‘The good-natured size of his person and set of his face, seem to show that Philosophy is not the thing of toil and anguish it once was to men.’—Robert W. Barbour.

From an Aberdeen education at the Grammar School to begin with, and afterwards at King’s College, where he learned his Latinity, John Gregory came to Edinburgh in 1742. He came with his mother to look after him, who, poor soul, was haunted by the remembrance of his brother George’s early death, and would hardly let John out of her sight. Both of the boy’s guardians had agreed that for a medical education he must attend Edinburgh University. His brother, the mediciner in Aberdeen, never seems to have suggested that he should stay there, where there was really no systematic teaching of medicine, nor did his grandfather, Principal Chalmers, the Principal of King’s College.

To begin his study at Edinburgh, to continue it at Leyden, was the best suggestion that they could offer him, and it turned out excellently.

His professors in Edinburgh were Professor Monro, (the first), who daily strove to make dry bones live, and succeeded; Professor Sinclair, who expressed Boerhaave’s teaching in his own very beautiful Latin; Dr Rutherford, the grandfather of Sir Walter Scott, who taught the Practice of Physic, and Dr Alston, the strangeness of whose prescriptions makes it possible for us to grasp what an advance Cullen and Gregory accomplished in medicine. These were very nearly the same professors as lectured when Goldsmith attended the university some ten years afterwards, and he did not think much of any of them, except Professor Monro, to whom he gave his heart’s admiration. ‘This man,’ he wrote, ‘has brought the science he teaches to as much perfection as it is capable of; ‘tis he, I may venture to say, that draws hither such a number of students from most parts of the world, even from Russia.’

As for Professor Alston, he has left behind him the notes of his lectures, and they are very curious, though not laughable, for after all it was what everyone believed in those days. ‘Earthworms, large and fat ones especially, were dried and used in cases of jaundice and gout: the juice of slaters passed through a muslin bag was recommended for cancer, convulsions and headache.’ But, all the same, think of John Gregory taking notes of such teaching, sitting up late at night to write down how vipers must be used for ague and small-pox, and picture his watching the cure of the lady with a headache who could be induced to drink the wood-lice-juice. No wonder she was cured when you think what faith she must have brought to her physician.

Though these notes from Alston’s lectures seem only worthy of a medicine-man, there was yet throughout the university an awakening spirit of life and of enquiry. The Royal Medical Society, which Cullen had founded in 1735, and which John Gregory attended in 1742, was the scene of the most lively debates upon every subject in medicine and philosophy. Little was taken for granted, and everything was questioned. In Gregory’s year its charm was greatly enhanced by the presence of Mark Akenside, who was a member, and the best company possible. Amusing, poetical, his oratory drew many persons to the Society. Robertson, the historian, came every night when Akenside was going to speak, and the racy talk was enjoyed by him almost as much as it was by the speakers.

Gregory spent three years in Edinburgh at this time, and then went to Leyden to study under Albinus, Gaubius, and Van Royen. Albinus was an anatomist. His engravings were much clearer than those procured by anyone else at that time, but he was not a great lecturer, only painstaking and observant. In Gaubius, however, the university had a strong man, a vivid teacher, and an original thinker, and if Gregory had needed inspiration, he would have found it in his teaching.

To John Gregory Holland was delightful country when contrasted with the cold east of Scotland, where even the roads were almost impassable in bad weather. In Holland he made his way along sunlit canals, through villages gay with gardens, and when he reached Leyden his enjoyment was complete.

Full of delight he went about the quiet squares of the university town, along the banks of the old Rhine, and round the path on the top of the wall. Everything was new, and everything was foreign. He chose rooms for himself at a well-known lodging on the Long Bridge. Mademoiselle van der Tasse arranged her house especially for English-men. It paid her better, and besides, the fat little French-woman could talk English, and knew how to please, and her coffee was famous in the town. Gregory’s companions in Leyden were Alexander Carlyle, afterwards minister of Inveresk, Dr Nicholas Monckly, Charles Townshend, John Wilkes, and a few Scotsmen. Some of them were studying law, some divinity, and the others medicine. But alas for the great fame of Albinus and Van Royen. ‘I asked Gregory,’ wrote Alexander Carlyle, ‘why he did not attend the lectures,’ which he answered by asking in his turn why I did not attend the divinity professors. ‘Having heard all they could say in a much better form at home, we went but rarely, and for form’s sake only to hear the Dutchmen.’ So after all it was not the Professors of Leyden that taught John Gregory so much. Albinus was no doubt worthy, but in his portrait he looks a little dead, a little like a mummy. He looks as if he had forgotten that men were anything more than bones.

