It is unnecessary to describe in detail the further progress of the Quarterly.  The venture was now fairly launched.  Occasionally, when some friction arose from the editorial pruning of Southey’s articles, or when Mr. Murray remonstrated with the exclusion or inclusion of some particular article, Mr. Gifford became depressed, or complained, “This business begins to get too heavy for me, and I must soon have done, I fear.”  Such discouragement was only momentary.  Gifford continued to edit the Review for many years, until and long after its complete success had become assured.

The following extract, from a letter of Southey’s to his friend Bedford, describes very happily the position which Mr. Murray had now attained.

“Murray offers me a thousand guineas for my intended poem in blank verse, and begs it may not be a line longer than “Thomson’s Seasons”!  I rather think the poem will be a post obit, and in that case, twice that sum, at least, may be demanded for it.  What his real feelings may be towards me, I cannot tell; but he is a happy fellow, living in the light of his own glory.  The Review is the greatest of all works, and it is all his own creation; he prints 10,000, and fifty times ten thousand read its contents, in the East and in the West.  Joy be with him and his journal!”

CHAPTER IX

LORD BYRON’S WORKS, 1811 TO 1814

The origin of Mr. Murray’s connection with Lord Byron was as follows.  Lord Byron had made Mr. Dallas [Footnote:  Robert Charles Dallas (1754-1824).  His sister married Captain George Anson Byron, and her descendants now hold the title.] a present of the MS. of the first two cantos of “Childe Harold,” and allowed him to make arrangements for their publication.  Mr. Dallas’s first intention was to offer them to the publisher of “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” but Cawthorn did not rank sufficiently high among his brethren of the trade.  He was precluded from offering them to Longman & Co. because of their refusal to publish the Satire.  He then went to Mr. Miller, of Albemarle Street, and left the manuscript with him, “enjoining the strictest secrecy as to the author.”  After a few days’ consideration Miller declined to publish the poem, principally because of the sceptical stanzas which it contained, and also because of its denunciation as a “plunderer” of his friend and patron the Earl of Elgin, who was mentioned by name in the original manuscript of the poem.

After hearing from Dallas that Miller had declined to publish “Childe Harold,” Lord Byron wrote to him from Reddish’s Hotel: 

Lord Byron to Mr. Miller.

July 30, 1811.

SIR,