Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/207

JOHN MURRAY. 171 Glasses were put down untouched, and shouts of " The Ogre!" resounded. " Yes, gentlemen," said Campbell gravely, " here is to Bonaparte ; he has just shot a bookseller !" Amid shouts of applause, for the dinner was in "Bohemia," the glasses were jangled and the toast was drank, for the news had but just arrived that Palm, a bookseller of Nuremburg, had been shot by the Emperor's orders. Constable scarcely thought, when he offered the fourth share of " Marmion " to Murray, that he was fostering a dangerous rival. Yet in the very year after the publication of "Marmion " he was projecting a rival quarterly, and the following letter to Canning, first printed in " Barrow's Autobiography," shows that Murray is entitled to the whole credit of the new scheme. "September 25th, 1807. " SIR, I venture to address you upon a subject that is perhaps not undeserving of one moment of your attention. " There is a work entitled the Edinburgh Review, written with such unquestionable talent that it has already attained an extent of circulation not equalled by any similar publication. The principles of this work are, however, so radically bad, that I have been led to consider the effect which such sentiments, so generally diffused, are likely to produce, and to think that some means equally popular ought to be adopted to counteract their dangerous tendency. But the publication in question is conducted with so much ability, and is sanctioned and circulated with such high and decisive authority by the party of whose opinions it is the organ, that there is little hope of II 2