pense it was got up, felt it to be tragical enough when he came to settle the bill. The short and fateful career of the 'Representa tive' newspaper is an incident of which the details, as given here, are little known.

The Representative' was Mr Murray's sole essay in daily journalism, and it was enough for him. It originated in the fertile brain of young Mr Benjamin Disraeli, who was at the time sowing some of his wild oats among City speculators. He was then a Tory, and had not entered himself as a disciple of O'Connell and Joseph Hume, as he did some years afterwards. Disraeli was connected with a City financier of the name of Powles, whose enterprises he had been aiding by writing pamphlets, and he approached Murray with the project of a new daily paper, which was to be at once a Tory organ and a City oracle. Murray, who appears to have had a hankering after a newspaper venture, fell into the snare; but as he had consulted Scott before starting the 'Quarterly,' he wished to have his advice likewise on this occasion. . Benjamin was duly accredited as envoy to Abbotsford, to enlist Scott's sympathy and perhaps induce Lockhart to become editor; and he set out with all the pomp, circumstance, and secrecy attending a secret mission. In his despatches to his chief, ciphers are affectedly used to cover the names of the principal parties in the negotiation. "The Chevalier," of course, stands for Sir Walter; "M" from Melrose rather obscurely points to Lockhart; Barrow is "Chronometer"; "X" Mr Canning; and "O the political Puck" doubtless Disraeli himself. Dizzy flattered himself that he had managed everything,-conciliated

Sir Walter, and appointed Lockhart editor on a salary of £1000 and a percentage upon the profits, with a seat in Parliament.

"He cannot be a representative of a Government borough. It is impossible. He must be free as air," he airily writes to Murray. "There is no harm of Lockhart's coming in for a Tory borough because he is a Tory; sible to be managed." but a Ministerial borough is impos

"I read repeatedly the third letter of our young plenipotentiary. I know nothing against him but his youth,' writes Isaac D'Israeli with paternal partiality-"a fault which a few seasons of experience will infallibly correct; but I have observed that the habits and experience he has acquired as a lawyer often greatly serve him in matters of business. His views are vast, but they are based on good sense, and he is most determinedly anxious when he sets to work."

But young Disraeli's mission had not been so successful as he imagined. Sir Walter Scott was not likely to counsel his son-inlaw to risk his standing and prospects on the doubtful waters of London journalism; and had Murray not resolved to offer Lockhart the editorship of the 'Quarterly,' Disraeli's charming would have been in vain. The negotiations entailed a second embassy by Disraeli to the Tweed, before Lockhart was finally persuaded to go to London. To Disraeli Murray seems to have intrusted the whole of the preliminary preparations, and young Mr Benjamin threw himself into the work with feverish energy, purchasing premises, planning offices, engaging foreign correspondents, providing a staff, and even decoying away Times' reporters. He fixed the name of the new paper, 'The Representative,' and then-he disappeared from the scene. Neither he nor Powles turned up to deposit their respective quarter parts of the cap

ital; and Murray was left alone to carry out the enterprise, to which he stood committed to the public. The paper was launched, but from the first it was doomed to failure; and though an endeavour was made to save it by the aid of Maginn, it succumbed after six months, having absorbed not less than £26,000 of Murray's money. It is not surprising to be told that there was a coldness afterwards between Murray and Disraeli, for whom the only valid excuse is that he had at the time little more than escaped from his

teens.

6

Lockhart's assumption of office naturally excited misgivings and some hostility among the Quarterly' Reviewers. As the "Scorpion " of 'Blackwood,' some of them had even felt his sting; and it was somewhat of a revolution to find Murray committing the editorship of his 'Review' to that contributor against whose articles he had not so long before solemnly cautioned William Blackwood. Croker seems to have been especially nasty, and, both by his writing and his not-writing, to have given both Murray and Lock

hart much trouble. But Lockhart soon showed that he could not merely manage the old but recruit new contributors; and some of the Quarterly's' most distinguished Reviewers were added to the roll under his editorship. It It fell to his lot to pilot the Quarterly' through the two most difficult political crises that Tory editors have ever had to face, and he managed to keep the 'Review' on a consistent and honourable tack.

When the Duke of Wel

lington came in in January 1828, Lockhart foresaw that Emancipation must be faced. "The fact is," he wrote to Murray, we all feel that the accession of the

"I found that the 'Quarterly Review' had all along kept neutral on the Catholic question, and have considered it due to your interests not to be in a hurry to propose any change as to this matter. My own feeling, however, is, and always has been, that the question will be carried in our time; and my only difficulty as to advising you results from the sense I entertain of the extreme delicacy of thought and language that would be requisite for handling the subject with manliness, and yet without needlessly alarming and outraging a great body who have hitherto, for aught I can tell, been the best and steadiest friends of the 'Review.'

