Notwithstanding the sneers of Malone, it is impossible, in tracing the career of Mr. Murray, not to agree with Boswell’s opinion of him, that he was ‘no mere lawyer.’ The life-long friend and companion of some of the greatest wits and writers of his time (and there were giants in those days) must have had more in him than _good company_ to have deserved, and retained, their friendship, or to have felt sympathy in their society. There is more poetry in human nature than finds expression in verse; the courage, faith, and self-reliance—precious but easily packed possessions—that sat as lightly in the breast of the poor but well-born boy as he himself upon the rough Scotch pony on which he made his two months’ journey to the Metropolis, like the younger son in a fairy tale, with three good gifts for his portion, have in themselves the elements of poetry. He seems through life to have retained these gifts, and to have owed to a strong will, brave heart, and noble ambition, the achievement of eminence that has won him a historical name, independent of his father’s, and has made that of Mansfield little less memorable than that of Murray. Roscoe tells us that his success was the legitimate and logical result of the means he sedulously employed to secure it. Remembering his want of wealth, the well-known predilections of his house for that of the Stuarts, and his consequent want of influence with those in power, it is pretty evident that in the early part of his professional life he had no honours thrust upon him that he had not hardly and justly earned. Ten years before the purchase of Ken Wood, in the ever historically memorable 1745, we find Mr. Murray, then Solicitor-General, called before the Privy Council and put to his purgation touching his suspected Jacobite tendencies, being accused (though a Westminster boy at the time) of having drunk the Pretender’s health upon his knees; and also that on the trial of the Scotch rebels, instead of applying to them the latter epithet, he had referred to them as ‘unfortunate gentlemen.’ Yet in the next year, when the heads of the Lords Lovat, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino had fallen on Tower Hill, the astute Scotch lawyer maintained his legal and social status; but when, eight years later, he was made Attorney-General (1754), it is said that he was so afraid of the accusation he had been called to answer before the Privy Council being brought against him in the House of Commons that he offered his Sovereign, George II., to resign his place, saying that ‘the person who served His Majesty in that high office should not be suspected of treason.’ ‘Sir,’ replied the King, ‘were I able to replace you with as able a man as yourself, I might perhaps permit you to give up your place.’ A year afterwards he became Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (1755), and entered the House as Baron Mansfield.