‘He learned the art In Padua far beyond the sea.’ —Scott, Lay 1, xi. James Gregorie, the third son of the minister of Drumoak, was certainly the cleverest member of that family. He was so clever that no one had any time to tell anything about him, except his achievements in pure mathematics and in the science of optics; and indeed from his earliest days his love for mathematics was such, that his pretty mother unwilling to wait till her boy was able to go to school taught him herself all she knew of geometry, sending him away when the time came to the Grammar School of Aberdeen already far ahead of his class. He studied at Marischal College, and took his degree (laureated is the pleasant Scottish word) along with Gilbert Burnet, the readable if imaginative historian, with whom likely enough he did not find much in common, representing as they almost did fact and fancy. Now their portraits hang side by side in the Picture Gallery—Gregorie’s grey and grave and stern, with an indication of what he was in the mathematical globe by his side—Burnet’s less severe, satisfied with himself, and a most prosperous portrait. In 1663, his book entitled Optica Promota, which contained a description of his telescope, was published in London, and thither Gregorie went, hoping that by the assistance of a practical workman he might realise his ideal. His book had been much read by mathematicians, and amongst others by John Collins, the Secretary to the Royal Society. We can picture then the mutual pleasure with which these two men met. It was in an alehouse, where possibly the jolly tavern keeper took the Aberdonian through the fumes of his stuffy parlour, and presented him to Master Collins as a likely friend for him; anyway, this was the beginning of a life-long friendship, and Collins, who had realised at once what a possibility lay in the proposed reflecting telescope, determined to have a glass made on the principles which Gregorie had suggested in his book. With this object in view, he took his new Scottish friend to the most skilled glass-grinder Before Gregorie’s time, the telescopes in England were many of them immensely long, going up even to three hundred feet, and at this length they were hardly available for scanning the heavens. The new reflector brought the size down to six or nine feet, and the idea was so ingenious, that it made Gregorie famous, and what was more, opened the door for him to friendship with Newton and Collins, to acknowledgment as an original worker by Huygens, and awakened in the Father of the Catholic Church an apprehension that one Gregorie, a Scot and a heretic, might come to deserve the spiritual blight which he is empowered to give in placing a book on the Index! It was not so very long before, that Galileo—an earlier maker of telescopes—had been accused by the learned scribes and pharisees of his day, of magic. ‘Oh, my dear Kepler,’ says Galileo to his brother astronomer in one of his most amusing letters, ‘how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh together! Here at Padua is the principal professor of philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and earnestly requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass, which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly, and to hear the professor of philosophy in Pisa labouring before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as with magical incantations, In the fifty years which intervened between Galileo and James Gregorie, Louis, the great monarch of France, had taken science under his care, so the Inquisition was no longer available as a means of preventing the spread of original thought, and Gregorie, unsuspecting of the pope’s attitude towards him, went to very Padua itself, and stayed there for three years. Padua, with its still colonnades and drowsy population, is visited now, not in the eager search for learning, but because of the pale frescoes with which Giotto had gifted it long before Gregorie was there, but in the seventeenth century, what other attractions drew men thither! Then such men as Riccioli, Manfredi and De Angelis were drawing the erudite from far and near to sit at their feet. Such men as Manfredi and De Angelis, who were they? Alas! they, the great mathematical champions of their day, have passed into oblivion, and are only remembered now, even in Padua, by the work of the masons who carved their names on the walls of the University. ‘In thine halls the lamp of learning Padua, now no more is burning; Like a meteor, whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray: Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth; Spring beneath the wide world’s might: But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by tyranny.’ As for Gregorie, he was at variance with Riccioli, De Angelis and Manfredi, and though we have only negative evidence, we hope that he was at one with the other great teachers of his time in Italy. Optica Promota had been much read on the Continent, and there the suggestion which he made that the solar parallax might be determined by the transit of Venus and Mercury had been accepted, and till a few years ago it was the method employed in finding out the distance of the sun. But after all, the most beautiful piece of Gregorie’s work was his telescope. ‘It consists of a parabolic concave speculum with a hole in its centre, having near its focus a small elliptic concave speculum. The image formed by the large parabolic speculum is received by the small elliptical one, and reflected through the aperture in the former upon a lens which magnifies it.’ In Padua his work took a more purely mathematical turn, and resulted in a book ‘pursuing a hint suggested by his own thoughts,’ of which he had only a few copies printed. It was entitled Vera Circuli et Hyperboles Quadratura, and Montucla in writing of it says that the title is misleading, and that the author does not claim, except approximately, through his infinite converging series to find the square of a circle or hyperbola. Collins, to whom a copy was sent, read part of it before the Royal Society. Lord Brouncker and Dr Wallis were enthusiastic in its praise, and under such encouragement Gregorie published it along with some fresh matter under This was in January 1668; in March he was still in Padua, but in all the confusion of departure, and not long after he returned to Scotland, and back to his much loved Aberdeenshire, where happiness was awaiting him on all sides. There was Kinairdy to visit with its many charms, and there was Aberdeen, and at Elrick there was a cousin who was after all, it is easy to guess, the end of his journey. This was Mary Burnet, the widow of John Burnet, who to his great joy consented to become his wife, and was married to him in 1669. The astronomer found love-making dreadfully time-consuming, and vaguely regretted it. You see, it was apt to interrupt his correspondence with Huygens and Halley, with Newton and Collins, with Dr Wallis and Lord Brouncker. Here is a pathetic letter from him written in the early part of the year to one of his mathematical correspondents—‘I have several things in my head as yet only committed to memory, neither can I dispose of myself to write them in order and method till I have my mind free from other cares.’ His wife was only twenty-three, although this was her second marriage, and even when after Mr Gregorie’s death she married Mr Ædis, she was still young and very beautiful. A rare piece of her work remains in the tapestries which adorn the Magistrates’ Gallery in St Nicholas Church in Aberdeen. Susannah and Jephtha’s Mrs Gregorie’s father, George Jameson the artist, drew the pictures for her. Walpole called him the ‘Van Dyck of Scotland,’ though it is difficult to know why, as there is really no resemblance in their work, but at least Jameson and Van Dyck were friends in Rubens’ studio, and the kindly appreciation of his fellow-citizens has remembered and repeated the phrase. In 1670, James Gregorie was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics in St Andrews, where he had a successful if sometimes vexed life. His duties were to deliver two lectures a week, and to answer any mathematical questions that might be set before him. ‘I am now much taken up,’ he writes in May, 1671, ‘and have been so all this winter by-past, both with my public lectures, which I have twice a week, and resolving doubts, which some gentlemen and scholars propose to me. This I must comply with, nevertheless that I am often troubled with great impertinences, all persons here being ignorant of these things to admiration. These things do so hinder me, that I have but little time to spend on these studies my genius leads me to.’ He lived near the beautiful cathedral and almost under the shadow of St Regulus, and there his name is still remembered in Gregorie’s Lane and Gregorie’s Place. He worked in the long, many-windowed library, where the Huygens and Gregorie had a long feud about his Paduan book. Its faults as the Dutchman thought were lack of ‘distinguished perspicuity’ and intricacy in its invention. But Huygens must have lived to regret his criticisms, however well founded they were, for with a sudden burst of the M’Gregor spirit, Professor James sent forth a volley of answers, his official statements through the medium of the Philosophical Transactions, and his unofficial through his many letters. Neither his great opponent, nor his great opponent’s allies were spared. ‘I am not yet so much a Christian as to help those who hurt me. I do not know (neither do I desire to know) who calleth in that preface, Hugenius his animadversions of November 12th 1668, judicious, but I would earnestly desire that he would particularize (if he be not an ignorant) in what my answer, which is contradictory to Hugenius his animadversions is faulty; for in geometrical matters, if anything be judicious its contradictory must be nonsense. I do not know what need there was for an apology for inserting my answer, but to compliment Hugenius, and violently (if it be possible) to bear down the truth. I imagined such actions below the meanest member of the Royal Society, however, I hope I may have permission to call to an account in print the penners of that Preface.’ The account was never called for, because Newton in the meantime, gave the simpler solution, which Gregorie had been declaring an impossibility, but it must be remembered In 1669 Gregorie’s books were suppressed in Italy, which came as a shock to him, and was all the more grievous because it deprived him of many of his most interested readers—and controversialists! Scotland, however, supplied the deficiency wonderfully well. There was a professor in Glasgow called George Sinclair, a mathematician, ‘Forasmuch as there is a Book of Natural and Experimental Philosophy in English, to be printed within these four months, or thereabouts; wherein are contained many excellent and new purposes: As first, Thirty Theorems, the most part whereof were never so much as heard of before:’ (Alas! poor professor what a beginning! And is the ending any better!) ‘and an excellent way for knowing, by the eye, the Sun or Moon’s motion in a second of time, which is the 3600 part of an hour, and many others of different kinds, useful and pleasant. These are ‘Which so exposed to my masters the vanity of that confident man, that they were forced plainly to let him know their mind,’ wrote the Arch-Bedal, and some of his own sentiments were expressed in a letter which he afterwards quoted in the Preface to his book The Great and New Art ‘Sir,—I admire exceedingly the forwardness of your humor (I will call it no worse) in your last to ——: he is a person not concerned in you or in your books, neither will he ignorantly commend anything, as it seems ye expected he should have done, when ye sent him these papers. Ye might have known long ago that he had no veneration for what ye had formerly published, for he made no secret of his mind, when he was put to it. Ye may mistake him, if ye think that any by-end will cause him speak what he thinks not: nevertheless he delivered your commission, and was willing to be unconcerned, expecting their answer. They pressed him to know his judgment of your last piece: he told ingenuously the truth, that there was none of them had less esteem for it than himself. He hopes you are so much a Christian, that ye will not be offended with him for speaking what he thought when he had a call to it; and yet albeit ye seem to favour him more than others, he hath ground to look upon himself as one of the sophistical rabble, for they only are such I rest your humble servant.’ To this letter Professor Sinclair in his turn very pertinently remarked, that they should not criticise his book till they had seen it, and the St Andrews’ teachers were convinced. But unfortunately in the address to the reader with which Professor Sinclair’s ‘When this Book was first committed to the press, I sent an intimation thereof to some of my friends, for their encouragement to it, a practice now common, and commendable which hath not wanted a considerable success, as witness the respect of many worthy persons, to whom I am oblidged. But there is a generation, that rather than they will encourage any new invention, set themselves by all means to detract from it and the authors of it; so grieved are they, that ought of this kind should fall into the hands of any, but their own. And therefore if the Author shall give but the title of New to his invention, though never so deservedly, they fly presently in his throat, like so many Wild-Catts, studying either to ridicule his work altogether—a trade that usually, the person of weakest abilities, and most empty heads, are better at, than learned men; like those schollars, who being nimble in putting tricks, and impostures upon their Condisciples, were dolts, as to their lesson, or else fall upon it with such snarling and carping as discover neither ingenuity, nor ingeniousness, but a sore sickness called, Envy.’ Now, indeed, now was the Arch-Bedal justified, and so in hot haste he wrote that stinging book, which purported to be by Patrick Mathers (the Arch-Bedal to the University of St Andrews), but was really by Gregorie, a fact which its erudition must have made clear to Sinclair, even before that kind person, the mutual friend, had confided the fact to him. The curious thing was that with all his desire to heap ridicule upon his adversary, Gregorie only In the meantime the clear air of St Andrews was daily suggesting to him how desirable a place it was in which to teach Astronomy. At night, when he walked over the links, the stars were so clear above him, and the hills so inconsiderable on the horizon, that he felt that nowhere in Scotland was there a site more suitable for an observatory. His idea was cordially agreed to by the University, and sufficient money had been collected by 1673 to admit of the authorities commencing their arrangements. Accordingly Gregorie was commissioned to proceed to the selection of the instruments needed for the carrying out of his plan. ‘Commission, University of St Andrews, to Mr James Gregorie, Professor of Mathematics. ‘10th June 1673. ‘Be it knowen to all men be these presents, Us, Rector, Principals, Doctors, and Professors of the University of St Andrews, under subscribing: For as much as we have formerly taken to our serious consideration the great detriment and losse this ancient seminary hath been at in times past, and doeth yet sustain by the want of such proper and necessary instruments and utensils as may serve and conduce for the better, more solemn and famous profession, teaching and improving of Naturall Philosophy and the mathematical sciences, and especially for making such observation on the Heavens and other bodys of this Universe (as easily may be by such helps, with the great advantage of the pure air and other accommodation of D. Will Comrie, Provost of St Marie’s Colledge Ja. Rymer Edw. Thomson Ja. Strachane Jo. Comrie And. Bruce, Rector. D. Geo. Weemss, Provost of the Old Colledge. D. James Weemss, Principal of St Leonard’s Colledge. Jo. Hay. Alexr. Grant. Alexr. Skene. W. Sanders.’ Professor James Gregorie in his search for funds went to Aberdeen, and there he achieved what was quite the most wonderful success of his life—he got a church-door collection in all the churches in Aberdeen to provide for astronomical instruments at St Andrews. Rob Roy need never have taken to the high hand, if he had a tongue at all as persuasive as his great cousin! Here are the Burgh Records for 15th October 1673. 