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.
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