He seldom read magazine articles. `I
do not greatly care for "Problems" and "vexed questions." I am so
much of a problem and a vexed question that I have quite enough to
do in searching for a solution of my own personality.' He tried a
story, based on `a midnight experience' of his own; unluckily he
does not tell us what that experience was. Had he encountered one
of the local ghosts?
`My blood-curdling romance I offered to the editor of Longman's
Magazine, but that misguided person was so ill-advised as to return
it, accompanied with one of these abominable lithographed forms
conveying his hypocritical regrets.' Murray sent a directed
envelope with a twopenny-halfpenny stamp. The paper came back for
three-halfpence by book-post. `I have serious thoughts of sueing
him for the odd penny!' `Why should people be fools enough to read
my rot when they have twenty volumes of Scott at their command?' He
confesses to `a Scott-mania almost as intense as if he were the last
new sensation.' `I was always fond of him, but I am fonder than
ever now.' This plunge into the immortal romances seems really to
have discouraged Murray; at all events he says very little more
about attempts in fiction of his own.
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