Do you have a specific purpose for this matrix? For instance, like a table or some data? Because there are specific datatypes which might be useful.
a = [1 5 9]';
b = [3 6 10]';
c = [4 7 8]';
d = [5 8 12]';
T = table(a,b,c,d);
This is convenient since you can call it by name:
T.a
to get th variables and there are a variety of other useful methods (see the documenation).
C = cell(4,1)
C{1} = {'a','b','c','d'};
C{2} = [1 3 4 5];
C{3} = [5 6 7 8];
C{4} = [9 10 11 12];
