No man without a
very high sense of justice and self-respect could have conducted a
correspondence on a matter of business in terms of such dignified
propriety as Murray employed in addressing Benjamin Disraeli after the
collapse of the _Representative_. It is indeed a proof of power to
appreciate character, remarkable in so young a man, that Disraeli
should, after all that had passed between them, have approached Murray
in his capacity of publisher with complete confidence. He knew that he
was dealing with a man at once shrewd and magnanimous, and he gave him
credit for understanding how to estimate his professional interest apart
from his sense of private injury.
Perhaps his most distinguishing characteristic as a publisher was his
unfeigned love of literature for its own sake. His almost romantic
admiration for genius and its productions raised him above the
atmosphere of petty calculation. Not unfrequently it of course led him
into commercial mistakes, and in his purchase of Crabbe's "Tales" he
found to his cost that his enthusiastic appreciation of that author's
works and the magnificence of his dealings with him were not the measure
of the public taste.
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