Memoir of John Murray
John Murray to Walter Scott, 6 June 1818
June 6th, 1818.
Dearest Sir,
I have the pleasure of sending you a copy of the new number of
my Review,
to which your unabated kindness has contributed so much value. As we cannot
afford to put all our plums into one pudding, Mr.
Gifford has reserved the amusing paper on ‘Lord Orford’s
Letters’ for our next number. I have therefore enclosed it to you
revised, and shall be happy if it receive any enlargement of interesting
extracts which may have occurred to you. . . I am sorry to say, Southey had nearly completed an article on Evelyn’s delightful memoirs before I had been favoured with
your inquiry. But I would like to send for your consideration Miss Aikin’s very entertaining
‘Court of Queen
Elizabeth,’ and Coxe’s ‘Memoirs of the Duke of ![]()
![]()
Marlborough.’ Perhaps you
will favour me with putting your memoranda together on D’Israeli’s work. George Chalmers persists in his determination to publish the
private life of Queen
Mary, on the printing of which he has already made great progress. This
will afford an opportunity for giving a most interesting account of this
unfortunate woman, and of the characters and times of her reign. I have myself
ten or twelve original letters,—from which something might be
extracted—written during her confinement in Sheffield Castle. Now, if you
would do me the favour to make your memoranda for such a subject,—and
much preparation you must already have formed in spite of yourself,—and
favour me by writing the life, which you could accomplish easily in three or
four sheets of the Review, I shall have the pleasure of being
your debtor in the sum of 100 guineas and a hundredweight of obligation. I have
just parted with Mr. and Mrs.
Somerville, who set out for Edinburgh on Wednesday. I hope to have
the pleasure of seeing you before the autumn closes.
I remain, dear Sir, &c., &c.,
Lucy Aikin (1781-1864)
English biographer and historian, the daughter of Dr. John Aikin and niece of Anna
Letitia Barbauld, whose works she edited (1825). She published in the
Literary Gazette.
George Chalmers (1742-1825)
Scottish antiquary ridiculed by Edmond Malone for defending Ireland's forgeries in
An Apology for the Believers in the Shakspear Papers (1797).
William Coxe (1748-1828)
English traveller, biographer, antiquary, and archdeacon of Wiltshire; he was employed as
a tutor by the Duke of Marlborough and Samuel Whitbread.
Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
English essayist and literary biographer; author of
Curiosities of
Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.
John Evelyn (1620-1706)
English writer and virtuoso, author of
Sylva, or Forest Trees
(1664); his
Diary was published in 1818-19.
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
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.
Mary Somerville [née Fairfax] (1780-1872)
Mathematician and science writer, daughter of Admiral William George Fairfax (1739-1813)
and friend of Ada Byron; she spent her later years in Italy. She was twice married.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
