d Foley, who supplied him with funds, he was
enabled to follow a profession for which, as he himself said, he felt "a
calling." He had not been at Oxford a year before he became a member of
the Hon. Society of Lincoln's inn, although he did not begin to keep his
terms there until he had taken his bachelor's degree. At college William
Murray was as diligent as he had been at school, and, intent upon renown,
he took care to make all study subservient to the one great object of his
life. He read whatever had been written on the subject of
oratory,--translated into English every oration of Cicero, and
retranslated it into Latin, until every thought and expression of the
illustrious example was familiar to his mind. He applied himself
vigorously to original composition, and strengthened his intellect by the
perusal of works which do not ordinarily fall within the college course.
He was still at Oxford in 1727, the year of George the First's death, and
became the successful competitor for a prize when the students of the
University were called upon, in the name of the Muses, to mourn over the
urn of the departed Caesar,--"of that Caesar," as Mr. Macaulay has it, "who
could not read a line of Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and fat
women." A rival poet upon this occasion was a lad from Eton.
Disappointment and vexation at defeat, it is said, rankled in this boy's
bosom, and opened a wound which closed only with life. Be this as it may,
the classic rivalry begun at school between Pitt and Murray became fiery
strife between Chatham and Mansfield, fit for a civilized world to
witness and to profit by.

From Christ Church to Lincoln's-inn was a transfer of abode, scarcely a
change of habits or of life. Murray was four years nearer to his goal,
but that goal had still to be reached, and could only be won by untiring,
patient, and ceaseless endeavor. At Oxford he had attended lectures on
the _Pandects of Justinian_, "which gave him a permanent taste for that
noble system of jurisprudence." In his chambers he made himself
thoroughly acquainted with ancient and modern history, applied himself
diligently to ethics, to the study of Roman civil law, the foundation of
jurisprudence, of international law, and of English municipal law. No
drudgery was too laborious, no toil too dull. Expecting, from his
northern connections, to be employed in appeals from Scotland, he made
himself master of the law of that country, and when he was not