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The Correspondents of the EDINBURGH MAGAZINE and LITERARY MISCELLANY are respectfully requested to transmit their Communications for the Editor to ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & COMPANY, Edinburgh, or to HURST, ROBINSON, & COMPANY, London; to whom also orders for the Work should be addressed.

Printed by J. Ruthven & Sons,

THE

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,

AND

LITERARY MISCELLANY.

DECEMBER 1822.

LIFE OF DR ALEXANDER MURRAY.

DR MURRAY's posthumous work, entitled "Philosophical History of the European Languages," with a memoir of his life prefixed, from the pen of the Reverend Sir Henry Moncrieff Wellwood, Bart., being now before the public, we lose not a moment in laying before our readers, some account of one of the greatest Philologists, and altogether most remarkable men, which our country has ever produced. We have never read the biography of any literary man with such intense, and almost overmastering interest; nor, with the single exception of Dr Leyden, or perhaps Dr Carey, are we aware of any example in literary history which can be set up as a parallel to that of Dr Murray. The difficulties with which his early progress was beset, were such as nothing but the irrepressible energy and prodigious enthusiasm of his character could have overcome; while throughout the whole of his brief but brilliant career, the originality by which he was so eminently distinguished, conjoiued with the simplicity and purity of his moral habits, sheds an attraction over the events of his life, and imparts a charm to whatever concerns him, that instantly take hold of our admiration, and inspire us with sentiments of affectionate veneration for his memory. As a Philologist and Linguist, the work about to appear, in addition to the evidences he had before given of his vast acquirements in this department of knowledge, will

VOL. XI.

place his name among the first in the first rank, and prove that it would be nearly as hopeless to equal, as to surpass him. Languages he appears to have acquired by a species of intuitive facility peculiar to himself, and by methods as new as unavailable to ordinary men. But he did not merely load his memory with words, or render his mind a sort of polyglott-storehouse of the different dialects and languages he had mastered. On the contrary, his prime and favourite object, in tracing the affiliations of cognate forms of speech, was to discover the general laws of the human mind, and to endeavour to supply a link in the history and fate of nations, upon which their annals are necessarily silent. Lan- ' guage he considered, and justly, as the most certain and permanent record of the early history of the different tribes by which the earth is peopled; and it will be seen how able he was to avail himself of this powerful instrument, in prying into those recesses of antiquity which had hitherto, in a great measure, remained unexplored. Such an inquiry necessarily pre-supposed an acquaintance with a majority of the principal languages and dialects of Europe and of Asia; and this Dr Murray possessed, to an extent that has certainly never been equalled, except by Sir William Jones or Dr Leyden, whom, in many other respects, he resembled and we regret to add, in this, too, that his unquenchable ardour, in the acquisition of knowledge, appears to have wasted 40

his strength, consumed his vital energies, and sent him to a premature and lamented grave.

Alack, for lesser knowledge! how aecurs'd

In being so bless'd.

It is peculiarly fortunate that we have the history of the early progress of this celebrated and regretted scholar sketched by his own hand, with inimitable and undisguised simplicity. For this we are indebted to the friendly zeal of Dr Baird, his early and steady patron, to whom Dr Murray communicated this interesting document through the Rev. Mr Maitland of Minnigaff, also one of Dr Murray's early and kind patrons. It bears date, the Manse of Urr, July 25, 1812. From this we mean to extract freely, as the subsequent events in Dr Murray's life are already, in some measure, known, and will therefore require only a general notice.

The subject of this memoir was born at a place called Dunkitterick, in Earse, Dun-cheatharaich,the knowe of the cattle,") we believe, in the parish of Minnigaff, and stewarty of Kirkcudbright, on the 22d of October 1775. His father, Robert Murray, had been a shepherd all his days. His mother, Mary Cochrane, was also the daughter of a shepherd. His father had completed his 69th year before Alexander was born. About the year 1781 he learned to read almost entirely by his own efforts, and amused himself by printing, on the back of a wool-card, the letters of the alphabet, with a charred heather-stem, or root, snatched from the fire. I wrought,' he tells us, "with board and brand continually." In May 1782 he got a Psalm-book,-soon committed to memory a great number of the Psalms,"and longed for a new book." This was not so easily procured, as he was forbidden to open or touch the "Bible used every night in the family!" At length, however, he found an old loose Bible, which he carried off piecemeal, and read with great avidity; particularly in the more solemn and mournful parts, as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Lamentations. In 1783 his fame for "wondrous reading" and a great memory was the talk of the whole

