intend to breed him to a profession in this country, and to give him an university education. If you propose to send him to the University here for a year or two only, and then abroad to study the civil law, and travel, and so home, this certainly don't deserve to be thought of, and is by no means advisable; and I suspect this so much to be your plan, and it is a very reasonable one, that when I found upon inquiry you had no younger son whom this would suit, I doubted whether I shou'd propose this to you at all; but a friend of yours, from whom I learnt the state of your family, desired I wou'd that you might judge for yourself. There is no haste in determining, because it will be a considerable time before the place falls. I desire my compliments to my Lady. I need not tell you the pleasure it wou'd give me to be serviceable to your family in any respect. This is the first thing in my power that has offered, and, whether it suits or not, I have the pleasure of giving this small mark that I am, my Lord,

“Your Lop's most obliged and obedt. hu: servt
"W. MURRAY.

"Lincoln's Inn, 2d Feb." (1737-8)
"My dear Lord,—The accounts I have lately heard
of your Lops health have giv'n me great pain; and I
have often been tempted to write to Lady Milton to
inquire after you, but I was afraid it might be too tender
a subject to apply to her upon. I called yesterday upon
L' Isla to talk with him about your son's education. I
am glad to find he thinks the offer which fortune put in
my power to make you last year is so advantagious to
him as not to leave room for deliberation; tho' he has
some prejudices, and perhaps too well founded, to many
things in our Universitys; I know the good and the
bad of them very well; and upon the whole am very
clear that you cannot dispose of him in any other way
so well, and it will interfere with no scheme which you
can have hereafter. I am too much pressed at present to
give you my reason, and I only write this to tell you
that my L and I agreed he shou'd go to Christ Church
in Oxford. The time when, and everything else in
relation to fixing him there, I will take the trouble of

directing, and likewise recommend him to proper cornpany, and put him under the best care I can. I desire my compliments to my lady, and am with great truth, "Your Lop's most ob: hu: servt "W. MURRAY.

"Lincoln's Inn, 11 Jan. 1738-9.

"I don't at all know what progress he has made at school, but he seems to me a very pretty youth."

The new Solicitor General and M. P. found a mortifying difficulty in keeping up the intercourse he wished with his literary associates; and Pope, when publishing a new edition of the DUNCIAD, introduced him (although with respect and tenderness) among those who from their classical attainments and their genius might have gained high intellectual distinction, but who had sunk into lawyers and politicians:

"We ply the memory, we load the brain,

Bind rebel wit, and double chain on chain;
Confine the thought to exercise the breath,
And keep them in the pale of words till death.
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A poet the first day he dips his quill;
And what the last ?-a very poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall,

Lost-too soon lost-in yonder house or hall.
There truant Wyndham ev'ry muse gave o'er;
There Talbot sank, and was a wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, MURRAY, was our boast [1
How many Martials were in Pultney lost!"

Notwithstanding such lamentations, the intimacy between the two illustrious friends continued without abatement. Pope was often in the habit of spending his winter evenings in the library of Murray's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

It is related that on one occasion the rising lawyer, being called away to a consultation, put into the poet's

1 From this compliment, I suspect that the beauty of CHLOE or some other charmer had been celebrated by Murray in verses which have not reached us.

It is rather suprising that Murray's name is not introduced with Wyndham's, St. John's, and Marchmont's, in the verses on Pope's Grotto at Tickenham; but perhaps it did not aptly fall into any couplet. On such considerations do the praises and censures bestowed by poets sometimes depend.

hand a volume of Latin Epitaphs, lately published by Dr. Friend, head master of Westminster, saying that they had been much read and admired. Pope, who, like other great men, felt unnecessary jealousy of a supposed rival, was alarmed lest his own fame in epitaph-writing, on which he particularly valued himself, should be dimmed and on Murray's return showed him the following epigram :

"Friend! for your epitaphs I'm grieved:

Where still so much is said,

One-half will never be believed,

The other never read."

The old Westminster, although a little hurt that his preceptor should be so slighted, acknowledged that the lines were smart, and, with permission, took a copy of them. But next night, Pope, having produced a Latin epitaph of his own composition, which he maintained to be equal to any of Friend's, Murray, detecting a false quantity in it, threw it in the fire, saying that "the finest of English poets, and he who had most embellished his own language, ought to write in no other." The distinction conferred on a young lawyer by such an intimacy is more to be envied than Chief Justiceships and Earldoms.

Pope, a few days before his death, when much debilitated in body, was, at his own desire, carried from Twickenham to dine with Murray in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The only other guests invited were Bolingbroke and Warburton. O for a Boswell to have given us their conversation! But, perhaps, it is better that their confidence has not been betrayed, for, amidst the gratification arising from their lively sallies, we might have. found Bolingbroke scoffing at religion,-Warburton irreverently anathematizing all who differed with him on questions of criticism,-Pope vindicating himself from the charge of Roman Catholic bigotry by denying Divine revelation,-and Murray softening the misconduct of those who had been, or were in the service of the Pretender, by admitting that he himself had had a strong hankering after the doctrine of the divine right. of kings.

Some expected that Murray, having been treated by

Pope as a son, would have been named his heir; but he was himself amply satisfied with the proof of the continued regard he experienced in being appointed his executor, and being legatee of a marble bust of Homer by Bernini, and another of Sir Isaac Newton by Guelfi. He had received before, what he valued beyond all his possessions, a portrait of Betterton, the actor, drawn by Pope himself, who, it is well known, thought he was born to excel by the pencil as well as by the pen.

CHAPTER XXXII.

CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OE LORD MANSFIELD TILL HE WAS MADE ATTORNEY GENERAL.

I'

T has often happened that a lawyer, with great reputation at the bar, has lamentably failed on coming into the House of Commons; but Murray, as a parliamentary debater, was still more applauded than when pleading as an advocate. Now he reaped the reward of long years of study, by which he cultivated and perfected the high qualifications for oratory which he had received from nature. The first time he opened his mouth in the House of Commons he seems to have had the most brilliant success; and, during the fourteen years he remained a member of that assembly, as often as he mixed in the debate he was listened to with favor.

His chief antagonist was William Pitt, who had entered parliament two years before him, as member for Old Sarum, and had made himself most formidable by an uncompromising hostility to all the measures of the Government, and by an energy of declamation and a power of invective hitherto unexampled in the annals of English eloquence. The great patriot was already compared to a mighty torrent which, with irresistible fury, carries away before it every obstacle that it encounters, spreading consternation and ruin through the country which it overwhelms.

Murray, unless on some very rare occasions, was found to be his match. The mellifluous tones,-the conciliatory manner, the elegant action,-the lucid reasoning,-the varied stores of knowledge,--the polished diction, the alternate appeals to the understanding and the affections, -the constant self-control,- which distinguished the new aspirant, divided the suffrages of the public. Even the worshipers of Pitt admitted that Murray was justly