During the year in which the Quarterly was first given to the world, the alliance between Murray and the Ballantynes was close and intimate: their correspondence was not confined to business matters, but bears witness to warm personal friendship.

Murray was able to place much printing work in their hands, and amongst other books, "Mrs. Rundell's Cookery," a valuable property, which had now reached a very large circulation, was printed at the Canongate Press.

They exerted themselves to promote the sale of one another's publications and engaged in various joint works, such, for example, as Grahame's "British Georgics" and Scott's "English Minstrelsy."

In the midst of all these transactions, however, there were not wanting symptoms of financial difficulties, which, as in a previous instance, were destined in time to cause a severance between Murray and his Edinburgh agents. It was the old story—drawing bills for value not received. Murray seriously warned the Ballantynes of the risks they were running in trading beyond their capital. James Ballantyne replied on March 30, 1809:

Mr. James Ballantyne to John Murray.

"Suffer me to notice one part of your letter respecting which you will be happy to be put right. We are by no means trading beyond our capital. It requires no professional knowledge to enable us to avoid so fatal an error as that. For the few speculations we have entered into our means have been carefully calculated and are perfectly adequate."

Yet at the close of the same letter, referring to the "British Novelists"—a vast scheme, to which Mr. Murray had by no means pledged himself—Ballantyne continues:

"For this work permit me to state I have ordered a font of types, cut expressly on purpose, at an expense of near £1,000, and have engaged a very large number of compositors for no other object."

On June 14, James Ballantyne wrote to Murray:

"I can get no books out yet, without interfering in the printing office with business previously engaged for, and that puts me a little about for cash. Independent of this circumstance, upon which we reckoned, a sum of £1,500 payable to us at 25th May, yet waiting some cursed legal arrangements, but which we trust to have very shortly [sic]. This is all preliminary to the enclosures which I hope will not be disagreeable to you, and if not, I will trust to their receipt accepted, by return of post."

Mr. Murray replied on June 20:

"I regret that I should be under the necessity of returning you the two bills which you enclosed, unaccepted; but having settled lately a very large amount with Mr. Constable, I had occasion to grant more bills than I think it proper to allow to be about at the same time."

This was not the last application for acceptances, and it will be found that in the end it led to an entire separation between the firms.

The Ballantynes, however, were more sanguine than prudent. In spite of Mr. Murray's warning that they were proceeding too rapidly with the publication of new works, they informed him that they had a "gigantic scheme" in hand—the "Tales of the East," translated by Henry Weber, Walter Scott's private secretary—besides the "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," and the "Secret Memoirs of the House of Stewart." They said that Scott was interested in the "Tales of the East," and in one of their hopeful letters they requested Mr. Murray to join in their speculations. His answer was as follows:

John Murray to Messrs. Ballantyne & Co.

October 31, 1809.

"I regret that I cannot accept a share in the 'Edinburgh Encyclopaedia.' I am obliged to decline by motives of prudence. I do not know anything of the agreement made by the proprietors, except in the palpable mismanagement of a very exclusive and promising concern. I am therefore fearful to risk my property in an affair so extremely unsuitable.

"You distress me sadly by the announcement of having put the 'Secret Memoirs' to press, and that the paper for it was actually purchased six months ago! How can you, my good sirs, act in this way? How can you imagine that a bookseller can afford to pay eternal advances upon almost every work in which he takes a share with you? And how can you continue to destroy every speculation by entering upon new ones before the previous ones are properly completed?… Why, with your influence, will you not urge the completion of the 'Minstrelsy'? Why not go on with and complete the series of De Foe?… For myself, I really do not know what to do, for when I see that you will complete nothing of your own, I am unwillingly apprehensive of having any work of mine in your power. What I thus write is in serious friendship for you. I entreat you to let us complete what we have already in hand, before we begin upon any other speculation. You will have enough to do to sell those in which we are already engaged. As to your mode of exchange and so disposing of your shares, besides the universal obloquy which attends the practice in the mind of every respectable bookseller, and the certain damnation which it invariably causes both to the book and the author, as in the case of Grahame, if persisted in, it must end in serious loss to the bookseller…. If you cannot give me your solemn promise not to exchange a copy of Tasso, I trust you will allow me to withdraw the small share which I propose to take, for the least breath of this kind would blast the work and the author too—a most worthy man, upon whose account alone I engaged in the speculation."

Constable, with whom Murray had never entirely broken, had always looked with jealousy at the operations of the house of Ballantyne. Their firm had indeed been started in opposition to himself; and it was not without a sort of gratification that he heard of their pecuniary difficulties, and of the friction between them and Murray. Scott's "Lady of the Lake" had been announced for publication. At the close of a letter to Murray, Constable rather maliciously remarks:

January 20, 1810.

"I have no particular anxiety about promulgating the folly (to say the least of it) of certain correspondents of yours in this quarter; but if you will ask our friend Mr. Miller if he had a letter from a shop nearly opposite the Royal Exchange the other day, he will, I dare say, tell you of the contents. I am mistaken if their game is not well up! Indeed I doubt much if they will survive the 'Lady of the Lake.' She will probably help to drown them!"

