Young Murray was at this time of a very different temperament to his partner—full of youth, fire, and energy, and uncommonly gifted with that speculative spirit which must have caused the elder man many a time to shake his head sagely, and to lift his gravely deprecating eyebrows. In fact, youth and age can never see matters with the same eyes;—the one looks as through a telescope magnifying all things within vision some hundred-fold; the other peers cautiously through spectacles, misty and begrimed, more used in guiding immediate footsteps than in gazing far ahead. Murray had attained his majority in 1799, and in four years the two partners resolved to sever their connection in a pleasant and friendly manner. By the formal deed of separation, dated 25th March, 1803, Highley retained all the medical business. But the principal act of parting was of anything but a formal nature. They drew lots for the old house and Murray was fortunate enough to secure the winning prize. Highley moved to No. 24, Fleet Street, but was able afterwards, in 1812, when Murray migrated to Albemarle Street, to move back again, and here he increased his medical connection, leaving a thriving business to his son.
In this very year of separation the Edinburgh Review was started, and Murray was probably reminded of the scheme in which his father had once been concerned with Smellie to produce a periodical under a similar title, but the time was not yet ripe for his own projects.
In 1806, at the age of twenty-four, he married Miss Elliot of Edinburgh, a young lady descended from one of the best-known publishers in the Modern Athens, and this, perhaps, drawing his attention to household matters, led to the publication of Mrs. Rundell’s “Domestic Cookery Book.” It is said that the receipts came from the note-book of the mother of the late Admiral Burney, with whose family, be it remembered, he had been at school at Gosport. This was the first and one of the most lucrative “hits” that Murray made, and perhaps in the important items of £ s. d. rivalled “Childe Harold” itself. Byron sings of it in playful jealousy:—
“Along thy sprucest book-shelves shine
The works thou deemest most divine,
The Art of Cookery and mine,
My Murray!”
Murray’s ambition however was not to be satisfied with the sop of a successful cookery book. His marriage may be supposed to have strengthened his interests in the Scotch metropolis, for in the following year we find Constable offering him a fourth share in Scott’s forthcoming poem of “Marmion.” “I am,” writes Murray on the 6th Feb., 1807, “truly sensible of the kind remembrance of me in your liberal purchase. You have rendered Mr. Miller no less happy by your admission of him; and we both view it as honourable, profitable, and glorious to be concerned in the publication of a new poem by Walter Scott.” For an account of the success of “Marmion” we must refer the reader to the life of Archibald Constable; it is enough for our present purpose to know that Murray afterwards said that this fourth share, for which he paid £250, brought him in a return of fifty-fold.
The publication of “Marmion” was followed by a connection with Scott, who in the succeeding year edited for him Strutt’s “Queen Hoo Hall.”
Scott had before this been concerned with Campbell in a projected series of “Biographies of the Poets,” which had however come to nothing. Murray now thought that Scott’s talents, and more especially perhaps his name, would bestow certain success upon the project; and we find Campbell, who had just made a “poet’s marriage”—with love enough in his heart and genius enough in his brain, but “with only fifty pounds in his writing desk”—inditing to Scott as follows:—
“My dear Scott,—A very excellent and gentlemanly man—albeit a bookseller—Murray of Fleet Street, is willing to give for our joint ‘Lives of the Poets,’ on the plan we proposed to the trade a twelvemonth ago, a thousand pounds.... Murray is the only gentleman in the trade except Constable.... I may perhaps also except Hood. I have seldom seen a pleasanter man to deal with. Our names are what he principally wants, especially yours.... I do not wish even in confidence to say anything ill of the London booksellers beyond their deserts; but I can assure you that to compare this offer of Murray’s with their usual offers is magnanimous indeed. Longman and Rees and a few of the great booksellers have literally monopolized the trade, and the business of literature is getting a dreadful one indeed. The Row folks have done nothing for me yet; I know not what they intend. The fallen prices of literature—which is getting worse by the horrible complexion of the times—make me often rather gloomy at the life I am likely to lead. You may guess, therefore, my anxiety to close with this proposal; and you may think me charitable indeed to retain myself from wishing that you were as poor as myself, that you might have motives to lend your aid.”
Scott, however, was too busy on higher paid work and was obliged to decline the offer, and for the present Campbell went back to his “hack-work.” Poor Campbell had suffered much from the publishers. His “Pleasures of Hope” had been rejected by every bookseller in Glasgow and Edinburgh; not one of them would even risk paper and printing upon the chance of its success. At last Messrs. Mundell and Son, printers to the University of Glasgow, with much reluctance undertook its publication, upon the liberal condition of allowing the author fifty copies at trade price, and, in the event of its reaching a second edition, a gratuity of ten pounds. A few years afterwards, when Campbell was present at a literary dinner party, he was asked to give a toast, and without a moment’s hesitation he proposed “Bonaparte.” 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.