before they are mature, and of injuring his health before it is
confirmed. His ambitions, to lookers-on, may seem narrow and
school-boyish, as if he were merely emulous, and eager for a high
place in his `class,' as lectures are called in Scotland. This was
Murray's own view, and he certainly avoided the dangers of academic
over-work. He read abundantly, but, as Fitzgerald says, he read
`for human pleasure.' He never was a Greek scholar, he disliked
Philosophy, as presented to him in class-work; the gods had made him
poetical, not metaphysical.

There was one other cause of his lack of even such slender
commercial success in letters as was really necessary to a man who
liked `plain living and high thinking.' He fell early in love with
a city, with a place--he lost his heart to St. Andrews. Here, at
all events, his critic can sympathise with him. His `dear St.
Andrews Bay,' beautiful alike in winter mists and in the crystal
days of still winter sunshine; the quiet brown streets brightened by
the scarlet gowns; the long limitless sands; the dark blue distant
hills, and far-off snowy peaks of the Grampians; the majestic
melancholy towers, monuments of old religion overthrown; the deep
dusky porch of the college chapel, with Kennedy's arms in wrought
iron on the oaken door; the solid houses with their crow steps and
gables, all the forlorn memories of civil and religious feud, of
inhabitants saintly, royal, heroic, endeared St. Andrews to Murray.
He could not say, like our other poet to Oxford, `Farewell, dear
city of youth and dream!' His whole nature needed the air, `like
wine.' He found, as he remarks, `health and happiness in the German
Ocean,' swimming out beyond the `lake' where the witches were
dipped; walking to the grey little coast-towns, with their wealth of
historic documents, their ancient kirks and graves; dreaming in the