success ; and which has 
 impressed much of the stamp of chivalry on a trading career. 
 
 Many of the side-lights of this Biography open subjects of 
 great interest ; for instance, the origin and character of Gifford. 
 But there is one of them which cannot be passed by, by reason of 
 its probable bearing on Mr. Murray's commercial education. 
 Constable, whose large and enterprising business came to a 
 disastrous end in 1826, and made place for that great epic 
 presented to us in the heroic close of the life of Scott, was, if not 
 the tutor, yet certainly the foreshadower of Murray. He had 
 something of the same boldness of conception, and largeness of 
 liberality towards authors : with the disadvantage of a less central 
 position, and a narrower market at his doors. Their relations were 
 close for a considerable time, and their sentiments of reciprocal 
 regard were warm. The tie was weakened by Murray's distrust of 
 his friend's finance, which he thought dangerously mixed up with 
 reliance on accommodation bills. In 1807 the junior entered on 
 a course of remonstrance with the senior trader. But the bond 
 between them was not then broken, and Mr. Murray most 
 warmly acknowledges the value of pecuniary support received 
 from him in i8io,t ;when his own resources may have been 
 seriously strained by the heavy charges attending the first 
 * Vol. ii. chap. xxvi. f ' Archibald Constable,' vol. i. p. 384. 
 
lo Memoir of John Murray. 
 
 establishment of the 'Quarterly Review.' This is related in 
 the memoir of Constable by his son, a work which is unduly 
 swollen with much padding, but contains no small amount of 
 Vciluable information, and forms a portion of what may be called 
 the Scott-literature. Controversy arose upon Lockhart's treat- 
 ment of Constable in his great Biography. However, in a letter 
 of the year 1827, Lockhart says* all literary men know the 
 debt they owe him personally for having thrown so much of 
 new life and vigour into the conduct of the profession. And he 
 seems to be entitled to some share of the praise which has been 
 earned by Murray on a larger scale, and with a surer sagacity, 
 and a closer adherence to sound principles of business. 
 
 In the grand enterprise of cheapening literature, and making 
 it accessible to the public at large, Mr. Murray, Mr. Charles 
 Knight, and Mr. Constable, had their respective shares.f The 
 'Family Library' and 'The Library of Entertaining Know- 
 ledge' began in 1829. But Constable had been beforehand 
 with them, and had brought out his ' Miscellany ' in the beginning 
 of 1827.$ Mr. Murray had long been pondering his own scheme, 
 which he at length brought into beneficial operation. And it 
 seems no improbable conjecture that this delay was owing to 
 the pre-occupation, first of his mind, by the fascinations of 
 the Representative, and then of his resources by a disastrous 
 liquidation. 
 
 I must not close these remarks without referring to the literary 
 Court of Mr. Murray §• His hospitality was large and constant. 
 It was not confined to authors of standing and repute, for I 
 myself, without the smallest pretension to such a character, 
 shared it half a century ago. His drawing-room, open from day 
 to day, had the attractions of a most refined literary club, minus 
 the subscription. His relations with the distinguished circle did 
 not merely represent what Carlyle calls " the cash-«^;tr«J between 
 man and man." The company which so freely went in and out 
 had no limit of nationality and was of no sect in politics or letters. 
 In another development of his munificent spirit, he coveted and 
 contrived the formation of a gallery of portraits. The hand of 
 Lawrence was to be traced there ; and when he had not long 
 passed the middle of his career, it already included Byron, Scott, 
 Coleridge, Southey, Moore, Gifford, Croker, Barrow, Hallam, 
 
 * ' Archibald Constable,' vol. iii. p. 439. 
 
 t ' Memoirs,' vol. ii. 295-6. 
 
 % ' Archibald Constable,' chap. vii. p. 440. 
 
 § Vol. ii. p. 83. 
 
Memoir of John Murray. 1 1 
 
 Irving, Campbell, Lockhart, Crabbe, among men of letters, 
 besides the chief voyagers to the North Pole and Africa.* 
 
 The scope of human life is indeeds wide, and its aspects 
 multitudinous. On some and the very highest of them I have 
 not presumed to touch. But Murray raised the tone of his 
 profession, and every man who does that is among the benefactors 
 of his race. I have therefore sought to mark the work, as a 
 literary life which is entitled to the rare and solid distinction of a 
 permanent place in the history of letters. My own title, so to 
 mark it, is to be found only in the fact that, though two dis- 
 tinguished ladies f still survive, one of whom preceded me, I am 
 the only man now living who has had Mr. Murray, second of his 
 race, for his publisher. His saitem accumulatem donis. 
 
 W. E. Gl,ADSTONE. 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 317. 
 
 t Mrs. Butler and Lady Eastlake. 
 

 
 
 ' • ' i--, - . ji ' ^x*- ' 
 
 • -Sf' 
 
 ■C?": '.'4 
 
 
7" .' 
 
 
 ..j-v 
 
 5**-j 
 
 P^T^' 
 
 IS^ -•''&■.< 'w'^i^**^'^' .d