An arrangement had been made with the Ballantynes that, in consideration of their being the sole agents for Mr. Murray in Scotland, they should give him the opportunity of taking shares in any of their publications. Instead, however, of offering a share of the "Lady of the Lake" to Mr. Murray, according to the understanding between the firms, the Ballantynes had already parted with one fourth share of the work to Mr. Miller, of Albemarle Street, London, whose business was afterwards purchased by Mr. Murray. Mr. Murray's letter to Ballantyne & Co. thus describes the arrangement:

John Murray to Messrs. Ballantyne & Co.

March 26, 1810.

"Respecting my Review, you appear to forget that your engagement was that I should be your sole agent here, and that you were to publish nothing but what I was to have the offer of a share in. Your deviation from this must have led me to conclude that you did not desire or expect to continue my agent any longer. You cannot suppose that my estimation of Mr. Scott's genius can have rendered me indifferent to my exclusion from a share in the 'Lady of the Lake.' I mention this as well to testify that I am not indifferent to this conduct in you as to point it out to you, that if you mean to withhold from me that portion which you command of the advantages of our connexion, you must surely mean to resign any that might arise from me. The sole agency for my publications in Edinburgh is worth to any man who understands his business £300 a year; but this requires zealous activity and deference on one side, and great confidence on both, otherwise the connexion cannot be advantageous or satisfactory to either party. For this number of the Review I have continued your name solely in it, and propose to make you as before sole publisher in Scotland; but as you have yourself adopted the plan of drawing upon me for the amount of each transaction, you will do me the favour to consider what quantity you will need, and upon your remitting to me a note at six months for the amount, I shall immediately ship the quantity for you."

Mr. James Ballantyne to John Murray.

"Your agency hitherto has been productive of little or no advantage to us, and the fault has not lain with us. We have persisted in offering you shares of everything begun by us, till we found the hopelessness of waiting any return; and in dividing Mr. Scott's poem, we found it our duty to give what share we had to part with to those by whom we were chiefly benefited both as booksellers and printers."

This letter was accompanied with a heavy bill for printing the works of De Foe for Mr. Murray. A breach thus took place with the Ballantynes; the publisher of the Quarterly was compelled to look out for a new agent for Scotland, and met with a thoroughly competent one in Mr. William Blackwood, the founder of the well-known publishing house in Edinburgh.

To return to the progress of the Quarterly. The fifth number, which was due in February 1810, but did not appear until the end of March, contained many excellent articles, though, as Mr. Ellis said, some of them were contributed by "good and steady but marvellously heavy friends." Yet he found it better than the Edinburgh, which on that occasion was "reasonably dull."

It contained one article which became the foundation of an English classic, that of Southey on the "Life of Nelson." Of this article Murray wrote to its author:

"I wish it to be made such a book as shall become the heroic text of every midshipman in the Navy, and the association of Nelson and Southey will not, I think, be ungrateful to you. If it be worth your attention in this way I am disposed to think that it will enable me to treble the sum I first offered as a slight remuneration."

Mr. Murray, writing to Mr. Scott (August 28, 1810) as to the appearance of the new number, which did not appear till a month and a half after it was due, remarked on the fourth article. "This," he said, "is a review of the 'Daughters of Isenberg, a Bavarian Romance,' by Mr. Gifford, to whom the authoress (Alicia T. Palmer) had the temerity to send three £1 notes!" Gifford, instead of sending back the money with indignation, as he at first proposed, reviewed the romance, and assumed that the authoress had sent him the money for charitable purposes.

Mr. Gifford to Miss A.T. Palmer.

"Our avocations leave us but little leisure for extra-official employment; and in the present case she has inadvertently added to our difficulties by forbearing to specify the precise objects of her bounty. We hesitated for some time between the Foundling and Lying-in Hospitals: in finally determining for the latter, we humbly trust that we have not disappointed her expectations, nor misapplied her charity. Our publisher will transmit the proper receipt to her address."

One of the principal objections of Mr. Murray to the manner in which Mr. Gifford edited the Quarterly was the war which he waged with the Edinburgh. This, he held, was not the way in which a respectable periodical should be conducted. It had a line of its own to pursue, without attacking its neighbours. "Publish," he said, "the best information, the best science, the best literature; and leave the public to decide for themselves." Relying on this opinion he warned Gifford and his friends against attacking Sydney Smith, and Leslie, and Jeffrey, because of their contributions to the Edinburgh. He thought that such attacks had only the effect of advertising the rival journal, and rendering it of greater importance. With reference to the article on Sydney Smith's "Visitation Sermon" in No. 5, Mr. George Ellis privately wrote to Mr. Murray:

"Gifford, though the best-tempered man alive, is terribly severe with his pen; but S.S. would suffer ten times more by being turned into ridicule (and never did man expose himself so much as he did in that sermon) than from being slashed and cauterized in that manner."

