Murray seems to have kept up his connection with Edinburgh, for in 1773 we find him London agent for the _Edinburgh Magazine and Review_, and in the following year, when it was proposed to separate the _Magazine_ from the _Review_, Stuart writes to Smellie:--“Murray seems fully apprised of the pains and attentions that are necessary, has literary connections, and is fond of the employment; let him, therefore, be the London proprietor.” Murray consented to “take a share,” if his advice were attended to; but the scheme of a review came to nothing, and even the existing _Edinburgh Magazine and Review_ died, in 1776, of a violent attack on Lord Monboddo’s “Origin of Language.” Murray offered his condolence in the following laconic note:-- “DEAR SMELLIE,--I am sorry for the defeat you have met with. Had you praised Lord Monboddo instead of damning him, it would not have happened. “Yours, &c. “JOHN MURRAY.” Murray, now that the Edinburgh scheme had come to nothing, commenced in 1780 a volume of annual intelligence of his own under the title of the _London Mercury_; and in January, 1783, with the assistance of a staff of able writers, among whom were Dr. Whittaker and Gilbert Stuart, who had lately come from Scotland, he started the _English Review_. A great portion of Murray’s retail stock was medical books, and for many years the house had a reputation in the medical world. Of the books, however, which he published, those more latterly issued proved by far the most successful, such as Langhorne’s “Plutarch’s Lives,” Mitford’s “Greece,” and, in 1791, a thin octavo in which the elder Disraeli first gave the public his “Curiosities of Literature”--all of them works which have since been annual sources of revenue to the firm. Murray found time, however, amidst all this business, to indulge his own literary tastes and aspirations, which had at one time been strong. Some of his pamphlets--such as the “Letter to Mr. Mason on his Edition of Gray’s Poems, and the Practice of Booksellers” (1777); his “Considerations on the Freight and Shipping of the East India Company” (1786), and “An Author’s Conduct to the Public, stated in the Behaviour of Dr. William Cullen” (1784)--acquired much transient reputation. After a career, as successful we imagine as his wishes could desire, John Murray died on the 6th November, 1793, leaving behind him a widow, two daughters, and an only son, and bequeathing to the latter a business which was destined to carry the name of John Murray wherever the English language was spoken, and wherever English books were read, as the most venturesome and yet the most successful publisher who has ever, in London at all events, encouraged the struggles of authorship and gratified the tastes of half a world of readers.