delighted me: another of his, `Ariadne in Naxos,' appeared in the
Cornhill Magazine about the same time. Mr. Thackeray, who was then
editor, no doubt remembered Pen's prize poem on the same subject. I
did not succeed in learning anything about the author, did not know
that he lived within a drive of my own home. When next I heard of
him, it was in his biography. As a `Probationer,' or unplaced
minister, he, somehow, was not successful. A humorist, a poet, a
delightful companion, he never became `a placed minister.' It was
the old story of an imprudence, a journey made in damp clothes, of
consumption, of the end of his earthly life and love. His letters
to his betrothed, his poems, his career, constantly remind one of
Murray's, who must often have joined in singing Davidson's song, so
popular with St. Andrews students, The Banks of the Yang-tse-kiang.
Love of the Border, love of Murray's `dear St. Andrews Bay,' love of
letters, make one akin to both of these friends who were lost before
their friendship was won. Why did not Murray succeed to the measure
of his most modest desire? If we examine the records of literary
success, we find it won, in the highest fields, by what, for want of
a better word, we call genius; in the lower paths, by an energy
which can take pleasure in all and every exercise of pen and ink,
and can communicate its pleasure to others. Now for Murray one does
not venture, in face of his still not wholly developed talent, and
of his checked career, to claim genius. He was not a Keats, a
Burns, a Shelley: he was not, if one may choose modern examples, a
Kipling or a Stevenson. On the other hand, his was a high ideal; he
believed, with Andre Chenier, that he had `something there,'
something worthy of reverence and of careful training within him.
Consequently, as we shall see, the drudgery of the pressman was
excessively repulsive to him. He could take no delight in making
the best of it. We learn that Mr. Kipling's early tales were