The students who most enlivened the university were Charles Townshend and Wilkes, both of whom became notorious in after life, Townshend as a statesman, and Wilkes as Wilkes. On the first Sunday after Carlyle joined the party at Leyden, Gregory took him out for a walk along the Cingle, and introduced him to the English colony. As Wilkes drew near the newcomer asked eagerly about him. His face was so remarkable, not only for its ugliness, but for its self-assurance and interest, that no one could pass him without notice. Gregory’s answer was that ‘he was the son of a London distiller or brewer, who wanted to be a fine gentleman and man of taste, which he could never be, for God and Nature had been against him.’ And famous and popular as he afterwards became, this estimate of him remained true, for he never succeeded in becoming either a gentleman or a man of taste. What a clear insight Gregory had, and what a sharp tongue! He carried things all his own way in Holland, but in Edinburgh it was different; there his rapid way of expressing his thoughts even about the things for which he cared most deeply, was often put down to shallowness and hypocrisy.

The conversation among these men was often brilliant, but most of all at their students’ supper parties—these Leyden suppers of red herring, eggs and salad. Gregory’s great subjects were religion, and the equal, if not superior, talents of women as compared with men. Everybody made fun of him, for ‘he could hardly be persuaded to go to church, and there were no women near whom he could have wished to flatter;’ but he would not change his mind. Nicholas Monckly was a great friend of Gregory’s, but more because it brought him into notice than because of any love. He saw that Gregory could be witty, so he used to talk to him in private about subjects of interest, and then bringing the same matter up for discussion at their evening entertainments, would give out his friend’s opinions as if they had been his own. Gregory was much amused with this, and after a few evenings took Carlyle into his confidence, whereupon these two played many pranks upon poor Monckly, leading him out of his depth, or contradicting him. The sport was given up, because the victim was too unconscious of their satire, and when they made their chaff plain, he would come into Gregory’s bedroom, and complain even with tears. Wilkes, who tried too, but with greater success, to be a leader among the students, used to leave Leyden when he felt tired of it, and spend a few days in Utrecht with ‘Immateriality Baxter.’ These two men were really attached to one another, and what an ideal retreat it was to go to the house of that quaint Scotsman, even though he was in exile. King’s College in Aberdeen honoured John Gregory in his absence by sending him the degree of M.D., and thus distinguished, he turned his face again towards home. He, along with Carlyle and Monckly, travelled via Helvoet, Harwich, and London. In the boat they found a charming companion in Violetti, who was on her way to fulfil an engagement at the Haymarket Theatre, and to fame. She became Mrs Garrick, and lived happily in her villa, near London, till 1822, but except on the stage, Gregory never saw her again.

Now there happened to John Gregory, what so seldom befalls anyone, that he was put into the right place for him without any effort on his part. When he returned to Aberdeen he was offered the Chair of Philosophy, which meant in those days that he should teach mathematics, natural philosophy and moral philosophy, and be a regent. His former study did not exactly lead to this, and people must sometimes have asked of what use had his apprenticeship to his doctor brother been to him if he were to turn into a philosopher. But there was plenty of time to be several things in the leisurely eighteenth century. That was what John Gregory thought, so from 1747 to 1749 he was a Regent of Philosophy.

