The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 7/To Mr. Murray (2)
For works with similar titles, see To Mr. Murray.
TO MR. MURRAY.
1.
Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times,[1]
Patron and publisher of rhymes,
For thee the bard up Pindus climbs,
My Murray.
2.
To thee, with hope and terror dumb,
The unfledged MS. authors come;
Thou printest all—and sellest some—
My Murray.
3.
Upon thy table's baize so green
The last new Quarterly is seen,—
But where is thy new Magazine,[2]
My Murray?
4.
Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine
The works thou deemest most divine—
The Art of Cookery,[3] and mine,
My Murray.
5.
Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist,
And Sermons, to thy mill bring grist;
And then thou hast the Navy List,
My Murray.
6.
And Heaven forbid I should conclude,
Without "the Board of Longitude,"[4]
Although this narrow paper would,
My Murray.
Venice, April 11, 1818.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 171.]
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 171.]
- ↑ [William Strahan (1715-1785) published Johnson's Dictionary, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Cook's Voyages, etc. He was great-grandfather of the mathematician William Spottiswoode (1825-1883).
Jacob Tonson (1656?-1736) published for Otway, Dryden, Addison, etc. He was secretary of the Kit-Cat Club, 1700. He was the publisher (1712, etc.) of the Spectator. Barnaby Bernard Lintot (1675-1736) was at one time (1718) in partnership with Tonson. He published Pope's Iliad in 1715, and the Odyssey, 1725-26.] - ↑ [See note 2, p. 51.]
- ↑ [Mrs. Rundell's Domestic Cookery, published in 1806, was one of Murray's most successful books. In 1822 he purchased the copyright from Mrs. Rundell for £2000 (see Letters, 1898, ii. 375; and Memoir of John Murray, 1891, ii. 124).]
- ↑ [The sixth edition of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1813) was "printed by T. Davison, Whitefriars, for John Murray, Bookseller to the Admiralty, and the Board of Longitude." Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 259) attributes to Byron a statement that Murray had to choose between continuing to be his publisher and printing the "Navy Lists," and "that there was no hesitation which way he should decide: the Admiralty carried the day." In his "Notes" to the Conversations (November 2, 1824) Murray characterized "the passage about the Admiralty" as "unfounded in fact, and no otherwise deserving of notice than to mark its absurdity."]