The sole agency for my publications in Edinburgh is worth to any man who understands his business L300 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.