ct of Mr. Butcher's lecture, Murray
says nothing. That brilliant man of letters in general, the Alcibiades
of literature, the wittiest, and, rarely, the most tender, and, always,
the most graceful, was a model who does not seem to have attracted
Murray. Lucian amused, and amuses, and lived by amusing: the vein of
romance and poetry that was his he worked but rarely: perhaps the
Samosatene did not take himself too seriously, yet he lives through the
ages, an example, in many ways to be followed, of a man who obviously
delighted in all that he wrought. He was no model to Murray, who only
delighted in his moments of inspiration, and could not make himself happy
even in the trifles which are demanded from the professional pen.

He did, at last, endeavour to ply that servile engine of which Pendennis
conceived so exalted an opinion. Certainly a false pride did not stand
in his way when, on May 5, 1889, he announced that he was about to leave
St. Andrews, and attempt to get work at proof-correcting and in the
humblest sorts of journalism in Edinburgh. The chapter is honourable to
his resolution, but most melancholy. There were competence and ease
waiting for him, probably, in London, if he would but let his pen have
its way in bright comment and occasional verse. But he chose the other
course. With letters of introduction from Mr. Meiklejohn, he consulted
the houses of Messrs. Clark and Messrs. Constable in Edinburgh. He did
not find that his knowledge of Greek was adequate to the higher and more
remunerative branches of proof-reading, that weary meticulous toil, so
fatiguing to the eyesight. The hours, too, were very long; he could do
more and better work in fewer hours. No time, no strength, were left for
reading and writing. He did, while in Edinburgh, send a few things to
magazines, but he did not actually 'bombard' editors. He is 'to live in
one room, and dine, if not on a red herring, on the next cheapest article
of diet.' These months of privation, at which he laughed, and some weeks
of reading proofs, appear to have quite undermined health which was never
strong, and which had been sorely tried by 'the wind of a cursed to-day,
the curse of a windy to-morrow,' at St. Andrews. If a reader observes in
Murray a lack of strenuous diligence, he must attribute it less to lack
of resolution, than to defect of physical force and energy. The many bad
colds of which he speaks were warnings of the end, which came in