The following refers to a difference of opinion between Mr. Murray and his editor. Mr. Gifford had resented some expression of his friend's as savouring of intimidation.

John Murray to Mr. Gifford.

September 25, 1810.

"I entreat you to be assured that the term 'intimidation' can never be applied to any part of my conduct towards you, for whom I entertain the highest esteem and regard, both as a writer and as a friend. If I am over-anxious, it is because I have let my hopes of fame as a bookseller rest upon the establishment and celebrity of this journal. My character, as well with my professional brethren as with the public, is at stake upon it; for I would not be thought silly by the one, or a mere speculator by the other. I have a very large business, as you may conclude by the capital I have been able to throw into this one publication, and yet my mind is so entirely engrossed, my honour is so completely involved in this one thing, that I neither eat, drink, nor sleep upon anything else. I would rather it excelled all other journals and I gained nothing by it, than gain £300 a year by it without trouble if it were thought inferior to any other. This, sir, is true."

Meanwhile, Mr. Murray was becoming hard pressed for money. To conduct his increasing business required a large floating capital, for long credits were the custom, and besides his own requirements, he had to bear the constant importunities of the Ballantynes to renew their bills. On July 25, 1810, he wrote to them: "This will be the last renewal of the bill (£300); when it becomes due, you will have the goodness to provide for it." It was, however, becoming impossible to continue dealing with them, and he gradually transferred his printing business to other firms. We find him about this time ordering Messrs. George Ramsay & Co., Edinburgh, to print 8,000 of the "Domestic Cookery," which was still having a large sale.

The Constables also were pressing him for renewals of bills. The correspondence of this date is full of remonstrances from Murray against the financial unpunctuality of his Edinburgh correspondents.

On March 21, 1811, he writes: "With regard to myself, I will engage in no new work of any kind"; and again, on April 4, 1811:

Dear Constable,

You know how much I have distressed myself by entering heedlessly upon too many engagements. You must not urge me to involve myself in renewed difficulties.

To return to the Quarterly No. 8. Owing to the repeated delay in publication, the circulation fell off from 5,000 to 4,000, and Mr. George Ellis had obviously reason when he wrote: "Hence I infer that punctuality is, in our present situation, our great and only desideratum."

Accordingly, increased efforts were made to have the Quarterly published with greater punctuality, though it was a considerable time before success in this respect was finally reached. Gifford pruned and pared down to the last moment, and often held back the publication until an erasure or a correction could be finally inserted.

No. 9, due in February 1811, was not published until March. From this time Southey became an almost constant contributor to the Review. He wrote with ease, grace, and rapidity, and there was scarcely a number without one, and sometimes two and even three articles from his pen. His prose style was charming—clear, masculine, and to the point. The public eagerly read his prose, while his poetry remained unnoticed on the shelves. The poet could not accept this view of his merits. Of the "Curse of Kehama" he wrote:

"I was perfectly aware that I was planting acorns while my contemporaries were setting Turkey beans. The oak will grow, and though I may never sit under its shade, my children will. Of the 'Lady of the Lake,' 25,000 copies have been printed; of 'Kehama', 500; and if they sell in seven years I shall be surprised."

Scott wrote a kindly notice of Southey's poem. It was not his way to cut up his friend in a review. He pointed out the beauties of the poem, in order to invite purchasers and readers. Yet his private opinion to his friend George Ellis was this:

Mr. Scott to Mr. G. Ellis.

"I have run up an attempt on the 'Curse of Kehama' for the Quarterly: a strange thing it is—the 'Curse,' I mean—and the critique is not, as the blackguards say, worth a damn; but what I could I did, which was to throw as much weight as possible upon the beautiful passages, of which there are many, and to slur over its absurdities, of which there are not a few. It is infinite pity for Southey, with genius almost to exuberance, so much learning and real good feeling of poetry, that, with the true obstinacy of a foolish papa, he will be most attached to the defects of his poetical offspring. This said 'Kehama' affords cruel openings to the quizzers, and I suppose will get it roundly in the Edinburgh Review. I could have made a very different hand of it indeed, had the order of the day been pour dÉchirer."

It was a good thing for Southey that he could always depend upon his contributions to the Quarterly for his daily maintenance, for he could not at all rely upon the income from his poetry.

The failure of the Edinburgh Annual Register, published by Ballantyne, led to a diminution of Southey's income amounting to about £400 a year. He was thus led to write more and more for the Quarterly. His reputation, as well as his income, rose higher from his writings there than from any of his other works. In April 1812 he wrote to his friend Mr. Wynn:

Mr. Southey to Mr. Wynn.

"By God's blessing I may yet live to make all necessary provision myself. My means are now improving every year. I am up the hill of difficulty, and shall very soon get rid of the burthen which has impeded me in the ascent. I have some arrangements with Murray, which are likely to prove more profitable than any former speculations … Hitherto I have been highly favoured. A healthy body, an active mind, and a cheerful heart, are the three best boons Nature can bestow, and, God be praised, no man ever enjoyed these more perfectly."