Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/205

JOHN MURRA Y. 1 60 marriage may be supposed to have strengthened his interests in the Scotch metropolis, for in the following year we find Constable offering him a fourth share in Scott's forthcoming poem of " Marmion." " I am," writes Murray on the 6th Feb., 1807, " truly sensible of the kind remembrance of me in your liberal pur- chase. You have rendered Mr. Miller no less happy by your admission of him ; and we both view it as honourable, profitable, and glorious to be concerned in the publication of a new poem by Walter Scott." For an account of the success of " Marmion " we must refer the reader to the life of Archibald Constable ; it is enough for our present purpose to know that Murray afterwards said that this fourth share, for which he paid 250, brought him in a return of fifty-fold. The publication of " Marmion " was followed by a connection with Scott, who in the succeeding year edited for him Strutt's " Queen Hoo Hall." Scott had before this been concerned with Campbell in a projected series of "Biographies of the Poets," which had however come to nothing. Murray now thought that Scott's talents, and more especially perhaps his name, would bestow certain success upon the project ; and we find Campbell, who had just made a " poet's marriage " with love enough in his heart and genius enough in his brain, but " with only fifty pounds in his writing desk " inditing to Scott as follows : " MY DEAR SCOTT, A very excellent and gentle- manly man albeit a bookseller Murray of Fleet Street, is willing to give for our joint 'Lives of the Poets/ on the plan we proposed to the trade a twelvemonth ago, a thousand pounds. . . . Murray is the only gentle- man in the trade except Constable, ... I may perhaps ii