The younger son of a poor Scotch lord, whose family favored the Stuart cause, William Murray quitted his school at Perth on the 15th of March, 1718, being then thirteen years of age, and started on the back of a pony for the city of London. His destination was the house of an apothecary, who, emigrating from Perth, had settled in London, and was now commissioned to see the son of his former patron safely deposited at Westminster School, where it was hoped the young student would win, in due time, his Oxford scholarship. Upon the 8th of May, just two months after the journey was commenced, the pony completed his task, and the rider resolutely began his own. He soon distinguished himself by his classical attainments, and, according to Mr. Welsby, "his superiority was more manifest in the declamations than in any of the other exercises prescribed by the regulations of the school." In May, 1723, after a severe examination, William Murray took his place as first on the list of King's scholars who were to proceed to Christ Church. At Oxford the student determined to go to the bar, and through the generosity of the first Lord Foley, who supplied him with funds, he was enabled to follow a profession for which, as he himself said, he felt "a calling." He had not been at Oxford a year before he became a member of the Hon. Society of Lincoln's inn, although he did not begin to keep his terms there until he had taken his bachelor's degree. At college William Murray was as diligent as he had been at school, and, intent upon renown, he took care to make all study subservient to the one great object of his life. He read whatever had been written on the subject of oratory,--translated into English every oration of Cicero, and retranslated it into Latin, until every thought and expression of the illustrious example was familiar to his mind. He applied himself vigorously to original composition, and strengthened his intellect by the perusal of works which do not ordinarily fall within the college course. He was still at Oxford in 1727, the year of George the First's death, and became the successful competitor for a prize when the students of the University were called upon, in the name of the Muses, to mourn over the urn of the departed Cæsar,--"of that Cæsar," as Mr. Macaulay has it, "who could not read a line of Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and fat women." A rival poet upon this occasion was a lad from Eton. Disappointment and vexation at defeat, it is said, rankled in this boy's bosom, and opened a wound which closed only with life. Be this as it may, the classic rivalry begun at school between Pitt and Murray became fiery strife between Chatham and Mansfield, fit for a civilized world to witness and to profit by.