him to school there. The advantages which might have accrued from this act of liberality were cut short by the ill health of Alexander. He was in the school but two months, when it became actually necessary that he should return home. Here he became once more a shepherd, with a literary turn for boards and charcoal pencils. Whenever by good fortune he obtained a sixpence, he disbursed it instantly on ballads and penny histories, with which his pockets and his head were constantly filled. These established his reputation as a prodigy in the neighborhood. "My fame," he says, "for reading and memory was loud, and several said that I was a living miracle." Serious elders of the Church, even, were astonished at his remarkable acquaintance with Holy Writ.

In 1787 Alexander was able to greatly extend his course of reading. A friend loaned him a translation of "Josephus" and "Salmon's Geographical Grammar," works that he perused with such avidity that he remembered their contents to the end of his life. He was now twelve years of age, very clever at every thing except taking care of sheep, and, consequently, a source of very great perplexity to his parents. It was necessary that he should ́ maintain himself; and, with this object in view, he became private teacher in the families of two neighboring farmers. For his labors in this new field of enterprise he received as compensation, for an entire winter, the magnificent sum of sixteen shillings! With this sum he unsealed the sources of human knowledge. He procured an edition of the veritable Cocker, and studied arithmetic up to the rule of three; he obtained other books, and read them with a purpose. "My memory now," he says, “contained a very large mass of historical facts and ballad poetry, which I repeated with pleasure to myself, and the astonished approbation of the peasants around me."

Much to the delight of Alexander, circumstances permitted him. once more to become a student at the school at Minnigaff to the extent of three days' attendance per week. He made the most of his opportunity, but it was a brief one, for in six weeks he had to look after his own living again—that is to say, to teach what he knew to the children of the neighboring farmers.

In 1790 he again attended school for about three months and a half of the summer, and it was during this brief term that he conceived the ambitious idea of becoming a scholar. His first impulse he attributes to the curiosity awakened by perusing, in

"Salmon's Geography" a transcript of the Lord's Prayer, translated into a variety of living and dead languages. About the same time he resolved to fit himself, if possible, for the duties of a clerk. To make his studies contribute to both results was now his endeavor. During the few weeks he remained at school, he obtained a grammatical knowledge of the English language, and commenced the study of French. While pursuing the latter, his attention was directed to the Latin by the circumstance of a boy complaining that he had once been set to learn it. Young Alexander Murray thus describes the circumstance: "About the 15th of June, Kerr (one of his classmates) told me that he had once learned Latin for a fortnight, but had not liked it, and still had the Rudiments beside him. I said, 'Do lend me them; I wish to see what the nouns and verbs are like, and whether they resemble our French.' He gave me the book. I examined it for four or five days, and found that the nouns had changes on the last syllables, and looked very singular. I used to repeat a lesson from the French Rudiments every forenoon in school. On the morning of the midsummer fair of Newton Stewart I set out for school, and accidentally put into my pocket the Latin Grammar instead of the French Rudiments. On an ordinary day Mr. Cramond would have chid me for this; but on that festive morning he was in excellent spirits, and very communicative. With great glee he replied, when I told him my mistake and showed him the Rudiments, 'Gad, Sandy, I shall try thee with Latin;' and accordingly read over to me no less than two of the declensions. It was his custom with me to permit me to get as long lessons as I pleased, and never to fetter me by joining me to a class. There was at that time in the school a class of four boys advanced as far as the pronouns in Latin Grammar. They ridiculed my separated condition. But before the vacation in August I had reached the end of the Rudiments, knew a good deal more than they by reading at home the notes on the foot of each page, and was so greatly improved in French that I could read almost any French book at opening of it. I compared French and Latin, and riveted the words of both in my memory by this practice. When proceeding with the Latin verbs, I often sat in the school all midday, and pored on the first page of Robert Cooper's (another schoolmate) Greek Grammar, the only one I had ever seen. He was then reading Livy and learning Greek. By help of his book

I mastered the letters, but I saw the sense of the Latin rules in a very indistinct manner. Some boy lent me an old Corderius, and a friend made me a present of Eutropius. I got a common vocabulary from my companion Kerr. I read to my teacher a number of colloquies, and before the end of July was permitted to take lessons in Eutropius. There was a copy of Eutropius in the school that had a literal translation. I studied this last with great attention, and compared the English and Latin. When my lesson was prepared, I always made an excursion into the rest of every book; and my books were not, like those of other schoolboys, opened only in one place, and where the lesson lay."

