[Excerpts from "The Monthly Review", Ser. 2, V. 72, ed. Ralph Griffiths, Sept.-Dec., 1813] [Excerpted 19 Sep 2007, Mark Murphy] p. 79 Foot's Life of MURPHY Art. XIV. The Life of Arthur MURPHY, Esq., by Jesse Foot, Esq., his Executor. 1811. 410. zl. 2s. Boards. Faultier. 1811. From the present mode of manufacturing biography, it has grown into a very cumbrous and expensive article. The subject of the memoir is often rendered a kind of nucleus, around which a mass of matter, of various descriptions, is formed by aggregation, and that which at first was little more than a pebble swells to the magnitude of a rock. By the facile process of collecting the letters of relatives, friends, and acquaintance, and subjoining them to those of the person whose life is narrated, quartos are expeditiously formed : but great books of this description, if not great evils, are too costly ; and public critics, who have their time consumed in being forced to turn over pages of inanity, may be allowed to enter their protest against this practice of wasting the lives of the living by lengthening the lives of the dead. Mr. Murphy was ingenious as a writer, and entertaining as a companion and a correspondent : but, though he wished to descend with an "honourable fame to posterity, he would not have liked to have been exhibited in the chapter and verse style in which he is displayed in the volume before us. He had prepared a brief and modest memoir of himself, which Mr. Foot has augmented to a volume containing more than 450 quarto pages. We applaud the warmth of the biographer's friendship, and we esteemed the hero of his narrative : but he has unnecessarily overwhelmed us with correspondence, and in some instances has exposed to the public eye letters which ought not to have been printed with- p.80 out the consent of the writers. Some documents are properly admitted, and some specimens of Mr. Murphy's epistolary style would naturally be expected : but many of the letters of his correspondents might have been suppressed ; as well as digressions from the direct line of the narrative, and copies of pieces which the deceased never wished to be published. We shall briefly abstract the principal incidents in the life. Arthur Murphy was the second son of James Murphy, [This conflicts with other info stating he was son of Richard, a mariner lost at sea. See also New York Council testimony 1729-mm] merchant, at Dublin, and was born in December 1727 at Clooniquin, where his mother was staying at her brother's Bouse. In 1729 the father perished on a voyage to America, and the widow removed with her children to London. Her circumstances were narrow, and she parted with her son Arthur in 1736 to her sister Mrs.Plunkett, who was settled at Boulogne, and who offered him the benefit of a foreign education. In 1738 he was accordingly sent to the school at Saint Omer's, where he made considerable Classical attainments, and he returned to England in 1744. At that college he was known by the maternal name of French; on account of some act of parliament which prohibits natives of the British dominions from being educated in Catholic seminaries abroad. The next anecdote is remarkable, and shall be related in Mr. Murphy's own words : In July 1744, I arrived at my mother's in York-buildings. My eldest brother James soon came home from his morning walk, and embraced me with great affection, In a day or two after, my uncle Jeffrey French, then member of parliament for Milbourn Port, came to see me. He talked with me for some time about indifferent things ; and then, repeating a line from Virgil, asked me if I could construe it? I told him I had the whole AEneid by heart. He made me repeat ten or a dozen lines, and then said, "If I have fifty acres of land to plough, and can only get two labouring men to work at two acres per day, how many days will it take to do the whole?" "Sir!" said I, staring at him ; "Can't you answer that question?" said he ; "Then I would not give a farthing for all you know. Get Cocker's Arithmetic ; you may buy it for a shilling at any stall; and mind me, young man, did you ever hear mass while you was abroad.'" "Sir, I did, like the rest of the boys." Then, mark my words; let me never hear that you go to mass again; it is a mean, beggarly, blackguard religion." He then rose, stepped into his chariot, and drove away. My mother desired me not to mind his violent advice ; but my brother, who was educated at Westminster-school, spoke strongly in support of my uncle's opinion, and he never gave up the point till he succeeded to hit utmost wish.' In 1747, Mr. Murphy was placed as clerk in a merchant's counting-house at Cork: having meanwhile attended an academy p. 81 to learn book-keeping. In 1749, proposals were made to him to go out as agent to the West Indies, and superintend an estate which his uncle possessed in Jamaica. He came to London with this view, and for preparatory instruction attended at the counting-house of Alderman Ironside : but the plan was not executed; apparently because young Murphy preferred London, books, leisure, and want of money, to wealth purchased by the dull cares of commerce abroad. At the Bedford Coffee-house, Arthur Murphy became acquainted with Samuel Foote, with Sir John Hill, with Dr. Barrowby, and with Garrick; and in October 1752 he began his career as an author, by publishing the first number of "The Gray's Inn Journal." In 1754 his uncle French died, without leaving to him even a legacy; and as he was then in debt three hundred pounds, he was obliged to terminate his literary enterprize, and sought a maintenance by going on the stage. He first appeared at Covent-garden in the character of Othello: but Garrick transplanted him to Drury-lane; brought out his farce called "The Apprentice," which is still popular; and enabled him, by the success of that work, by his salary, and by a benefit, not merely to pay off his debts, but to put four hundred pounds in his pocket: with which sum, says Mr. M., 'I determined to quit the dramatic line,' in 1756. In 1757, Mr. Murphy offered to enter himself as a student of the Middle Temple: but objections