ticular, he had made himself certainly much more completely master than any European had ever been before; and this led to his being selected by the booksellers in 1802 to prepare a new edition of Bruce's Travels, which appeared in seven volumes octavo three years after, and at once placed him in the first rank of the oriental scholars of the age. In 1806 he left Edinburgh, in order to officiate as clergyman in the parish of Urr in Dumfriesshire. And here he remained, pursuing his favourite studies, for six years. He devoted his leisure moments while at Urr,' says a writer to whom he was known, to the composition of his stupendous work on the languages of Europe, without communicating his design almost to a single individual; and a person might have spent whole weeks in his company without hearing a word of his favourite pursuits, or of the extent to which, in the department of philology, he had carried his researches.' Events, however, at last called him forth from his retirement, to win, and for a short time to occupy, a more conspicuous station. In 1812 the professorship of Oriental Languages in the University of Edinburgh became vacant ; and Mr. Murray's friends immediately seized the opportunity of endeavouring to obtain for him the situation of all others which he seemed especially formed and endowed to fill. Three other candidates, however, also advanced their pretensions; and as the result of the election depended upon the votes of the members of the town council or city corporation, a body consisting of thirty-three individuals, the contest soon became a keen and doubtful one. It was eventually carried on between Murray and a single opponent, one of the other candidates having in the most handsome manner withdrawn as soon as he learned that Murray had come forward, and another having found it impossible to command any interest which gave him a chance of success. A full account of this election, the progress of which was watched by the friends of learning with the deepest anxiety, is given in the Scots Magazine for July 1812. Murray's friends, with Principal Baird at their head, submitted a multitude of testimonials of his qualifications for the vacant chair, as honourable as ever were given to any candidate, whether we look to the decided terms in which they were expressed, or to the authority of the writers. One was from the late Mr. Hamilton, the very eminent Professor of Oriental Languages in the East India College at Haileybury, in which that gentleman says of Mr. Murray: 'I happened last week to meet with him in Galloway, and found his acquisitions in oriental literature and lan may be mentioned Dr. James Gregory, John Leslie, Francis Jeffrey, Sir Walter Scott, Professors Playfair and Dugald Stewart, etc. all bearing warm testimony to the general talents and worth of the candidate, even when there was no pretension to be able to appreciate his peculiar scholarship. Well was Murray entitled to say, as he did, in a letter written from Urr to one of his most zealous supporters, on the day after the election, but before he had learned its result: If your efforts have been exerted for an unsuccessful candidate, they will not be forgotten-for we have perished in light!' guages so extensive and various as greatly to exceed my power to appreciate them accurately. With the few languages in which I am conversant, he discovered an acquaintance that surprised me exceedingly; but the range of his studies included many of which I am completely ignorant.' Another was from Mr. Salt, one of the most distinguished of modern orientalists. My acquaintance with Mr. Murray,' says he, 'originated in my admiration of the deep erudition and extensive research displayed in his edition of Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia. Having twice visited that country, I was led to pay particular attention to its history and literature, and in these pursuits I received so much assistance from Murray's labours, that I took an early opportunity, on my return to England in February 1811, from the mission to Abyssinia in which I had been engaged, to recommend him to the Marquis Wellesley as the only person in the British dominions, in my opinion, adequate to trans-ciate. late an Ethiopic letter which I had brought from Ras Willida Selasé, addressed to the king. My recommendation was at tended to, and Murray finished the translation in the most satisfactory way.' There were others, from a host of distinguished names-among which He was elected on the 8th of July by a majority of two votes; and a few days after, the Senate of the University unanimously passed a vote of thanks to Dr. Baird for bringing his pretensions before the patrons, conferring, at the same time, the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon their new asso But all these honours came only to make the setting of the luminary more bright. On the 31st of October, Dr. Murray entered upon the discharge of his public duties, in a weak state of health, but with an ardour in which all weakness was forgotten. Although declining in strength every day, he continued to teach his classes during the winter, persevering in the preparation and delivery 1 After Dr. Murray's death, a pension of £80 a year was bestowed upon his widow by the king, in remembrance of his services on this occasion. of a course of most learned S lectures on oriental literature, which were attended by crowded and admiring audiences; and even carrying an elementary work through the press for the use of his students. A new impression of his edition of Bruce's Travels also appeared in the beginning of February. Engaged in these labours, he could not be persuaded that he was so ill as he really was; and when Mrs. Murray, who had been left behind him at Urr, urged him to permit her to come to town, it was with difficulty that he was at last brought to consent to her joining him on the 16th of April. Fortunately her affection and her fears impelled her to set out on her journey a few days earlier than the appointed time, and she arrived in Edinburgh on the 13th. She found her husband surrounded by his books and papers, and even engaged in dictating to an amanuensis. But life was now ebbing rapidly. He retired that evening to the bed from which he never rose; and before the close of another day, he was among the dead. Thus perished in his thirtyeighth year one who, if he had lived longer, would probably have reared for himself many trophies, and extended the bounds of human learning. His ambition had always been to perform, in the field to which he more especially dedicated his powers, something worthy of remembrance; and his latter years had been given to the composition of a work (his History of European Languages already mentioned) which, if time had been allowed to finish it, would unquestionably have formed a splendid monument of his ingenuity and learning. It was published after his death, in so far as it could be recovered from his manuscripts; and although, probably, very far from what it would have been had he lived to arrange and complete it, is still a wonderful display of erudition, and an important contribution to philological literature. | Of Murray's short life scarcely half was passed amidst those opportunities which usually lead to study and the acquisition of knowledge. The earlier portion of it was a continued struggle with everything that tends most to repress intellectual exertion, and to extinguish the very desire of learning. Yet in all the poverty and the many other difficulties and discouragements with which he had for his first eighteen years to contend, he went on pursuing his work of self- cultivation, not only as eagerly and steadily, but almost as successfully as he afterwards did when surrounded by all the accommodations of study. It is a lesson that ought to teach us how independent the mind really is of circumstances, which tyrannize over us chiefly through our habits of submis|sion, and by terrifying us with SELF-TUITION: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE-ROBERT BURNS. It is an interesting train of reflection which is excited by the fact, first noticed, we believe, by Malone, that the father of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE could not write his own name, a cross remaining to this day as his mark or signature in the records of the town of Stratfordupon-Avon, of which he was an alderman. Had the great dramatist himself been born half a century earlier, he probably might have lived and died as ignorant as his father appears to have been; and a few rudely scrawled crosses might have been the only efforts in the art of writing of that hand to which we owe so many an immortal page. That Shakespeare's own education, however, embraced at least English reading and writing, there can be no doubt. Dr. Farmer, in a well-known essay, distinguished by its ingenuity and learning, has attempted to show that he never had acquired any knowledge of the ancient languages, and owed his acquaintance with classical literature entirely to translations. Perhaps in this the learned critic goes a little too far. Shakespeare was evidently a great reader, for his poetry abounds with allusions, more or less accurate, to all the learning of his age, of which not even the most curious and abstruse departments seem to have escaped his attention. Of this any one may convince himself merely by perusing a few pages of the elaborate commentaries that have been written upon his works, and observing how the erudition of succeeding times has exhausted itself, sometimes in vain, in attempting to pursue the excursive range of his memory and his fancy. It may be conceded, however, that his native tongue was probably the only one which he read with much facility, and that to it he was indebted for nearly all he knew. And it is not to be overlooked, that in writing his plays, in particular, it was |