ade it physically
impossible for him to live in crowded streets and push his way through
throngs of indifferent men. He could not live even in Edinburgh; he made
the effort, and his health, at no time strong, seems never to have
recovered from the effects of a few months spent under a roof in a large
town. He hurried back to St. Andrews: her fascination was too powerful.
Hence it is that, dying with his work scarcely begun, he will always be
best remembered as the poet of _The Scarlet Gown_, the Calverley or J. K.
S. of Kilrymont; endowed with their humour, their skill in parody, their
love of youth, but (if I am not prejudiced) with more than the tenderness
and natural magic of these regretted writers. Not to be able to endure
crowds and towns, (a matter of physical health and constitution, as well
as of temperament) was, of course, fatal to an ordinary success in
journalism. On the other hand, Murray's name is inseparably connected
with the life of youth in the little old college, in the University of
the Admirable Crichton and Claverhouse, of the great Montrose and of
Ferguson,--the harmless Villon of Scotland,--the University of almost all
the famous Covenanters, and of all the valiant poet-Cavaliers. Murray
has sung of the life and pleasures of its students, of examinations and
_Gaudeamuses_--supper parties--he has sung of the sands, the links, the
sea, the towers, and his name and fame are for ever blended with the air
of his city of youth and dream. It is not a wide name or a great fame,
but it is what he would have desired, and we trust that it may be long-
lived and enduring. We are not to wax elegiac, and adopt a tearful tone
over one so gallant and so uncomplaining. He failed, but he was
undefeated.

In the following sketch of Murray's life and work use is made of his
letters, chiefly of letters to his mother. They always illustrate his
own ideas and attempts; frequently they throw the light of an impartial
and critical mind on the distinguished people whom Murray observed from
without. It is worth remarking that among many remarks on persons, I
have found not one of a censorious, cynical, envious, or unfriendly
nature. Youth is often captious and keenly critical; partly because
youth generally has an ideal, partly, perhaps chiefly, from mere
intellectual high spirits and sense of the incongruous; occasionally the
motive is jealousy or spite. Murray's sense of fun was keen, his ideal
was lofty; of