A boy of young Murray's tastes only needed to be placed on the right track. He would pursue it of his own enthusiasm. After leaving school he purchased an old copy of Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary, and "literally read it through," he says. His method of studying was remarkable, and was probably as dry as any that could be conceived by the mind of man. He studied the dictionary backward and forward, and took relaxation in the Grammar, in Casar, or (by way of dissipation) in Ovid. During the following summer (1791) he continued this course; and when he went to school again for another course of three months' instruction, he was able to pass all the other scholars, and to read whatever came in his way in English, Latin, or Greek. In the latter languages he addressed Mr. Maitland, the clergyman of the parish, who, struck with the proficiency of the boy, extended to him the freedom of a small classical library, the contents of which Alexander Murray eagerly devoured. He arose from the repast with a fresh appetite, namely, for Hebrew. To appease this, he procured a copy of Robertson's Hebrew Grammar, and got through it in a month, notwithstanding its many intricacies; next followed a dictionary, which he subjugated in his usual way. Before the end of the summer he was able to read the Bible in Hebrew. Thus, in something less than eighteen months, he had mastered the principal difficulties of four languages, the French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and had read several of the best authors in each. All this, too, in spite of innumerable and discouraging interruptions.

The winter of 1791 he passed in teaching, and earned thirtyfive or forty shillings, so that he was able to return to school for the last time in the summer of 1792, remaining three months

and a half. The different periods of school attendance added together, says one of his biographers, make about thirteen months, scattered over a period of nearly eight years. From November, 1792, till March of the following spring, he was once more employed in teaching, at a salary of thirty shillings. During this time he prosecuted his studies vigorously, and made the acquaintance of an Anglo-Saxon alphabet, which was his introduction to the northern languages. He obtained also a treatise in Welsh, and, without dictionary or grammar, set about making it out. "I mused a good deal on the quotations of Scripture that abound in it," he says, "and got acquainted with many Welsh words and sentences. If I had a copy of the Bible in any language of which I knew the alphabet, I could make considerable progress in learning it, without grammar or dictionary. This is done by minute observation and comparison of words, terminations, and phrases."

In the autumn of 1792 Murray's ambition took a new direction. His imagination had become inflamed by reading the classic poets and Milton, and he believed himself capable of writing an epic poem. After perpetrating several thousand lines, he had the good sense to feel and acknowledge that he was not yet fitted for the task, and the firmness, remarkable in a young poet, to commit his crude verses to the flames. Far more practical was his next literary effort, which consisted of a translation from the Latin of a series of lectures by a German professor. With this work under his arm, he repaired to Dumfries in 1794, but neither of the two publishers in the place would undertake the risk of publication. He then prepared a small volume of poems in the Scottish dialect; but Burns, to whom he showed them, advised him not to publish them. The object that young Murray had in view was to raise the means, in some way or other, of defraying his expenses at college. It was natural that he should feel downhearted and dispirited at these reverses.

To a very humble admirer Murray was indebted for his first step in the world. This was a peddler by the name of M'Harg, who knew Murray well, and who was in the habit of sounding his fame as a genius wherever he went. Among others to whom he spoke on the subject was Mr. James Kinnear, of Edinburgh, then a journeyman printer in the King's Printing-office. Mr. Kinnear, with a zeal in behalf of unfriended merit which does

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him infinite honor, immediately suggested that Murray should transmit an account of himself and some evidences of his attainments to Edinburgh, which he undertook to lay before some of the literary characters of that city. Murray was of course too happy to act on this suggestion, and the result exceeded his most sanguine expectations. The professors of the University were astonished at his attainments, and at once threw open their classes, and provided for his maintenance while attending them. Assistance he did not long need. In the city he found plenty of employment for his pen, and good remuneration for the exercise of his acquirements.

The struggles of this remarkable youth were now at an end. He remained in Edinburgh until 1806, having in the interval passed through the course of studies necessary to qualify him for the Scottish Church. His fondness for languages remained unabated; one by one he mastered the Oriental and northern languages, and of the Ethiopic and Abyssinian dialects he had a more critical knowledge than any other European of his day. This circumstance led him to undertake a new edition of Bruce's Travels (1802), a work which at once placed him in the foremost rank of Oriental scholars.

In 1806 he left Edinburgh to assume the duties of the pulpit, and for six years officiated as clergyman of the parish of Urr in Dumfriesshire. From this honored field of labor he was recalled to the University, to fill the professor's chair of Oriental languages. The degree of doctor of divinity was now conferred upon him, and he entered on the discharge of his duties with an ardor which led to the most untimely result. The preparation of his lectures, the supervision of philological works, the rendering of new translations, the prosecution of fresh studies, were undertaken and accomplished at the price of health. Dr. Murray could not be persuaded that he was sick and failing, nor indeed did he know it, until it was too late. He kept his bed for one day only, and died in the thirty-eighth year of his age, at a time when all that could gratify a scholar was within his grasp. He left behind him a reputation and an example which may be imitated by the hard-pressed and humble in this world.