



Transcribed from the 1894 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





ROBERT F. MURRAY
(AUTHOR OF THE SCARLET GOWN)
HIS POEMS: WITH MEMOIR


BY
ANDREW LANG

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16TH STREET

1894

Edinburgh: T. AND A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty

THE VOLUME
IS DEDICATED TO
J. M. D. MEIKLEJOHN, ESQ.
MOST INDULGENT OF MASTERS
AND KINDEST OF
FRIENDS




R. F. MURRAY--1863-1893


Much is written about success and failure in the career of literature,
about the reasons which enable one man to reach the front, and another to
earn his livelihood, while a third, in appearance as likely as either of
them, fails and, perhaps, faints by the way.  Mr. R. F. Murray, the
author of _The Scarlet Gown_, was among those who do not attain success,
in spite of qualities which seem destined to ensure it, and who fall out
of the ranks.  To him, indeed, success and the rewards of this world,
money, and praise, did by no means seem things to be snatched at.  To him
success meant earning by his pen the very modest sum which sufficed for
his wants, and the leisure necessary for serious essays in poetry.  Fate
denied him even this, in spite of his charming natural endowment of
humour, of tenderness, of delight in good letters, and in nature.  He
died young; he was one of those whose talent matures slowly, and he died
before he came into the full possession of his intellectual kingdom.  He
had the ambition to excel, [Greek text], as the Homeric motto of his
University runs, and he was on the way to excellence when his health
broke down.  He lingered for two years and passed away.

It is a familiar story, the story of lettered youth; of an ambition, or
rather of an ideal; of poverty; of struggles in the 'dusty and stony
ways'; of intellectual task-work; of a true love consoling the last
months of weakness and pain.  The tale is not repeated here because it is
novel, nor even because in its hero we have to regret an 'inheritor of
unfulfilled renown.'  It is not the genius so much as the character of
this St. Andrews student which has won the sympathy of his biographer,
and may win, he hopes, the sympathy of others.  In Mr. Murray I feel that
I have lost that rare thing, a friend; a friend whom the chances of life
threw in my way, and withdrew again ere we had time and opportunity for
perfect recognition.  Those who read his Letters and Remains may also
feel this emotion of sympathy and regret.

He was young in years, and younger in heart, a lover of youth; and youth,
if it could learn and could be warned, might win a lesson from his life.
Many of us have trod in his path, and, by some kindness of fate, have
found from it a sunnier exit into longer days and more fortunate
conditions.  Others have followed this well-beaten road to the same early
and quiet end as his.

The life and the letters of Murray remind one strongly of Thomas
Davidson's, as published in that admirable and touching biography, _A
Scottish Probationer_.  It was my own chance to be almost in touch with
both these gentle, tuneful, and kindly humorists.  Davidson was a
Borderer, born on the skirts of'stormy Ruberslaw,' in the country of
James Thomson, of Leyden, of the old Ballad minstrels.  The son of a
Scottish peasant line of the old sort, honourable, refined, devout, he
was educated in Edinburgh for the ministry of the United Presbyterian
Church.  Some beautiful verses of his appeared in the _St. Andrews
University Magazine_ about 1863, at the time when I first'saw myself in
print' in the same periodical.  Davidson's poem delighted me: another of
his, 'Ariadne in Naxos,' appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ about the
same time.  Mr. Thackeray, who was then editor, no doubt remembered Pen's
prize poem on the same subject.  I did not succeed in learning anything
about the author, did not know that he lived within a drive of my own
home.  When next I heard of him