vernal woods of Mount Melville or Strathtyrum; rambling (without a
fishing-rod) in the charmed `dens' of the Kenley burn, a place like
Tempe in miniature: these things were Murray's usual enjoyments,
and they became his indispensable needs. His peculiarly shy and, as
it were, silvan nature, made it physically impossible for him to
live in crowded streets and push his way through throngs of
indifferent men. He could not live even in Edinburgh; he made the
effort, and his health, at no time strong, seems never to have
recovered from the effects of a few months spent under a roof in a
large town. He hurried back to St. Andrews: her fascination was
too powerful. Hence it is that, dying with his work scarcely begun,
he will always be best remembered as the poet of The Scarlet Gown,
the Calverley or J. K. S. of Kilrymont; endowed with their humour,
their skill in parody, their love of youth, but (if I am not
prejudiced) with more than the tenderness and natural magic of these
regretted writers. Not to be able to endure crowds and towns, (a
matter of physical health and constitution, as well as of
temperament) was, of course, fatal to an ordinary success in
journalism. On the other hand, Murray's name is inseparably
connected with the life of youth in the little old college, in the
University of the Admirable Crichton and Claverhouse, of the great
Montrose and of Ferguson,--the harmless Villon of Scotland,--the
University of almost all the famous Covenanters, and of all the
valiant poet-Cavaliers. Murray has sung of the life and pleasures
of its students, of examinations and Gaudeamuses--supper parties--he
has sung of the sands, the links, the sea, the towers, and his name
and fame are for ever blended with the air of his city of youth and
dream. It is not a wide name or a great fame, but it is what he
would have desired, and we trust that it may be long-lived and
enduring. We are not to wax elegiac, and adopt a tearful tone over