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.'
Why not? The philosophers ought to be read in their own language, as
they are now read. The remarks on the most fairy of philosophers--Plato;
on the greatest of all minds, that of Aristotle, are boyish. Again 'I
speak but brotherly,' remembering an old St. Leonard's essay in which
Virgil was called 'the furtive Mantuan,' and another, devoted to ridicule
of Euripides. But Plato and Aristotle we never blasphemed.
Murray adds that he thinks, next year, of taking the highest Greek Class,
and English Literature. In the latter, under Mr. Baynes, he took the
first place, which he mentions casually to Mrs. Murray about a year after
date:--
'A sweet life and an idle
He lives from year to year,
Unknowing bit or bridle,
There are no Proctors here.'
In Greek, despite his enthusiastic admiration of the professor, Mr.
Campbell, he did not much enjoy himself:--
'Thrice happy are those
Who ne'er heard of Greek Prose--
Or Greek Poetry either, as far as that goes;
For Liddell and Scott
Shall cumber them not,
Nor Sargent nor Sidgwick shall break their repose.
But I, late at night,
By the very bad light
Of very bad gas, must painfully write
Some stuff that a Greek
With his delicate cheek
Would smile at as 'barbarous'--faith, he well might.
* * * * *
So away with Greek Prose,
The source of my woes!
(This metre's too tough, I must draw to a close.)
May Sargent be drowned
In the ocean profound,
And Sidgwick be food for the carrion crows!'
Greek prose is a stubborn thing, and the biographer remembers being told
that his was 'the best, with the worst mistakes'; also frequently by Mr.
Sellar, that it was 'bald.' But Greek prose is splendid practice, and no
less good practice is Greek and Latin verse. These exercises, so much
sneered at, are the Dwellers on the Threshold of the life of letters.
They are haunting forms of fear, but they have to be wrestled with, like
the Angel (to change the figure), till they bless you, and make words
become, in your hands, like the clay of the modeller. Could we write
Greek like Mr. Jebb, we would never write anything else.
Murray had naturally, it seems, certainly not by dint of wrestling with
Greek prose, the mastery of language. His light verse is wonderfully
handled, quaint, fluent, right. Modest as he was, he was ambitious, as
we said, but not ambitious of any gain; merely eager, in his own way, to
excel. His ideal is plainly stated in the following verses:--
[GREEK TITLE]
Ever to be the best. To lead
In whatsoever things are true;
Not stand among the halting crew,
The faint of heart, the feeble-kneed,
Who tarry for a certain sign
To make them follow with the rest--
Oh, let not their reproach be thine!
But ever be the best.
For want of this aspiring soul,
Great deeds on earth remain undone,
But, sharpened by the sight of one,
Many shall press toward the goal.
Thou running foremost of the throng,
The fire of striving in thy breast,
Shalt win, although the race be long,
And ever be the best.
And wilt thou question of the prize?
'Tis not of silver or of gold,
Nor in applauses manifold,
But hidden in the heart it lies:
To know that but for thee not one
Had run the race or sought the quest,
To know that thou hast ever done
And ever been the best.
Murray was never a great athlete: his ambition did not lead him to desire
a place in the Scottish Fifteen at Football. Probably he was more likely
to be found matched against 'The Man from Inversnaid.'