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 to offer the MS. of Pickwick to