were made to his having exercised the profession of an actor. Mr. Fox, afterward Lord Holland, in favour of whose party Murphy endeavoured to found a news-paper called "The Test" applied to Lord Mansfield, by whose advice Lincoln's Inn was tried, and there Mr. M. was politely admitted. The following year produced the author's second farce, "The Upholsterer" which had prodigious success; and in 1759 he altered from the French of Voltaire a tragedy infitled "The Orphan of China" to which the friendship of Garrick also secured a satisfactory reception. In 1760, Mr. Murphy produced "The Desert Island" which is now forgotten, and "The Way to Keep Him," which still deservedly keeps possession of the stage, and which supplied hints to the author of "The School for Scandal." Three comic pieces, "All in the Wrong" "The Citizen" and "The Old Maid" were the fruit of the author's prolific pen in the following year. Having been called to the bar in 1762, Mr. Murphy attached himself in 1763 to the Norfolk circuit; which is celebrated less for the forensic talent which it has elicited, than for the number of its barristers who have excelled in other lines of pursuit. Probably, it supplies but a narrow sphere of practice p. 82 Mr. Murphy, at least, returned to town with an empty purse and Foote said of him that he went the circuit in the stagecoach, and came home in the basket. In 1764, however, Mr. Murphy made a successful debut as barrister in the cause Menaton and Athawes: but his theatrical passion was predominant; and he wrote, in a lucky vein, "Three Weeks after Marriage." In 1768 he altered from the French of Crebillon the tragedy of Zenobia; and at Covent- garden, in the year 1772, he brought out the original and meritorious tragedy of "The Grecian Daughter."—Alzuma, which was acted there in the following year, is but a garbled translation from Voltaire. The comedy of "Knew Tour Own Mind" which is the last and perhaps the best of his dramatic productions, appeared in 1777. By the death of Serjeant Whitaker, Mr. Murphy became senior counsel on the Norfolk circuit, and in the absence of Mr. Erskine opened some action connected with the Hurry cause : but in 1787, in consequence of a disgust taken at Mr. Partridge being placed above him as King's counsel, he declined the circuit, sold in 1788 his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and retired altogether from the bar. Mr. M. now purchased a residence at Hammersmith, and prepared his translation of Tacitus for the press, which was published in four quarto volumes during the summer of 1793. The tragedy of "Armitiius" a translation of Vida's "Chest" and of Vanierc's "Bees" a satire called "The Force of Conscience" "The Life of Fielding," "The Life of Johnson" and "The Life of Garrick" to which Mr. Murphy was preparing to add a life of Foote, employed at various times his active pen. The office of Commissioner of Bankrupts was conferred on him by Lord Loughborough: but it required a somewhat assiduous attendance, and the salary did not surround his declining years with comfort. As he was respected by the great luminaries of the law, who knew his worth and fitness for business, his biographer justly observes that it is strange that they did not appoint him a Master in Chancery, which office would have given him the income of a gentleman. Under the ministry of Mr. Addington,(now Lord Sidmouth,) in the year 1803, Mr.Mur- phy received from his Majesty, altogether unsolicited, a pension of 200L.: this bounty, however, was insufficient; and in the conclusion of life he was far from enjoying that otium cum dignitate with which we wish the career of genius and virtue to close. His biographer laments that he permitted opportunities of rendering himself in- dependent p. 83 dependent to pass by him; and 'that a great part of the prime of his life, when he might have seized many advantages, was consumed and mouldered away in the service of others.' When, Subsequently, he resided in a lodging at Knightsbridge, he was made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn: but they who conferred on him this honour should previously have taken care to have furnished him with a more lucrative office than that of Commissioner of Bankrupts, which produced to him no more than 140L. per annum. His will was executed on the 5th June 1805, at Knights- bridge; and it conferred on the author of this volume the office of executor, the duties of which he so profusely and piously fulfils. Mr. Murphy died on the 18th June 1805, and was buried near his mother at Hammersmith. Such is a short sketch of the principal facts which occur in the course of this biography ; and which, as we have already observed, is throughout authenticated by copious quotations from the manuscript-remains and correspondence of Mr. Murphy. In particular, the narrative is distended to exuberance by the quantity of vouchers and documents which are adduced in proof of the rehearsal and exhibition of the several plays. Not fewer than three notes from Mr. Garrick are given at pp. 214, 215., which respect the commonest preparations for Zenobia. Of this tragedy, Mr. Foot speaks inaccurately, (p.213.) as if it had suggested itself to Mr. Murphy during the translation of Tacitus ; whereas it was published in 1768, and Crebillon's original play, whence this is a mere version, appears among his works already collected in 1750. An interesting memorandum is preserved (p. 429.) of the commencement of Mr. Murphy's collections towards a life of Foote, to which the editor has subjoined some observations in order to complete the portrait. [more on Foote follows-mm] His executor has erected a monument to his memory, with the following inscription: "Sacred to the Memory of Arthur Murphy, Esq., a Barrister at Law of distinguished character: a Dramatic Poet of great celebrity: a Classical Scholar of rare attainment: a Political Writer of no common consideration : a Loyal Subject, and a Sincere Christian.— This eminent man died on the 18th of June 1805, in the 78th year of his age, and is interred near this spot, in the same vault with his mother, Mrs. Jane Murphy."