“Permit me to add, sir, that the person who thus addresses you is no adventurer, but a man of some property, including a business that has been established for nearly half a century. I therefore trust that my application will be attributed to its proper motives, and that your goodness will at least pardon its intrusion. “I have the honour to be, Sir, &c., &c., “JOHN MURRAY.” Canning read the letter, and though for the present it was put away in his desk unanswered, the contents were not forgotten, for a few years before this he had heard Murray’s name mentioned in a very honourable way. Some Etonians, among them Canning’s nephew, had started a periodical called the _Miniature_, which brought them some fame, but left them under a pecuniary loss. Murray, with his usual good nature, and with something of the tact which afterwards made him so many powerful friends, took all copies off their hands, paid all their expenses, and though he found little demand for the work, offered to print a new edition. This was a trait of character that, with a clear-headed, far-seeing man like Canning, would probably go far. As yet, however, the Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs, though he gave the matter careful consideration, did not care to commit himself upon paper. Two months, however, before this letter Scott and Southey had been corresponding about the _Edinburgh Review_, Southey stating that he felt himself unable to contribute to a periodical of such political views, and Scott heartily agreeing in deprecating the general tone of the _Review_. Early in 1808, a very severe article came out in the _Review_ anent “Marmion.” Murray pricked up his ears, and, as he afterwards told Lockhart, “When I read the article on ‘Marmion,’ and another on general politics in the same number of the _Review_ I said to myself, ‘Walter Scott has feelings both as a gentleman and as a Tory, which those people must now have wounded. The alliance between him and the whole clique of the _Edinburgh Review_, the proprietor included, is shaken,’” “and,” adds Lockhart, “as far at least as the political part of the affair was concerned, John Murray’s sagacity was not at fault.”