Scott is abused, his publisher, Mr. Murray, is sneered at, in the
following lines:
"And think'st them, Scott, by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance;
Though _Murray_ with his Miller may combine,
_To yield thy Muse just_ HALF-A-CROWN A LINE?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former _laurels fade_.
Let such forego the poet's sacred name,
Who _rack_ their _brains_ for _lucre_, not for fame:
Low may they sink to _merited contempt_,
And _scorn_ remunerate the _mean_ attempt."
Now, is it not almost incredible that this very Murray (the only
remaining one of the booksellers whom his Lordship had attacked; Miller
has left the trade)--is it not, we say, almost incredible that this very
Murray should have been soon after selected, by this very Lord Byron, to
be his own publisher? But what will our readers say, when we assure
them, that not only was Murray so selected, but that this magnanimous
young Lord has actually _sold_ his works to this same Murray? and, what
is a yet more singular circumstance, has received and pocketted, for one
of his own "stale romances," a sum amounting, not to "_half-a-crown_,"
but to _a whole crown, a line!!!_
This fact, monstrous as it seems in the author of the foregoing lines,
is, we have the fullest reason to believe, accurately true. And the
"_faded laurel_," "_the brains rac'd for lucre_," "_the merited
contempt_," "_the scorn_," and the "_meanness_," which this impudent
young man dared to attribute to Mr.
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