glen; and in 1784 he was put to school at New Galloway, where his rude exterior, and awkward pronunciation, at first made him a "subject of fun" to the younkers, whom, however, he soon taught to respect him, by ascending to the head of the class. In the month of November, a cutaneous eruption forced him to leave school, which he saw no more for four years; but during this interval he employed himself in devouring all manner of books of which he could get hold, and contracted an amazing love for ballad-poetry. In the winter of 1787-8 he was engaged, for the miserable pittance of fifteen or sixteen shillings, to teach the children of the heads of two families, in the parish of Kirkowen. During his residence there, he was indefatigable in adding to his miscellaneous stock of knowledge, and particularly made himself master of the four principal rules of Arithmetic, and even of the Rule of Three, without any assistance. Soon after this, we find him, for a little while, at school, though very irregular in his attendance, and always pursuing his own methods in instructing himself: for it ought to be remarked, that no man was ever more completely self-taught than Dr Murray, or less indebted to the instruction of others. At school he invariably followed his own course. His mind had been thrown back on its own energies; and as it never failed to enable him to accomplish whatever he wished, his confidence in his own powers became a strong and confirmed principle in the regulation of his conduct. And it ought to be mentioned, to the credit of the teachers whom he attended, that they had the discrimination to discover his extraordinary aptitude for acquiring knowledge, and in no instance subjected him to the restraint of artificial modes and rules, which might have repressed his noble ardour, and checked his persevering but anomalous industry. But we shall now have recourse to his own narrative:

"A little before Whitsunday 1790, I returned home to Drigmorn. My father had been engaged to herd in Barncauchla a farm within two miles of Minnigaff village, to which farm we removed on the 26th May 1790. I had now easy access

to school, and went regularly. As I now understood reading, writing, and accounts, in initation of other lads in the country, I wished to add to these a little French. These were the sum-total of qualifications deemed necessary for a clerk intending to go to the West Indies, or America.

"I had in 1787 and 1788 often admired and mused on the specimens of the Lord's Prayer in every language found in Salmon's Grammar. I had read in the Magazines and Spectator, that Homer, Virgil, Milton, Shakespeare, and Newton, were the greatest of mankind. I had been early informed that Hebrew was the first language, by some elders and good religi ous people. In 1789, at Drigmorn, an old woman, who lived near, showed me her Psalm-book, which was printed with a large type, had notes on each page, and likewise what I discovered to be the He. brew Alphabet, marked letter after letter in the 119th Psalm. I took a copy of these letters, by printing them off in my old way, and kept them.

"I borrowed from one Jack M'Bride, at Bridgend of Cree, Chambeaud's Rudiments of French Grammar. About the 30th of May 1790, I set to work on it. My indulgent master gave me whole pages of lessons, and in less than a fortnight I began to read lessons on the second volume of the Diable Boiteux, a book which he gave me. Robert Kerr, a son of William Kerr in Risque, was my friend and companion. He, in preparation for Grenada, whither he soon went, had for some time read French. His grammar was Boyer's, and the book which he read on an old French New Testament. There was another Grammar in the school, read by Robert Cooper, son of Mr Cooper, late tenant in Clarie. In the middle of the days I sat in the school, and compared the nouns, verbs, &c. in all these books; and as I knew much of the New Testament by memory, I was able to explain whole pages of the French to Kerr, who was not diligent in study. About the 15th of June, Kerr 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

It

the thin French Rudiments. On an ordinary day, Mr Cramond would have chid me for this, but on that festive morning he was mellow, and in excellent spirits, a state not good for a teacher, but always desired in him by me, for he was then very communicative. With great glee he replied, when I told him my mistake, and showed the Rudiments, "Gad, Sandy, I shall try thee with Latin," and accordingly read over to me no less than two of the declensions. 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 rivetted the words of both in my memory by this practice. When proceeding with the Latin verbs, I often sat in the school all mid-day, and pored on the first pages of Robert Cooper's 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 school-boys, opened only in one place, and where the lesson lay. The school was dissolved in harvest.. After the vacation, I returned to it a week or two, to read Eutropius. A few days before the vacation, I purchased from an old man, named William Shaw, a very bulky and aged edition of Ainsworth's Dictionary. This was an invaluable acquisition to me. It had all the Latin words, and the corresponding Greek and Hebrew, likewise a plan of ancient Rome, and a Dictionary of proper names. I had it for eighteenpence, a very low price. With these books I went off, about Mar-,

