The relations between author and publisher which had prevailed in the
eighteenth century were, in his case, curiously inverted, and, in the
place of a solitary scholar like Johnson, surrounded by an association
of booksellers, the drawing-room of Murray now presented the remarkable
spectacle of a single publisher acting as the centre of attraction to a
host of distinguished writers.
In Murray the spirit of the eighteenth century seemed to meet and
harmonize with the spirit of the nineteenth. Enthusiasm, daring,
originality, and freedom from conventionality made him eminently a man
of his time, and, in a certain sense, he did as much as any of his
contemporaries to swell that movement in his profession towards complete
individual liberty which had been growing almost from the foundation of
the Stationers' Company. On the other hand, in his temper, taste, and
general principles, he reflected the best and most ancient traditions of
his craft. Had his life been prolonged, he would have witnessed the
disappearance in the trade of many institutions which he reverenced and
always sought to develop.
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