Now that his reputation as a publisher was becoming established, Mr. Murray grew more particular as to the guise of the books which he issued.  He employed the best makers of paper, the best printers, and the best book-binders.  He attended to the size and tone of the paper, and quality of the type, the accuracy of the printing, and the excellence of the illustrations.  All this involved a great deal of correspondence.  We find his letters to the heads of departments full of details as to the turn-out of his books.  Everything, from the beginning to the end of the issue of a work—­the first inspection of the MS., the consultation with confidential friends as to its fitness for publication, the form in which it was to appear, the correction of the proofs, the binding, title, and final advertisement—­engaged his closest attention.  Besides the elegant appearance of his books, he also aimed at raising the standard of the literature which he published.  He had to criticize as well as to select; to make suggestions as to improvements where the manuscript was regarded with favour, and finally to launch the book at the right time and under the best possible auspices.  It might almost be said of the publisher, as it is of the poet, that he is born, not made.  And Mr. Murray appears, from the beginning to the end of his career, to have been a born publisher.

In August 1806, during the slack season in London, Mr. Murray made his promised visit to Edinburgh.  He was warmly received by Constable and Hunter, and enjoyed their hospitality for some days.  After business matters had been disposed of, he was taken in hand by Hunter, the junior partner, and led off by him to enjoy the perilous hospitality of the Forfarshire lairds.

Those have been called the days of heroic drinking.  Intemperance prevailed to an enormous extent.  It was a time of greater licentiousness, perhaps, in all the capitals of Europe, and this northern one among the rest, than had been known for a long period.  Men of the best education and social position drank like the Scandinavian barbarians of olden times.  Tavern-drinking, now almost unknown among the educated and professional classes of Edinburgh, was then carried by all ranks to a dreadful excess.

Murray was conducted by Hunter to his father’s house of Eskmount in Forfarshire, where he was most cordially received, and in accordance with the custom of the times the hospitality included invitations to drinking bouts at the neighbouring houses.

An unenviable notoriety in this respect attached to William Maule (created Baron Panmure 1831).  He was the second son of the eighth Earl of Dalhousie, but on succeeding, through his grandmother, to the estates of the Earls of Panmure, he had assumed the name of Maule in lieu of that of Ramsay.

Much against his will, Murray was compelled to take part in some of these riotous festivities with the rollicking, hard-drinking Forfarshire lairds, and doubtless he was not sorry to make his escape at length uninjured, if not unscathed, and to return to more congenial society in Edinburgh.  His attachment to Miss Elliot ended in an engagement.