tinmas, to teach the children of Robert Kerr, tenant in Garlarg, English reading, writing, arithmetic, and Latin. In his house I found several more books-Ruddiman's Grammar, the most obscure of all works that ever were offered to children for their instruction, a book on which I laboured much to no great purpose→→→ Cæsar, and Ovid. I employed every spare moment in pondering on these books. I literally read the Dictionary throughout. My method was to revolve the leaves of the letter A, to notice all the principal words and their Greek sy nonimes, not omitting a glance at the Hebrew: to do the same by B, and so on through the book. I then returned from X and Z to A, and in these winter months I amassed a large stock of Latin and Greek vocables. From this exercise I took to Eutropius, Ovid, and Cæsar, or at times to Ruddiman's Grammar. The inverted order often perplexed me, and I frequently mistook, but also frequently discerned, the sense. The wild fictions of Ovid have had charms for me ever since. I was not a judge of simple and elegant composition, but when any passage contained wild, sublime, pathetic, or singular expressions, I both felt and tenaciously remembered them. Here I got another book, which, from that time, has influenced and inflamed my imagination. This was "Paradise Lost," of which I had heard, and which I was eager to see. It was lent me by Jean Macmillan, at present residing in Minnigaff village, then housekeeper in Garlarg, and afterwards married to Robert Murray, my brother's son. I cannot describe to you the ardour or various feelings with which I read, studied, and admired this first-rate work. I found it as difficult to understand as Latin, and soon saw that it required to be parsed like that language. I had the use of this copy for a year, and replaced it with one of my own. I account my first acquaintance with Paradise Lost an era in my reading.

"About Whitsunday 1791 I returned to school, able to read Eutropius, Ovid, Cæsar, and Ruddiman's Grammar, in an intelligent, but not very correct style. I certainly knew a great deal of words and matters, but my prosody was bad, and my English not fluent nor elegant. I found the young class reading Ovid and Cæsar, and afterwards Virgil. I laughed at the difficulty with which they prepared their lessons, and often obliged them, by reading them over, to assist the work of preparation. My kind master never proposed that I should join them. He knew, indeed, that my time at school was uncertain ; and he not only remitted a great

part of my fees, but allowed me to read any book which I pleased. I studied his humour, and listened to his stories about his college life, in the University of Aberdeen, where he had been regularly bred, and where he had been the class-fellow of Dr Beattie.

He

"I found my school-fellow Robert Cooper reading Livy, the Greek Gram. mar, and the Greek New Testament. A few days before going to school this season, I had formed an acquaintance with John Hunter, a miner under Mr George Mure, and who lived in the High Row of the Miners' Village, at Mr Heron's lead mines. This man and his fa. mily had come from Leadhills. showed me many civilities, and gave me use of the following books, that bad be longed to a brother of his then deceased: Luciani Dialogi, cum Tabulà Cebetis, Greek and Latin; a Greek New Testa ment; Homer's Iliad, Greek and Latin, in two small volumes; Buchanani His. toria Rerum Gest. Scoticarum ; and Buchanani Opera Poetica. The first portion of my wages had gone to Dumfries or Edinburgh, to buy Moor's Greek Grammar and Schrevelii Lexicon. I got the Grammar, but I forget how I obtained the Lexicon. My master allowed me to pass over Cæsar, Ovid, Virgil, and Sallust, of which last, however, I borrowed copies, and read them privately, or at times with the young class. Dr George Muir was one of the young class, and my intimate friend. After I had read my own lessons, I almost always read along with him his lesson in Virgil and Sallust. But Mr Cramond permitted me to read Livy along with Robert Cooper, and Buchanan's History by myself. Robert Cooper was indolent, and I was proud to see that I had overtaken him, and could repeat Greek Grammar, and read Greek in the New Testament, with more ease. He was given to taw, but I joined in no sports, but sat all day in the school. My amusement consisted in reading books of history and poetry, brought to school by the other scholars. At home I attacked Homer, and attempted to translate him by help of the Latin translation. In June 1791 we were allowed to read a daily lesson in the first book and volume of the Iliad, which we prepared in the school But I kept the second volume at home, and pored on it, till I fairly became, in an incorrect way, master of the sense, and was delighted with it. I remember, that the fate of Hector and of Sarpedon affected me greatly. And no sensation was ever more lively, than what I felt on first reading the passage which declares,⚫ that Jupiter rained drops of blood on the

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