face this almost fixed certainty of rejection: a man is weakened by his apprehensions of a lithographed form, and of his old manuscript coming home to roost, like the Graces of Theocritus, to pine in the dusty chest where is their chill abode.  If the Alexandrian poets knew this ill-fortune, so do all beginners in letters.  There is nothing for it but ‘putting a stout heart to a stey brae,’ as the Scotch proverb says.  Editors want good work, and on finding a new man who is good, they greatly rejoice.  But it is so difficult to do vigorous and spontaneous work, as it were, in the dark.  Murray had not, it is probable, the qualities of the novelist, the narrator.  An excellent critic he might have been if he had ‘descended to criticism,’ but he had, at this time, no introductions, and probably did not address reviews at random to editors.  As to poetry, these much-vexed men receive such enormous quantities of poetry that they usually reject it at a venture, and obtain the small necessary supplies from agreeable young ladies.  Had Murray been in London, with a few literary friends, he might soon have been a thriving writer of light prose and light verse.  But the enchantress held him; he hated London, he had no literary friends, he could write gaily for pleasure, not for gain.  So, like the Scholar Gypsy, he remained contemplative,

‘Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.’

About this time the present writer was in St. Andrews as Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology.  To say that an enthusiasm for totems and taboos, ghosts and gods of savage men, was aroused by these lectures, would be to exaggerate unpardonably.  Efforts to make the students write essays or ask questions were so entire a failure that only one question was received—as to the proper pronunciation of ‘Myth.’  Had one been fortunate enough to interest Murray, it must have led to some discussion of his literary attempts.  He mentions having attended a lecture given by myself to the Literary Society on ‘Literature as a Profession,’ and he found the lecturer ‘far more at home in such a subject than in the Gifford Lectures.’  Possibly the hearer was ‘more at home’ in literature than in discussions as to the origin of Huitzilopochtli.  ‘Literature,’ he says, ‘never was, is not, and never will be, in the ordinary sense of the term, a profession.  You can’t teach it as you can the professions, you can’t succeed in it as you can in the professions, by dint of mere diligence and without special aptitude . . . I think all this chatter about the technical and pecuniary sides of literature is extremely foolish and worse than useless.  It only serves to glut the idle curiosity of the general public about matters with which they have no concern, a curiosity which (thanks partly to American methods of journalism) has become simply outrageous.’

Into chatter about the pecuniary aspect of literature the Lecturer need hardly say that he did not meander.  It is absolutely true that literature cannot be taught.  Maupassant could have dispensed with the instructions of Flaubert.  But an ‘aptitude’ is needed in all professions, and in such arts as music, and painting, and sculpture, teaching is necessary.  In literature, teaching can only come from general education in letters, from experience, from friendly private criticism.  But if you cannot succeed in literature ‘by dint of mere diligence,’ mere diligence is absolutely essential.  Men must read, must observe, must practise.  Diligence is as necessary to the author as to the grocer, the solicitor, the dentist, the barrister, the soldier.  Nothing but nature can give the aptitude; diligence must improve it, and experience may direct it.  It is not enough to wait for the spark from heaven to fall; the spark must be caught, and tended, and cherished.  A man must labour till he finds his vein, and himself.  Again, if literature is an art, it is also a profession.  A man’s very first duty is to support himself and those, if any, who are dependent on him.  If he cannot do it by epics, tragedies, lyrics, he must do it by articles, essays, tales, or how he honestly can.  He must win his leisure by his labour, and give his leisure to his art.  Murray, at this time, was diligent in helping to compile and correct educational works.  He might, but for the various conditions of reserve, hatred of towns, and the rest, have been earning his leisure by work more brilliant and more congenial to most men.  But his theory of literature was so lofty that he probably found the other, the harder, the less remunerative, the less attractive work, more congenial to his tastes.

He describes, to Mrs. Murray, various notable visitors to St. Andrews: Professor Butcher, who lectured on Lucian, and is ‘very handsome,’ Mr. Arthur Balfour, the Lord Rector, who is ‘rather handsome,’ and delights the listener by his eloquence; Mr. Chamberlain, who pleases him too, though he finds Mr. Chamberlain rather acrimonious in his political reflections.  About Lucian, the subject 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 the form of consumption.  This lurking malady it was that made him wait, and dally with his talent.  He hit on the idea of translating some of Bossuet’s orations for a Scotch theological publisher.  Alas! the publisher did not anticipate a demand, among Scotch ministers, for the Eagle of Meaux.  Murray, in his innocence, was startled by the caution of the publisher, who certainly would have been a heavy loser.  ‘I honestly believe that, if Charles Dickens were now alive and unknown, and were