Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/227

JOHN MURRAY. 191 stipulated sum of 500 into double that amount. To Allen Cunningham, too, he gave $o per volume additional for his " Lives of the British Artists," and made the payment retrospective. We could repeat five hundred anecdotes of his liberal and kindly generosity, but our space only per- mits us to record another, which it is very pleasant to read about. It was twenty-two years since the obscure Fleet Street bookseller had embraced the " glorious and pro- fitable" opportunity of taking a fourth share in " Mar- mion," and since then Sir Walter Scott had achieved an unparalleled position in the world of English letters, had written innumerable works, and had earned unheard-of sums and had been completely ruined. With the aid of his creditors, Scott was now seeking to recover all his copyrights for a final edition of his collected works. AH had been bought back save this fourth share of " Marmion." Lockhart was commissioned by his father-in-law to inquire on what terms the share might be re-purchased, and this was Murray's immediate reply : " Albemarle Street, June 8th, 1829. "MY DEAR SIR, -Mr. Lockhart has this moment communicated your letter respecting my fourth share of the copyright of ' Marmion.' I have already been applied to by Messrs. Constable and Messrs. Long- man to know what sum I would sell this share for ; but so highly do I estimate the honour of being, even in so small a degree, the publisher of the author of this poem, that no pecuniary consideration what- ever can induce me to part with it. "But there is a consideration of another kind,