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
trade seems early to have risen in his mind, and he was perhaps the
first member of the Stationers' craft to separate the business of
bookselling from that of publishing. When Constable in Edinburgh sent
him "a miscellaneous order of books from London," he replied: "Country
orders are a branch of business which I have ever totally declined as
incompatible with my more serious plans as a publisher."
With ideas of this kind, it may readily be imagined that Murray was not
what is usually called "a good man of business," a fact of which he was
well aware, as the following incident, which occurred in his later
years, amusingly indicates.
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