We could repeat five hundred anecdotes of his liberal and kindly generosity, but our space only permits us to record another, which it is very pleasant to read about. It was twenty-two years since the obscure Fleet Street bookseller had embraced the “glorious and profitable” opportunity of taking a fourth share in “Marmion,” and since then Sir Walter Scott had achieved an unparalleled position in the world of English letters, had written innumerable works, and had earned unheard-of sums--and had been completely ruined. With the aid of his creditors, Scott was now seeking to recover all his copyrights for a final edition of his collected works. All had been bought back save this fourth share of “Marmion.” Lockhart was commissioned by his father-in-law to inquire on what terms the share might be re-purchased, and this was Murray’s immediate reply:-- “Albemarle Street, June 8th, 1829. “MY DEAR SIR,--Mr. Lockhart has this moment communicated your letter respecting my fourth share of the copyright of ‘Marmion.’ I have already been applied to by Messrs. Constable and Messrs. Longman to know what sum I would sell this share for; but so highly do I estimate the honour of being, even in so small a degree, the publisher of the author of this poem, that no pecuniary consideration whatever can induce me to part with it. “But there is a consideration of another kind, which until now I was not aware of, which would make it painful to me if I were to retain it longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required by the author, into whose hands it was spontaneously resigned in the same instant that I read his request. “The share has been profitable to me fifty-fold beyond what either publisher or author could have anticipated, and, therefore, my returning it on such an occasion, you will, I trust, do me the favour to consider in no other light than as a mere act of grateful acknowledgment, for benefits already received by “My dear Sir, “Your obliged and faithful Servant, “JOHN MURRAY.” This noble act, we must remember, was performed at a time when the future was anything but bright, or at all events when the present was dismally gloomy. “Lydia Whyte,” writes Tom Moore, “told me that Murray was very unsuccessful of late. Besides the failure of his _Representative_, the _Quarterly_ did not look very promising, and he was about to give up the fine house he had taken in Whitehall, and return to live in Albemarle-street.”