MUNDAY, ANTHONY (1553-1633).—­Dramatist, poet, and pamphleteer, s. of a draper in London, appears to have had a somewhat chequered career.  He went to Rome in 1578, and pub. The Englyshe Romayne Life, in which he gives descriptions of rites and other matters fitted to excite Protestant feeling; and he appears to have acted practically as a spy upon Roman Catholics.  He had a hand in 18 plays, of which four only are extant, including two on Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (Robin Hood) (1598), and one on the Life of Sir John Oldcastle.  He was ridiculed by Ben Jonson in The Case is Altered.  He was also a ballad-writer, but nothing of his in this kind survives, unless Beauty sat bathing in a Spring be correctly attributed to him.  He also wrote city pageants, and translated popular romances, including Palladino of England, and Amadis of Gaule.  He was made by Stow the antiquary (q.v.) his literary executor, and pub. his Survey of London (1618).

MURE, WILLIAM (1799-1860).—­Scholar, laird of Caldwell, Ayrshire, ed. at Westminster, Edin., and Bonn, sat in Parliament for Renfrewshire 1846-55.  He was a sound classical scholar, and pub. A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece (5 vols., 1850-57).  He held the view that the Iliad and Odyssey are now substantially as they were originally composed.  M. was Lord Rector of Glasgow Univ. 1847-48.

MURPHY, ARTHUR (1727-1805).—­Actor and dramatist, b. in Ireland, and ed. at St. Omer, went on the stage, then studied for the Bar, to which he was ultimately admitted after some demur on account of his connection with the stage.  His plays were nearly all adaptations.  They include The Apprentice (1756), The Spouter, and The Upholsterer.  He also wrote an essay on Dr. Johnson, and a Life of Garrick.

MURRAY, LINDLEY (1745-1826).—­Grammarian, was b. in Pennsylvania, and practised as a lawyer.  From 1785 he lived in England, near York, and was for his last 16 years confined to the house.  His English Grammar (1795) was long a standard work, and his main claim to a place in literature.  His other writings were chiefly religious.

MYERS, FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY (1843-1901).—­Poet and essayist, s. of a clergyman, was b. at Keswick, and ed. at Cheltenham and Camb.  He became an inspector of schools, and was the author of several vols. of poetry, including St. Paul (1867).  He also wrote Essays Classical and Modern, and Lives of Wordsworth and Shelley.  Becoming interested in mesmerism and spiritualism he aided in founding the Society for Psychical Research, and was joint author of Phantasms of the Living.  His last work was Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (1903).

NABBES, THOMAS (fl. 1638).—­Dramatist, was at Oxf. in 1621.  He lived in London, and wrote comedies, satirising bourgeois society.  He was most successful in writing masques, among which are Spring’s Glory and Microcosmus.  He also wrote a continuation of Richard Knolles’ History of the Turks.