MURPHY, Arthur (1727-1805), dramatist, was the son of a Dublin merchant, and was born near Elphin in Roscommon in 1727. From 1740 to 1747 he was a student at St Omer (France). He then entered the counting-house of his uncle, a merchant at Cork. But four years afterwards he was in London, prosecuting literature as a profession and publishing The Gray's Inn Journal, a periodical in the style of The Spectator. The drama was also occupying his attention. He produced the farce of The Apprentice, and appeared as an actor in the character of Othello. His dramas were more successful than his acting. After treading the stages of Covent Garden and Drury Lane for one season each, he abandoned the profession. His next undertaking was the editing of a political periodical called The Test. In this, too, he was unsuccessful. He next turned his attention to the study of law, and was called to the bar by the Society of Lincoln’s Inn in 1757. But the smallness of his practice forced him to have recourse to his former vocation of writing for the stage. Among his many popular dramas, The Upholsterer, in 1758; The Way to Keep Him, in 1760; All in The Wrong, in 1761; The Grecian Daughter, in 1772; and Know Your Own Mind, in 1777, were very successful, and secured for their author both fame and wealth. Murphy is also notable as the first biographer of Fielding, and amidst the miscellaneous literary work of his later years he produced an “essay on the life and genius” of Johnson and translations of Sallust and Tacitus. Towards the close of his life the office of a commissioner of bankrupts, and a pension of <£200, were conferred upon him by Government. He died in June 1805....