Constable had, some years previous, hit upon the idea of appealing to a public that should be numbered, not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands, ay, and by millions! and had just commenced his “Miscellany.” Murray, quick to receive a good idea, started at once into competition with his “Family Library,” Lockhart commencing the series with a “Life of Napoleon” and the “Court and Camp of Bonaparte.” Cunningham followed with his “Lives of the British Painters,” and Southey revised his “Life of Nelson,” and expanded another review article into a “Life of Wellington,” on terms equally munificent with the other. Cheap editions of Byron were multiplied by the score; Landor received a thousand guineas for his “Journals of African Travel,” and Napier another thousand for his first volume of the “History of the Peninsular War.” If Murray neglected opportunities, he generally managed to retrieve them. He might have had the “Bridgewater Treatises;” and he says, “The ‘Rejected Addresses’ were offered me for ten pounds, and I let them go by as the kite of the moment. See the result! I was determined to pay for my neglect, and I bought the remainder of the copyright for 150 guineas.” Murray might have added that he generously gave the Smiths a handsome share in the ultimate profits. Sometimes, too, he had the sagacity to buy the _failures_ as well as the successes of other publishers. Constable produced a little “History of England,” in one small volume, which fell still-born from the press. Murray purchased it for a trifle, re-christened it with his usual happiness, and as “Mrs. Markham’s History of England” the work has been an annual source of revenue to the house, as the present Mr. Murray’s last trade sale list would tell us. Murray was never dazzled by the fame of his Byrons, his Moores, his Campbells, and his Crabbes, but always recollected that “taste” is flitting, while works that only aid the necessities of mankind are always saleable. The “Army and Navy List” and the “Nautical Almanack” are every whit as profitable to-day as in the first year of their publication. Moore tells a story that shows he could still occupy his mind as well as fill his purse with “Mrs. Rundell’s Cookery Book.” “Called at Murray’s,” he writes in his “Diary,” for 1831: “mentioned to him Lady Morgan’s wish to contribute something to his ‘Family Library,’ and that she has materials ready for the lives of five or six Dutch painters. ‘Pray, isn’t Lady Morgan a very good cook?’ I answered I didn’t know; but why did he ask? ‘Because,’ said he, ‘if she would do something in that line--’ ‘Why, you don’t mean,’ said I, ‘that she should write a cookery book for you?’ ‘No,’ answered John, coolly, ‘not so much as that; but that she should re-edit mine’ (Mrs. Rundell’s, by which he had made heaps of money). Oh, that she could have heard this with her own ears! Here ended my negotiations for her Ladyship.”