ry
men--Maginn, Cunningham, Basil Hall, and poor Southey, worst of all.
Lockhart's letters of late have made me very uneasy, too, about him. Has
he yet returned from Scotland, and is he at all improved?" Only a few
months later Mr. Murray himself was to be called away from the scene of
his life's activity. In the autumn of 1842 his health had already begun
to fail rapidly, and he had found it necessary to live much out of
London, and to try various watering-places; but although he rallied at
times sufficiently to return to his business for short periods, he never
recovered, and passed away in sleep on June 27, 1843, at the age of
sixty-five.

CHAPTER XXXII

JOHN MURRAY AS A PUBLISHER

In considering the career of John Murray, the reader can hardly fail to
be struck with the remarkable manner in which his personal qualities
appeared to correspond with the circumstances out of which he built his
fortunes.

When he entered his profession, the standard of conduct in every
department of life connected with the publishing trade was determined by
aristocratic ideas. The unwritten laws which regulated the practice of
bookselling in the eighteenth century were derived from the Stationers'
Company. Founded as it had been on the joint principles of commercial
monopoly and State control, this famous organization had long lost its
old vitality. But it had bequeathed to the bookselling community a large
portion of its original spirit, both in the practice of cooperative
publication which produced the "Trade Books," so common in the last
century, and in that deep-rooted belief in the perpetuity of copyright,
which only received its death-blow from the celebrated judgment of the
House of Lords in the case of Donaldson _v_. Becket in 1774. Narrow and
exclusive as they may have been in their relation to the public
interest, there can be no doubt that these traditions helped to
constitute, in the dealings of the booksellers among themselves, a
standard of honour which put a certain curb on the pursuit of private
gain. It was this feeling which provoked such intense indignation in the
trade against the publishers who took advantage of their strict legal
rights to invade what was generally regarded as the property of their
brethren; while the sense of what was due to the credit, as well as to
the interest, of a great organized body, made the associated
booksellers zealous in the promotion of all enterprises likely to add to
th