Part 2

Songs that distantly resembled Those one hears from men assembled In the old Cross Keys Hotel, Only sung not half so well.

For the time of this ecstatic Amateur was most erratic, And he only hit the key Once in every melody.

If "he wot prigs wot isn't his'n Ven he's cotched is sent to prison," He who murders sleep might well Adorn a solitary cell.

But, if no obliging peeler Will arrest this midnight squealer, My own peculiar arm of might Must undertake the job to-night.

The following fragment is but doubtfully autobiographical. 'The swift four-wheeler' seldom devastates the streets where, of old, the Archbishop's jackmen sliced Presbyterian professors with the claymore, as James Melville tells us:--

TO NUMBER 27x.

Beloved Peeler! friend and guide And guard of many a midnight reeler, None worthier, though the world is wide, Beloved Peeler.

Thou from before the swift four-wheeler Didst pluck me, and didst thrust aside A strongly built provision-dealer

Who menaced me with blows, and cried 'Come on! come on!' O Paian, Healer, Then but for thee I must have died, Beloved Peeler!

The following presentiment, though he was no 'waster,' may very well have been his own. He was only half Scotch, and not at all metaphysical:--

THE WASTER'S PRESENTIMENT

I shall be spun. There is a voice within Which tells me plainly I am all undone; For though I toil not, neither do I spin, I shall be spun.

April approaches. I have not begun Schwegler or Mackintosh, nor will begin Those lucid works till April 21.

So my degree I do not hope to win, For not by ways like mine degrees are won; And though, to please my uncle, I go in, I shall be spun.

Here we must quote, from The Scarlet Gown, one of his most tender pieces of affectionate praise bestowed on his favourite city:--

A DECEMBER DAY

Blue, blue is the sea to-day, Warmly the light Sleeps on St. Andrews Bay-- Blue, fringed with white.

That's no December sky! Surely 'tis June Holds now her state on high, Queen of the noon.

Only the tree-tops bare Crowning the hill, Clear-cut in perfect air, Warn us that still

Winter, the aged chief, Mighty in power, Exiles the tender leaf, Exiles the flower.

Is there a heart to-day, A heart that grieves For flowers that fade away, For fallen leaves?

Oh, not in leaves or flowers Endures the charm That clothes those naked towers With love-light warm.

O dear St. Andrews Bay, Winter or Spring Gives not nor takes away Memories that cling

All round thy girdling reefs, That walk thy shore, Memories of joys and griefs Ours evermore.

'I have not worked for my classes this session,' he writes (1884), 'and shall not take any places.' The five or six most distinguished pupils used, at least in my time, to receive prize-books decorated with the University's arms. These prize-men, no doubt, held the 'places' alluded to by Murray. If he was idle, 'I speak of him but brotherly,' having never held any 'place' but that of second to Mr. Wallace, now Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, in the Greek Class (Mr. Sellar's). Why was one so idle, in Latin (Mr. Shairp), in Morals (Mr. Ferrier), in Logic (Mr. Veitch)? but Logic was unintelligible.

'I must confess,' remarks Murray, in a similar spirit of pensive regret, 'that I have not had any ambition to distinguish myself either in Knight's (Moral Philosophy) or in Butler's.' {1}

Murray then speaks with some acrimony about earnest students, whose motive, he thinks, is a small ambition. But surely a man may be fond of metaphysics for the sweet sake of Queen Entelechy, and, moreover, these students looked forward to days in which real work would bear fruit.

'You must grind up the opinions of Plato, Aristotle, and a lot of other men, concerning things about which they knew nothing, and we know nothing, taking these opinions at second or third hand, and never looking into the works of these men; for to a man who wants to take a place, there is no time for anything of that sort.'