Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
John Murray to Sir Walter Scott, 8 June 1829
“Albemarle Street, June 8, 1829.
“My dear Sir,
“Mr Lockhart
has this moment communicated your letter respecting my fourth share of the
copyright of Marmion. I have
already been applied to by Messrs Constable, and by Messrs Longman, to know what sum I would sell this share for—but so
highly do I estimate the honour of being even in so small a degree the
publisher of the author of the poem—that no pecuniary consideration whatever
can induce me to part with it.
“But there is a consideration of another kind, which
until now I was not aware of, which would make it painful to me if I were to
retain it a moment longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required by the
author, into whose hands it was spontaneously resigned in the same instant that
I read his request.
“This share has been profitable to me fifty-fold
beyond what either publisher or author could have anticipated, and, therefore,
my returning it on such an occa-
196 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. | |
sion you will, I trust,
do me the favour to consider in no other light than as a mere act of grateful
acknowledgment for benefits already received by, my dear Sir, your obliged and
faithful servant,
Archibald Constable (1774-1827)
Edinburgh bookseller who published the
Edinburgh Review and works
of Sir Walter Scott; he went bankrupt in 1826.
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
Editor of the
Quarterly Review (1825-1853); son-in-law of Walter
Scott and author of the
Life of Scott 5 vols (1838).
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.