1.Ane collection to be at the Kirk Dores for the Observatorie at Saint Andrews. ‘15th Oct. 1673. ‘The said day, Master Alexander Skene, ane of the regents of Saint Andrewes signifying to the councell that Master James Gregorie, professor of Mathematics ther, that ther was ane considerable work intendit in that airt, which before being brought to ane perfectione woulde stand considerable moneyes and that severall incorporations and Universities hade contribuit therto, and seeing the said professor was ane town’s man heir, it was expectit Things were going very smoothly—success was absolutely fawning upon Gregorie—he was getting money as he wanted it, and the instruments he had bought were entirely to his mind; but on his return from London, where he had gone to fulfil his commission, he found everything changed, and his colleagues, who had once been so kindly to him, had ceased to regard him as their friend. He was in the curious situation of being paid by all three colleges, and that in itself would make his position somewhat difficult, but this difficulty had always existed. The real cause of dissension was that in his absence the students had been making popular demonstrations against some of the other teachers, and citing his lectures as opposed to the theories propounded by them. It was most uncomfortable for everybody, and everyone in authority determined to make it most uncomfortable of all for Gregorie. His salary was suspended, the university servants were told to take no notice of his orders, and the students were commanded not to attend his lectures, for certainly the mathematics as taught by him had turned their heads, they had shown distinct signs of madness. The attitude of the professors was not unlike that taken up by the country doctor, who when asked to fill in a form, certifying one of his patients to be In the midst of all the turmoil came a flattering invitation to James Gregorie to become Professor of Mathematics in Edinburgh University. After the treatment he had received this was a most blessed chance and with great joy he left St Andrews, and came to Edinburgh. The whole story was written to James Fraser, then at Paris:— ‘Much honoured Sir,—I received some days ago your very obliging letter, and not long after your arrival at Paris I had another from you, to which the truth is I was ashamed to answer, the affairs of the St Andrews Observatory were in such a bad condition, the reason of which was the prejudice the masters of the University did take at the mathematics, because some of their scholars finding their courses and dictates opposed by what they had studied in the mathematics, did mock at their masters, and deride some of them publicly. After this the servants of the college got orders not to wait on me or my observations, my salary was also kept back from me, and scholars of most eminent rank were violently kept from me, contrary to their own and their parents’ wills, the masters persuading them that their brains were not able to endure it. These and many other discouragements oblige me to accept of a call here to the College of Edinburgh, where my salary is here double, and my encouragements much greater.’ Gregorie left St Andrews somewhat under a cloud, because, as we have good reason to suppose, he had been The last scene in his life comes all too soon, and before he had been a year in Edinburgh his place was vacant. On an October evening while he was showing his students the satellites of Jupiter, a sudden blindness came on, and within a few days everything was over. He probably died of Bright’s disease. It seems to us on looking back, as if the active mind had worked too quickly. Gregorie was only thirty-six, but he had already done a full life’s work in science. Mengoli, Newton, Huygens, and even Leibnitz (who for some time claimed Gregorie’s series for his own) have borne witness to his power. In truth there was something in him that inclined great men to love him, and his mathematics are so deep that it is only the master minds who appreciate him. He was a mathematician for mathematicians. There are many of Gregorie’s letters still extant, and ‘St Andrews, 1. Jan. 1673. ‘Sir,—I received your of the 23rd of December last, and am glad to have the occasion to keep a correspondence with such a knowing person as ye ar. I have not had leasur at this time to satisfie you in your probleme, being drawn away all this afternoon with necessarie affairs: but with the nixt I shall doe my endeavour for I expect not to mak the calculation considerablie short, seing the nature of the question doeth not suffice it. Our bedal his book against Mr Sinclair is come out several weeks ago. No more at present, but being in hast and hoping that ye will be pleased to continue this new correspondence, I rest, ‘Your humble servant, ‘James Gregorie. ‘for Mr Coline Campbell.’ His widow and orphans were granted a pension by Charles II. of £40 a year Scots in recognition of what Gregorie had done in Scotland. No one could be found suitable to succeed him in the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh. The authorities waited eight years before they made another appointment; and when the new professor came, he was also a Gregorie, a nephew of the late professor. His own son, too, held a chair, but that was in Aberdeen, and he was a professor of medicine. |