form, and of his old manuscript coming
home to roost, like the Graces of Theocritus, to pine in the dusty chest
where is their chill abode. If the Alexandrian poets knew this
ill-fortune, so do all beginners in letters. There is nothing for it but
'putting a stout heart to a stey brae,' as the Scotch proverb says.
Editors want good work, and on finding a new man who is good, they
greatly rejoice. But it is so difficult to do vigorous and spontaneous
work, as it were, in the dark. Murray had not, it is probable, the
qualities of the novelist, the narrator. An excellent critic he might
have been if he had 'descended to criticism,' but he had, at this time,
no introductions, and probably did not address reviews at random to
editors. As to poetry, these much-vexed men receive such enormous
quantities of poetry that they usually reject it at a venture, and obtain
the small necessary supplies from agreeable young ladies. Had Murray
been in London, with a few literary friends, he might soon have been a
thriving writer of light prose and light verse. But the enchantress held
him; he hated London, he had no literary friends, he could write gaily
for pleasure, not for gain. So, like the Scholar Gypsy, he remained
contemplative,

'Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.'

About this time the present writer was in St. Andrews as Gifford Lecturer
in Natural Theology. To say that an enthusiasm for totems and taboos,
ghosts and gods of savage men, was aroused by these lectures, would be to
exaggerate unpardonably. Efforts to make the students write essays or
ask questions were so entire a failure that only one question was
received--as to the proper pronunciation of 'Myth.' Had one been
fortunate enough to interest Murray, it must have led to some discussion
of his literary attempts. He mentions having attended a lecture given by
myself to the Literary Society on 'Literature as a Profession,' and he
found the lecturer 'far more at home in such a subject than in the
Gifford Lectures.' Possibly the hearer was 'more at home' in literature
than in discussions as to the origin of Huitzilopochtli. 'Literature,'
he says, 'never was, is not, and never will be, in the ordinary sense of
the term, a profession. You can't teach it as you can the professions,
you can't succeed in it as you can in the professions, by dint of mere
diligence and without special aptitude . . . I think all this chatter
about the technical and pec