In the Reform difficulty, and amid the political confusion which it caused, the circulation of the 'Review' began to fall, and we find Lockhart proposing to Murray the reduction of his own honorarium, but the publisher instead faced the crisis in his own way by increas ing both the editor's salary and the rate of payment for contributions. Under Lockhart and Murray's vigorous management the 'Review' eventually held its ground.

Lockhart," says Dr Smiles, "had the knack of greatly improving the articles submitted to him. By his knowledge of language and mastery of English style, he added grace and point to even the best written papers, and by a few touches he would develop and spirit to the solid sense of a heavy a half-expressed thought and give life article.. He did this, too, without unnecessary curtailment, so as not to offend but even to gratify the authors of the papers. He was also most punctual in his correspondence with the contributors; nor was he less prompt in the publication of the suc cessive numbers of the 'Quarterly' at the appointed periods-so different from the irregularity of its appearance in the time of his predecessor, William Gifford."

The presence of Lockhart at Murray's hospitalities in Albemarle Street always attracted the study of strangers, and in the letters and journals of many distinguished visitors we find surprise recorded at the difference from their preconceived expectations. Cold and reserved on the surface, he was found to be cordial and genial when once the ice was broken. His warmth of heart and genuine friendship were qualities full well known to Maga.' He was the very concentration of quiet power. His lofty contempt for all that was sham and spurious, in literature as in the world in general, the outspoken expression of which had procured him the sobriquet of the "Scorpion," were too deeply ingrained in his character to be ever shaken, but he learned through experience when to manifest it with propriety and effect. We find him even interposing between "such poor deer as Lady Morgan" and the scourging of Croker. In every way Lockhart was the worthy successor of Gifford, and a most valuable literary ally to Murray's business.

It was in 1812 that Murray removed westward to Albemarle Street, and that his house became one of the great literary salons of London; and his drawing-room, famed as the meeting-place of Scott and Byron, and adorned with the portraits of 'Quarterly' Reviewers and the great authors for whom he had published, has been made familiar by description from many pens. It is beyond our space to run over even the names of the celebrities who were attracted thither as to a common centre of literary reunion. Nor were the gentler sex unrepresented. Mrs Grahame, afterwards Lady Calcott, Mrs Norton, Lady Caroline Lamb, Mrs Hemans, Fanny

share in his joint adventures. Murray and Constable were early associated together, and it was one of the former's pieces of great good fortune to obtain a one-fourth share in the publication of "Marmion," which, in addition to its profitable results, brought with it the still more important advantage of an intimacy with Scott, and a lifelong friendship. The transactions and correspondence between Murray and Constable occupy considerable space in these volumes-they bear out the impression which Lockhart's Life of Scott' has already established, of Constable's ambitious and sanguine temperament and reckless financial management. From the beginning of their intercourse, Murray was troubled with difficulties arising from the "accommodation bills "> on which the Edinburgh business was carried on; and as Constable's London agent, and for a little time as London publisher of the Edinburgh Review,' he was kept in a state of constant suspense by Constable's failures to meet his obligations in time. Remonstrances were of no effect, and quarrels and reconciliations were of frequent occurrence. With the Ballantynes his experience had been much the same. They too had their share of Scott, and to receive any benefits from the wand of the Great Magician, it was necessary to become a participant in their reckless bill transactions, and to take an interest in their unsound trading operations. Murray could not save himself from participating in the embarrassments of the Edinburgh business, but he seems to have kept his head amid the enchantment which Scott had wrought around him, and to have followed Bailie Nicol Jarvie's sage principle of "never putting out your hand farther than your arm will

reach." So long as assistance was procurable James Ballantyne was all complaisance, but the printing business was a bottomless pit, and when Murray began to draw back, which was not easily done, quarrels too followed with him. When the Ballantyne printing and publishing partnership was formed, the responsibility of allocating interests in Scott's works fell to James Ballantyne, and he used power solely as a means of providing money for the two businesses, and of propping up their credit. Murray, to his great disgust, found himself for these reasons excluded from a venture in the "Lady of the Lake," and the consequent controversy between them led to the transference of the Edinburgh agency of the 'Quarterly' and Murray's publications from the Ballantynes to William Blackwood, who was then rising into note as a publisher. It was Murray's good fortune to free himself of the meshes of Constable and the Ballantynes before he fell under the spell of the "Waverley Novels," for when the inevitable crash came, he was not only secure himself, but was able to reach out an assisting hand to less fortunate members of the "trade."

The connection between Murray and Blackwood, though not of long duration, was marked by pleasant intercourse and mutual services, which are duly recorded in Dr Smiles's volumes; and its memory is, we are assured, still highly valued by the Edinburgh house. Murray's frequent visits to Edinburgh had early developed an intimacy between the two publishers which ripened under frequent correspondence and business intercourse. Both were active in mind and ambitious in their views, and both felt that they were weighed down by the preponderating incu