put forward his ingenious discovery of the relations between the glosses of the Lindisfarne and Rushworth MSS.
It is no wonder that Murray looked back upon his fifteen years at Mill Hill as his golden age, for on his removal to Oxford in 1885 began the intense pressure which was to be maintained to the end of his life, taxing to the full the resources of his strong frame and constitution. To his heavy editorial task was added the burden of a perpetual struggle against time, since at an early stage it was discovered that a serious miscalculation had been made of the years necessary for the completion of the work. Henceforward the hard life of the Dictionary—long working hours and short holidays—left him scant opportunity for the leisurely reading in which a scholar delights, and indeed barely permitted him to keep abreast of philological discovery in the many fields which he was bound to explore. In the early days of the work, moreover, financial difficulties were superadded. It appears that during the Mill Hill period Murray had disbursed considerable sums in providing books and other materials, and in 1885 he took the London Philological Society into his confidence with regard to this. The outcome was the raising of a special fund indemnifying Murray liberally for his expenditure. There were compensations, however, in the course of the succeeding years, not only in the ever-increasing recognition of his eminence as a lexicographer but also in the friendship and support of such Oxford men as Jowett, Robinson Ellis, and Ingram Bywater, as well as in the happiness of his home life, which was enhanced by the academic and other successes of the members of his large family. He had the satisfaction of receiving honorary degrees from nine universities, Cambridge and Oxford being added to the list in 1913 and 1914; he was elected member, honoris causa, of several learned societies, and was three times president of the London Philological Society; he was Romanes lecturer at Oxford in 1900, and an original fellow of the British Academy. He was knighted in 1908.
At the ‘Dictionary dinner’ held in Queen's College, Oxford, in 1897, Henry Bradley declared that it would have been ‘a national calamity’ if any other than Murray had been chosen to edit the Oxford Dictionary. It was his brain that conceived the plan of the work and settled its scope, the lines of which are laid down in the masterly preface of the first volume. The once current name ‘Murray’ as a title for the whole work is therefore justified in so far as he was its chief creator, although his editorial responsibility actually covers only one half of it (A–D, H–K, O, P, T). The first Dictionary copy was sent to the printers 19 April 1882, and the first section of 352 pages, comprising A–Ant, was published 1 February 1884. This, notwithstanding some immaturities inevitable in a piece of pioneer work on so grand a scale, marked an immense advance upon all previous lexicography, and this superiority was maintained to the full in the sections which followed. Murray's colleagues and successors owed much to the example of method, organization, and executive power which he set before them. The characteristic excellences of his work were indeed supplemented by equally characteristic merits of another kind in those who subsequently became his fellow-editors; but the framework designed by him was proved, as the Dictionary progressed, to be sufficient to stand the test of the expansion of philological knowledge and of the evolution of lexicographical experience. It is this achievement that gives Murray enduring rank among the great dictionary-makers.
Like the majority of philologists of his generation, Murray was in early years an advocate of English spelling reform, and even imposed an unfortunate example upon the Dictionary itself in the spelling ax for axe; but in later life his views on this subject were modified, and he withdrew from active support of the movement. He was a lifelong advocate of total abstinence and, following the tradition of his ancestors, who belonged to the Independent body in Scotland, he staunchly adhered to the principles of Congregationalism; he was deacon for fifteen years of the George Street Congregational chapel in Oxford. As a liberal in politics he took his place in the local activities of his party. He was a keen gardener and stamp-collector, and he bicycled regularly when past his seventieth year. His tall figure, accentuated by an erect and rigid bearing and an ample beard whitened at an early age, betokened endurance and aggressive perseverance, and rendered him conspicuous in any surroundings. With a formal exterior corresponded a formality of manner which rarely permitted him to mention a personal name without its appropriate prefix. Those, however, who knew him best were aware of his capacity for quiet humour and the amenities of friendly intercourse. He did not stint his appreciation of conscientious work, but could not tolerate the irregular or fitful worker, and expected from his staff a
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