of Principal Caird: `Voice,
gesture, language, thought--all in the
highest degree,--combined to make it the most moving and exalted
speech of a man to men that I ever listened to.' `The world is too
much with me,' he adds, as if he and the world were ever friends, or
ever likely to be friendly.
October 27th found him dating from St. Andrews again. `St. Andrews
after Edinburgh is Paradise.' His Dalilah had called him home to
her, and he was never again unfaithful. He worked for his firm
friend, Professor Meiklejohn, he
undertook some teaching, and he
wrote a little. It was at this time that his
biographer made
Murray's
acquaintance. I had been
delighted with his verses in
College Echoes, and I asked him to bring me some of his more serious
work. But he never brought them: his old enemy, reserve, overcame
him. A few of his pieces were published `At the Sign of the Ship'
in Longman's Magazine, to which he contributed occasionally.
From this point there is little in Murray's life to be chronicled.
In 1890 his health broke down entirely, and
consumption declared
itself. Very early in 1891 he visited Egypt, where it was thought
that some
educational work might be found for him. But he found
Egypt cold, wet, and windy; of Alexandria and the Mediterranean he
says little: indeed he was almost too weak and ill to see what is
delightful either in nature or art.
`To aching eyes each
landscape lowers,
To
feverish pulse each gale blows chill,
And Araby's or Eden's bowers
Were
barren as this moorland hill,'
says the least self-conscious of poets. Even so
barren were the
rich Nile and so bleak the blue Mediterranean waters. Though
received by the kindest and most
hospitable friends, Murray was
homesick, and pined to be in England, now that spring was there. He
made the great mistake of coming home too early. At Ilminster, in
his mother's home, he slowly faded out of life. I have not the
heart to quote his descriptions of brief yet
laborious saunters in
the coppices, from the letters which he wrote to the lady of his
heart. He was calm,
cheerful, even
buoyant. His letters to his
college friends are all
concerned with
literature, or with happy old
times, and are full of interest in them and in their happiness.
He was not
wholly idle. He wrote a number of short pieces of verse
in Punch, and two or three in the St. James's Gazette. Other work,
no doubt, he planned, but his strength was gone. In 1891 his book,
The Scarlet Gown, was published by his friend, Mr. A. M. Holden.
The little
volume,
despite its local
character, was kindly received
by the Reviews. Here, it was plain, we had a poet who was to St.
Andrews what the regretted J. K. S. was to Eton and Cambridge. This
measure of success was not calculated to
displease our alumnus
addictissimus.
Friendship and love, he said, made the summer of 1892 very happy to
him. I last heard from him in the summer of 1893, when he sent me
some of his most
pleasing verses. He was in Scotland; he had
wandered back, a shadow of himself, to his dear St. Andrews. I
conceived that he was better; he said nothing about his health. It
is not easy to quote from his letters to his friend, Mr. Wallace,
still written in his beautiful firm hand. They are too full of
affectionate banter: they also
containcriticisms on living poets:
he shows an
admiration, discriminating and not
wholesale, of Mr.
Kipling's verse: he censures Mr. Swinburne, whose Jacobite song (as
he wrote to myself) did not
precisely strike him as the kind of
thing that Jacobites used to sing.
They certainly celebrated
`The faith our fathers fought for,
The kings our fathers knew,'
in a different tone in the North.
The perfect health of mind, in these letters of a dying man, is
admirable. Reading old letters over, he writes to Miss -, `I have
known a wonderful number of
wonderfully kind-hearted people.' That
is his
criticism of a world which had given him but a scanty
welcome, and a life of foiled
endeavour, of disap
pointed hope. Even
now there was a
disappointment. His poems did not find a
publisher:
what
publisher can take the risk of adding another
volume of
poetryto the
enormous stock of verse brought out at the author's expense?
This did not sour or sadden him: he took Montaigne's advice, `not
to make too much
marvel of our own fortunes.' His
biographer,
hearing in the winter of 1893 that Murray's
illness was now
considered
hopeless, though its rapid close was not expected, began,
with Professor Meiklejohn, to make arrangements for the publication
of the poems. But the poet did not live to have this poor
gratification. He died in the early hours of 1894.
Of the merits of his more serious
poetry others must speak. To the
Editor it seems that he is always at his best when he is inspired by
the Northern Sea, and the long sands and grey sea grasses. Then he
is most himself. He was improving in his art with every year: his
development, indeed, was somewhat late.
It is less of the
writer than the man that we prefer to think. His
letters display, in passages which he would not have desired to see
quoted, the depth and
tenderness and thoughtfulness of his
affections. He must have been a
delightful friend:
illness could
not make him peevish, and his
correspondence with old college
companions could never be taken for that of a consciously dying man.
He had perfect courage, and
resolution even in his seeming
irresoluteness. He was
resolved to be, and continued to be,
himself. `He had kept the bird in his bosom.' We, who regret him,
may wish that he had been granted a longer life, and a secure
success. Happier fortunes might have mellowed him, no fortunes
could have altered for the worse his
admirable nature. He lives in
the hearts of his friends, and in the pride and
sympathy of those
who, after him, have worn and shall wear the
scarlet gown.
The following examples of his
poetry were selected by Murray's
biographer from a
considerable mass, and have been seen through the
press by Professor Meiklejohn, who possesses the original
manuscript,
beautifully written.
MOONLIGHT NORTH AND SOUTH
Love, we have heard together
The North Sea sing his tune,
And felt the wind's wild feather
Brush past our cheeks at noon,
And seen the cloudy weather
Made
wondrous with the moon.
Where
loveliness is rarest,
`Tis also prized the most:
The
moonlight shone her fairest
Along that level coast
Where sands and dunes the barest,
Of beauty seldom boast,
Far from that bleak and rude land
An exile I remain
Fixed in a fair and good land,
A
valley and a plain
Rich in fat fields and woodland,
And watered well with rain.
Last night the full moon's splendour
Shone down on Taunton Dene,
And
pasture fresh and tender,
And coppice dusky green,
The
heavenly light did render
In one enchanted scene,
One fair unearthly
vision.
Yet soon mine eyes were cloyed,
And found those fields Elysian