on to almost
the eve of the French Revolution of 1848, was characterized in a marked
degree by the advance of Democracy. In all directions there was an
uprising of the spirit of individual liberty against the prescriptions
of established authority. In Politics the tendency is apparent in the
progress of the Reform movement. In Commerce it was marked by the
inauguration of the Free Trade movement. In Literature it made itself
felt in the great outburst of poetry at the beginning of the century,
and in the assertion of the superiority of individual genius to the
traditional laws of form.

The effect produced by the working of the democratic spirit within the
aristocratic constitution of society and taste may without exaggeration
be described as prodigious. At first sight, indeed, there seems to be a
certain abruptness in the transition from the highly organized society
represented in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," to the philosophical
retirement of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is only when we look beneath
the surface that we see the old traditions still upheld by a small class
of Conservative writers, including Campbell, Rogers, and Crabbe, and, as
far as style is concerned, by some of the romantic innovators, Byron,
Scott, and Moore. But, generally speaking, the age succeeding the first
French Revolution exhibits the triumph of individualism. Society itself
is penetrated by new ideas; literature becomes fashionable; men of
position are no longer ashamed to be known as authors, nor women of
distinction afraid to welcome men of letters in their drawing-rooms. On
all sides the excitement and curiosity of the times is reflected in the
demand for poems, novels, essays, travels, and every kind of imaginative
production, under the name of _belles lettres_.

A certain romantic spirit of enterprise shows itself in Murray's
character at the very outset of his career. Tied to a partner of a petty
and timorous disposition, he seizes an early opportunity to rid himself
of the incubus. With youthful ardour he begs of a veteran author to be
allowed the privilege of publishing, as his first undertaking, a work
which he himself genuinely admired. He refuses to be bound by mere
trading calculations. "The business of a publishing bookseller," he
writes to a correspondent, "is not in his shop, or even in his
connections, but in his brains." In all his professional conduct a
largeness of view is apparent. A new conception of the scope of his