To Mr. Murray [Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times]

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Title:     To Mr. Murray [Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times]
Author: Lord Byron [More Titles by Byron]

1.

Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times,[1]
Patron and publisher of rhymes,
For thee the bard up Pindus climbs,
My Murray.

2.

To thee, with hope and terror dumb,
The unfledged MS. authors come;
Thou printest all--and sellest some--
My Murray.

3.

Upon thy table's baize so green
The last new Quarterly is seen,--
But where is thy new Magazine,[2]
My Murray?

4.

Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine
The works thou deemest most divine--
The Art of Cookery,[3] and mine,
My Murray.

5.

Tours, Travels, Essays, too, I wist,
And Sermons, to thy mill bring grist;
And then thou hast the _Navy List_,
My Murray.

6.

And Heaven forbid I should conclude,
Without "the Board of Longitude,"[4]
Although this narrow paper would,
My Murray.

Venice, _April 11_, 1818.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] [William Strahan (1715-1785) published Johnson's _Dictionary_, Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, Cook's _Voyages, etc_. He was great-grandfather of the mathematician William Spottiswoode (1825-1883).

Jacob Tonson (1656?-1736) published for Otway, Dryden, Addison, etc. He was secretary of the Kit-Cat Club, 1700. He was the publisher (1712, etc.) of the _Spectator_.

Barnaby Bernard Lintot (1675-1736) was at one time (1718) in partnership with Tonson. He published Pope's _Iliad_ in 1715, and the _Odyssey_, 1725-26.]

[2] [See note 2, p. 51.]

[3] [Mrs. Rundell's _Domestic Cookery_, published in 1806, was one of Murray's most successful books. In 1822 he purchased the copyright from Mrs. Rundell for £2000 (see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 375; and _Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, ii. 124).]

[4] [The sixth edition of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ (1813) was "printed by T. Davison, Whitefriars, for John Murray, Bookseller to the Admiralty, and the Board of Longitude." Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 259) attributes to Byron a statement that Murray had to choose between continuing to be his publisher and printing the "Navy Lists," and "that there was no hesitation which way he should decide: the Admiralty carried the day." In his "Notes" to the _Conversations_ (November 2, 1824) Murray characterized "the passage about the Admiralty" as "unfounded in fact, and no otherwise deserving of notice than to mark its absurdity."]

[The end]
Lord Byron's poem: To Mr. Murray [Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times]

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