Like many other men of Herculean power, he was not eager to exhibit his strength; but on one occasion he gave proof of it in the following circumstances.  Mr. Murray had asked him to accompany him to the Coronation of George IV.  They had tickets of admittance to Westminster Hall, but on arriving there they found that the sudden advent of Queen Caroline, attended by a mob claiming admission to the Abbey, had alarmed the authorities, who caused all the doors to be shut.  That by which they should have entered was held close and guarded by several stalwart janitors.  Belzoni thereupon advanced to the door, and, in spite of the efforts of these guardians, including Tom Crib and others of the pugilistic corps who had been engaged as constables, opened it with ease, and admitted himself and Mr. Murray.

In 1820 Mr. Murray was invited to publish “The Fall of Jerusalem, a Sacred Tragedy,” by the Rev. H.H.  Milman, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s.  As usual, he consulted Mr. Gifford, whose opinion was most favourable.  “I have been more and more struck,” he said, “with the innumerable beauties in Milman’s ‘Fall of Jerusalem.’”

Mr. Murray requested the author to state his own price for the copyright, and Mr. Milman wrote: 

“I am totally at a loss to fix one.  I think I might decide whether an offer were exceedingly high or exceedingly low, whether a Byron or Scott price, or such as is given to the first essay of a new author.  Though the ‘Fall of Jerusalem’ might demand an Israelitish bargain, yet I shall not be a Jew further than my poetry.  Make a liberal offer, such as the prospect will warrant, and I will at once reply, but I am neither able nor inclined to name a price....  As I am at present not very far advanced in life, I may hereafter have further dealings with the Press, and, of course, where I meet with liberality shall hope to make a return in the same way.  It has been rather a favourite scheme of mine, though this drama cannot appear on the boards, to show it before it is published to my friend Mrs. Siddons, who perhaps might like to read it, either at home or abroad.  I have not even hinted at such a thing to her, so that this is mere uncertainty, and, before it is printed, it would be in vain to think of it, as the old lady’s eyes and MS. could never agree together.

“P.S.—­I ought to have said that I am very glad of Aristarchus’ [Grifford’s] approval.  And, by the way, I think, if I help you in redeeming your character from ‘Don Juan,’ the ‘Hetaerse’ in the Quarterly, [Footnote:  Mitchell’s article on “Female Society in Greece,” Q.R. No. 43.] etc., you ought to estimate that very highly.”

Mr. Murray offered Mr. Milman five hundred guineas for the copyright, to which the author replied:  “Your offer appears to me very fair, and I shall have no scruple in acceding to it.”

Milman, in addition to numerous plays and poems, became a contributor to the Quarterly, and one of Murray’s historians.  He wrote the “History of the Jews” and the “History of Christianity”; he edited Gibbon and Horace, and continued during his lifetime to be one of Mr. Murray’s most intimate and attached friends.