binding,
title, and final advertisement--engaged his closest attention. Besides
the elegant appearance of his books, he also aimed at raising the
standard of the literature which he published. He had to criticize as
well as to select; to make suggestions as to improvements where the
manuscript was regarded with favour, and finally to launch the book at
the right time and under the best possible auspices. It might almost be
said of the publisher, as it is of the poet, that he is born, not made.
And Mr. Murray appears, from the beginning to the end of his career, to
have been a born publisher.

In August 1806, during the slack season in London, Mr. Murray made his
promised visit to Edinburgh. He was warmly received by Constable and
Hunter, and enjoyed their hospitality for some days. After business
matters had been disposed of, he was taken in hand by Hunter, the junior
partner, and led off by him to enjoy the perilous hospitality of the
Forfarshire lairds.

Those have been called the days of heroic drinking. Intemperance
prevailed to an enormous extent. It was a time of greater
licentiousness, perhaps, in all the capitals of Europe, and this
northern one among the rest, than had been known for a long period. Men
of the best education and social position drank like the Scandinavian
barbarians of olden times. Tavern-drinking, now almost unknown among the
educated and professional classes of Edinburgh, was then carried by all
ranks to a dreadful excess.

Murray was conducted by Hunter to his father's house of Eskmount in
Forfarshire, where he was most cordially received, and in accordance
with the custom of the times the hospitality included invitations to
drinking bouts at the neighbouring houses.

An unenviable notoriety in this respect attached to William Maule
(created Baron Panmure 1831). He was the second son of the eighth Earl
of Dalhousie, but on succeeding, through his grandmother, to the estates
of the Earls of Panmure, he had assumed the name of Maule in lieu of
that of Ramsay.

Much against his will, Murray was compelled to take part in some of
these riotous festivities with the rollicking, hard-drinking Forfarshire
lairds, and doubtless he was not sorry to make his escape at length
uninjured, if not unscathed, and to return to more congenial society in
Edinburgh. His attachment to Miss Elliot ended in an engagement.

In the course of his correspondence with Miss Elliot's trustees, Mr.
Murray gave a sta