“Any work in Poetry strikes me with more than common awe, as proposed for realization by myself, because from long habits of meditation on language, as the symbolic medium of the connection of Thought with Thought as affected and modified by Passion and Emotion, I should spend days in avoiding what I deemed faults, though with the full foreknowledge that their admission would not have offended three of all my readers, and might perhaps be deemed beauties by three hundred—if so many there were; and this not out of any respect for the public (i.e., the persons who might happen to purchase and look over the book) but from a hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my own feelings and sense of Duty. Language is the sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and the Muses are its especial and vestal priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile drugs and counterfeit Frankincense which render its flames at once pitchy, glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the Sacrilege. With the commencement of a Public, commences the degradation of the Good and the Beautiful—both fade and retire before the accidentally Agreeable. Othello becomes a hollow lip-worship; and the Castle Spectre, or any more peccant thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence, that may have over-billowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is the true Prayer of the Praise and Admiration.”
Fancy the feelings of a poor publisher assailed with this raging torrent of words! Murray, stemming the tide as best he can, replies in a short, businesslike note, proposing terms—not very liberal ones—for the desired translation. Whereupon Coleridge writes a second letter, actually longer than the first, intimating that a hundred pounds is but scant remuneration for such a piece of work, “executed as alone I can or dare do it—that is, to the utmost of my power; for which the intolerable Pain, nay the far greater Toil and Effort of doing otherwise, is a far safer Pledge than any solicitude on my part concerning the approbation of the Public.”
Finally, the undertaking was abandoned, and the English-speaking world lost its single chance of having Faust adequately translated; lost it, I truly believe, through the reluctance of even a patient man to stomach any further correspondence.
Trials of a very different order poured in on Murray through his connection with Lord Byron, an honor which was not altogether without thorns. People who thought Byron’s poetry immoral wrote frankly to Murray to say so. People who did not think Byron’s poetry immoral wrote quite as frankly to complain of those who did. His noble lordship himself was at times both petulant and exacting, and there is a ring of true dignity in the following remonstrance offered by the publisher to the peer, by “Mr. Bookseller Murray,” as Napier contemptuously calls him, to the poet whose good qualities he was so quick to understand:
“I assure you,” he writes, “that I take no umbrage at irritability which will occasionally burst from a mind like yours; but I sometimes feel a deep regret that in our pretty long intercourse I appear to have failed to show that a man in my situation may possess the feelings and principles of a gentleman. Most certainly do I think that, from personal attachment, I could venture as much in any shape for your service as any of those who have the good fortune to be ranked amongst your friends.”
In fact, the friends of authors were too often, as Blackwood hinted, the sources of Murray’s severest trials. Friends are obliging creatures in their way, and always ready to give with lavish hearts their wealth of criticism and opinion. There is a delightful letter from the Rev. H. H. Milman, Dean of St. Paul’s, offering to Murray his sadly unreadable poem Belshazzar, with this timely intimation: “I give you fair warning that all the friends who have hitherto seen it assure me that I shall not do myself justice unless I demand a very high price for it.” Murray, in reply, hints as urbanely as he can that, as it is he and not Mr. Milman’s friends who is to pay the price, he cannot accept their judgment in the matter as final; he is compelled to take into consideration his own chances of profit. Throughout all his correspondence we note this tone of careful self-repression, of patient and courteous kindness. Now and then only, particularly trying letters appear to have been left unanswered, as though the limits of even his endurance had been reached. When we remember that the Quarterly was the cherished idol of his life, and that his pride and delight in it knew no bounds, we can dimly appreciate his feelings on receiving the following lines from Southey, whose principal income for years had been derived from the magazine’s most liberal and open-handed payments. “It is a great price,” writes the author of Thalaba, who has just pocketed a comfortable sum, “and it is very convenient for me to receive it. But I will tell you, with that frankness which you have always found in my correspondence and conversation, that I must suspect my time might be more profitably employed (as I am sure it might be more worthily) than in writing for your journal, even at that price.”
I am not wont to peer too closely into the secrets of the human heart, but I would like to know exactly how Murray felt when he read that letter. “Let me at least be eaten by a lion!” says Epictetus. “Let me at least be insulted by a genius!” might well have been the publisher’s lament.