When in doubt about any manuscript, he usually conferred with Croker, Campbell, or Gifford, who always displayed the utmost kindness in helping him with their opinions.  Croker was usually short and pithy.  Of one poem he said:  “Trash—­the dullest stuff I ever read.”  This was enough to ensure the condemnation of the manuscript.  Campbell was more guarded, as when reporting on a poem entitled “Woman,” he wrote, “In my opinion, though there are many excellent lines in it, the poem is not such as will warrant a great sum being speculated upon it.  But, as it is short, I think the public, not the author or publisher, will be in fault if it does not sell one edition.”

Of a poem sent for his opinion, Gifford wrote: 

“Honestly, the MS. is totally unfit for the press.  Do not deceive yourself:  this MS. is not the production of a male.  A man may write as great nonsense as a woman, and even greater; but a girl may pass through those execrable abodes of ignorance, called boarding schools, without learning whether the sun sets in the East or in the West, whereas a boy can hardly do this, even at Parson’s Green.”

James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, was another of Murray’s correspondents.

The publication of “The Queen’s Wake” in 1813 immediately brought Hogg into connection with the leading authors and publishers of the day, Hogg sent a copy of the volume to Lord Byron, his “brother poet,” whose influence he desired to enlist on behalf of a work which Hogg wished Murray to publish.

The poem which the Ettrick Shepherd referred to was “The Pilgrims of the Sun,” and the result of Lord Byron’s conversation with Mr. Murray was, that the latter undertook to publish Hogg’s works.  The first letter from him to Murray, December 26, 1814, begins: 

“What the deuce have you made of my excellent poem that you are never publishing it, while I am starving for want of money, and cannot even afford a Christmas goose to my friends?”

To this and many similar enquiries Mr. Murray replied on April 10, 1815: 

My Dear Friend,

I entreat you not to ascribe to inattention the delay which has occurred in my answer to your kind and interesting letter.  Much more, I beg you not for a moment to entertain a doubt about the interest which I take in your writings, or the exertions which I shall ever make to promote their sale and popularity....  They are selling every day.

I have forgotten to tell you that Gifford tells me that he would receive, with every disposition to favour it, any critique which you like to send of new Scottish works.  If I had been aware of it in time I certainly would have invited your remarks on “Mannering.”  Our article is not good and our praise is by no means adequate, I allow, but I suspect you very greatly overrate the novel.  “Meg Merrilies” is worthy of Shakespeare, but all the rest of the novel might have been written by Scott’s brother or any other body.