Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/197

JOHN MURRAY. 163 bookselling in earnest. It was at a time when, through Wilkes and Bute, national feeling seems to have run very high, and to be a Scotchman was hardly a recommendation to a beginner, and we find that, though McMurray headed all his trade bills with a ship, as a proud testimony to his naval antecedents, he found it convenient to drop the Scotch prefix of Me. The following copy of a trade card issued at the time is the first record we have of this alteration of title. JOHN MURRAY (successor to Mr. SANDBY), Bookseller and Stationer, At No. 32, over-against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street, London. Sells all new Books and Publications. Fitts up Public or Private Libraries in the neatest manner with Books of the choicest editions, the best Print," and the richest Bindings. Also, Executes East India or Foreign Commissions by an assortment of Books and Stationary suited to the Market or Purpose for which it is destined : all at the most reasonable rates. Murray found that Sandby's connection at Fleet Street was a good one Mr. William Sandby, indeed, could have been no ordinary bookseller, for his father was a prebendary of Gloucester, and his brother a master of Magdalen College, while he was accepted as partner in a wealthy banking firm the trade were inclined to " back him up," and he was able to extend his business considerably in India and Edinburgh, where he had many friends. The new edition of Lord Lyttelton's "History" was brought out in stately quarto volumes, as befitted the rank of the