162 Autobiographical Notes. 



life could be rendered, and was rendered, difficult and sometimes 

 impossible, without recourse to the sword, for these perverse 

 people. 



Those interested in Troqueer and in its Roman Catholic 

 population will find lists of the Catholics in the district in the 

 Miscellany of the Maitland Club. Vol. III., pt. 2. These were 

 compiled by the parish ministers, and transmitted to the Privy 

 Council. The list for Troqueer was compiled in 1705 by Mr 

 Hutcheson, and that parish would appear to have had more 

 Catholics within its bounds than any other in the south. 



1st Ainil, 1910. 



Chairman — Dr J. W. Martin, V.P. 



Autobiographical Notes by Thomas Murray, Author of The 

 Literary History of Galloway, &c., &c., with further Notes 

 by Mr John A. Fairley, Davidson's Mains, Midlothian. 



The autobiographical notes here printed for the first time 

 are contained in a MS. volume in my possession, which once 

 belonged to Mr Murray, and they are in his holograph. They 

 are dated Edinburgh, 8th April, 1849, and seem to me to picture 

 the manners and life of his early days in a fashion so pleasing and 

 so interesting as to be well worthy of a wider circle of readers 

 than his own family, for whom they were intended. It must be a 

 matter of great regret that Mr Murray never completed his notes, 

 but stopped short at a time before he quitted the University of 

 Edinburgh, which he entered in 1810, and would probably leave 

 about the end of 1817. As he outlived Edinburgh's greatest 

 literary period, the days of Scott, Lockhart, Jeffrey, De Quincey, 

 and others of the stalwarts, and spent the better part of his life 

 within the precincts of the city, he must have had a great deal 

 to tell that would have been delightful to listen to. For some 

 reason or other, however, Mr Murray stayed his hand just when 

 we would have had him continue. His own notes appear in 

 Part I. Part II. contains such facts as I have been able to ascer- 

 tain regarding him from the date when his notes cease, also a 

 bibliography of his separately published works. 



