cessity of declining to publish
several new works offered to him, especially those dealing with medical
and poetical subjects.

Mr. Archibald Constable of Edinburgh, and Messrs. Bell & Bradfute, Mr.
Murray's agents in Edinburgh, were also communicated with as to the
settlement of their accounts with Murray & Highley. "I expected," he
said, "to have been able to pay my respects to you both this summer
[1803], but my _military duties_, and the serious aspect of the times,
oblige me to remain at home." It was the time of a patriotic volunteer
movement, and Mr. Murray was enrolled as an ensign in the 3rd Regiment
of Royal London Volunteers.

It cannot now be ascertained what was the origin of the acquaintance
between the D'Israeli and Murray families, but it was of old standing.
The first John Murray published the first volumes of Isaac D'Israeli's
"Curiosities of Literature" (1791), and though no correspondence between
them has been preserved, we find frequent mention of the founder of the
house in Isaac D'Israeli's letters to John Murray the Second. His
experiences are held up for his son's guidance, as for example, when
Isaac, urging the young publisher to support some petition to the East
India Company, writes, "It was a ground your father trod, and I suppose
that connection cannot do you any harm"; or again, when dissuading him
from undertaking some work submitted to him, "You can mention to Mr.
Harley the fate of Professor Musaeus' 'Popular Tales,' which never sold,
and how much your father was disappointed." On another occasion we find
D'Israeli, in 1809, inviting his publisher to pay a visit to a yet older
generation, "to my father, who will be very glad to see you at Margate."

Besides the "Curiosities of Literature," and "Flim-Flams," the last a
volume not mentioned by Lord Beaconsfield in the "Life" of his father
prefixed to the 1865 edition of the "Curiosities of Literature," Mr.
D'Israeli published through Murray, in 1803, a small volume of
"Narrative Poems" in 4to. They consisted of "An Ode to his Favourite
Critic"; "The Carder and the Currier, a Story of Amorous Florence";
"Cominge, a Story of La Trappe"; and "A Tale addressed to a Sybarite."
The verses in these poems run smoothly, but they contain no wit, no
poetry, nor even any story. They were never reprinted.

The following letter is of especial interest, as fixing the date of an
event which has given rise to much discussion--the birth of Benjamin
Dis