Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/215

JOHN MURRA y. i 79 though only to a limited extent : " If you don't like it, say so, and I'll alter it, but don't suggest anything instead." In one letter we find a strange absence of a young writer's anxiety anent the importance of typo- graphy. "The printer may place the notes in his own way, or in any way, so that they are out of my way." In another : " You have looked at it? to much purpose, to allow so stupid a blunder to stand ; it is not ' courage/ but ' carnage/ and if you don't want to see me cut my own throat see it altered !" Again, but later, "If every syllable were a rattlesnake, or every letter a pestilence, they should not be ex- punged." " I do believe the Devil never created or perverted such a fiend as the fool of a printer." " For God's sake," he writes in another place, " instruct Mr. Murray not to allow his shopman to call the work ' Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage ! ! !' as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might !" To John Murray we imagine Lord Byron must have appeared as much of a contradiction as he did to the world outside. Byron was extremely anxious that no underhand means should be used to foster the success of " Childe Harold." " Has Murray," he writes to Dallas, " shown the work to any one,? He may but I will have no traps for applause." On receipt of a rumour from Dallas, he indites a stormy letter to Murray, abso- lutely forbidding that Gififord should be allowed to look at the book before publication. Before the letter arrived, however, Gifford had expressed a very strong opinion, indeed, as to the merit of the poem, which he declared to " be equal to anything of the present day." Byron wrote again to Murray, " as never publisher