Although regents had been abolished both in Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities before 1746, in Aberdeen they were still retained, and from the statement quoted in Mr Rait’s book on the Universities of Aberdeen, I take the following paragraph, descriptive of the attitude of King’s College in regard to this subject. ‘Every Professor of Philosophy in this University is also tutor to those who study under him, has the whole direction of their studies, the training of their minds, and the oversight of their manners; and it seems to be generally agreed that it must be detrimental to a student to change his tutor every session ... and though it be allowed that a professor who has only one branch of philosophy for his province, may have more leisure to make improvements in it for the benefit of the learned world, yet it does not seem at all extravagant to suppose that a professor ought to be sufficiently qualified to teach all that his pupils can learn in philosophy in the course of three sessions.’ So it was not only to teach, but to train the minds, and ‘overlook’ the manners of his students, that John Gregory was called. He was the only Gregory who ever was a regent, and he came to his work with a clear insight into students’ ways, being indeed hardly more than a student himself. But the life must have been unattractive. To quote from a letter dated September 4th, 1765, from Thomas Reid, who held the Chair of Philosophy shortly after his cousin, which is full of much interesting information as to what the work of a regent was like:—‘The students here,’ he says, ‘have lately been compelled to live within the College. We need but look out at our windows to see when they rise and when they go to bed. They are seen nine or ten times throughout the day statedly, by one or other of the masters—at public prayers, school hours, meals, in their rooms, besides occasional visits which we can make with little trouble to ourselves.’

‘They are shut up within walls at 9 at night. This discipline hath indeed taken some pains and resolution, as well as some expense, to establish it.’

Along with this work in King’s College, John Gregory engaged in general practice as a physician. He found it very engrossing, much more so than the philosophical teaching which he had to give, and he determined to resign his regentship, and to go abroad for a few months.

On his return he fell in love with the Hon. Elizabeth Forbes, a daughter of William, Lord Forbes. She was a beautiful girl, very clever, and she was besides an heiress, and there is a story that her father did not at all approve of the marriage. ‘What do you propose to keep her on?’ said he, and Gregory, getting angry, took his lancet out of his pocket, and said, ‘on this.’ They were married in 1752. Their life was a singularly happy one, to use the expression of their own day, ‘they mutually enjoyed a high degree of felicity.’ For two years they were in Aberdeen, and then Gregory got impatient of his small practice, for there was only room there for one Dr Gregory, and he made up his mind to seek his fortune in London. This was a step which he was glad of all his days, for it brought him into contact with so many interesting people. ‘In London,’ says Lord Woodhouselee, he was ‘already known by reputation as a man of genius.’ How this could be, seeing that he had done little to show his talents, it is difficult to understand. Perhaps some one who knew him in the old Leyden days had spread a report of his brilliancy, or some Aberdonian may have named him as a coming power. However it happened, the effect was most fortunate, for not only was he recognised by the scientific world, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society, but Sir George Lyttelton and Mrs Montague, ‘that fascinating humbug,’ made friends with him, and whatever Mrs Montague was to other people, she was most sincerely kind to the Gregories.

These were the days of Samuel Johnson, of Sir Joshua Reynolds and his sister, of Miss Burney, of Garrick and of Lyttelton, and it was to this society that Mrs Montague introduced her new Scottish friends. It is true that there were days when ‘Mrs Montague kept aloof from Johnson like the west from the east,’ and when the sage said bitter things about ‘Mrs Montague for a penny’; but there were also the other days when they smiled upon one another, when Johnson forgot that she had called Rasselas a narcotic, and listened while Mrs Thrale compared her conversation with that of Burke. Reynolds thought her beauty classical. Miss Burney once called her the glory of her sex, and all the world reading her essay on Shakespeare believed that she had saved his fame from the calumnies of Voltaire. Into this admiring circle Gregory was admitted and was himself enjoyed and appreciated, and it is possible that he might also in the end have secured a practice if he had continued to live in the south. But in 1756 his brother James died leaving a vacancy in the Chair of Medicine in Aberdeen. To this chair Gregory was appointed and half reluctantly he turned his back upon London, and took up his new duties at King’s College, He returned unchanged except for his broader ideas and wider culture; and, although the rest of his life was passed within the somewhat narrow limits of university towns, he never became provincial.

Teaching was not one of his duties as mediciner. A few years apprenticeship to any doctor sufficed for training, and gave the students all the preparation they desired for a degree. John Gregory and Dr Skene fretted against this, and in the hope of founding a Medical School opened Lectures on Medicine. But the students did not attend. It was an indignity to the university, keenly felt by these professors, that an Aberdeen degree should be the laughing stock of all the other universities; but without an Infirmary it was impossible to teach the Practice of Physic, and the attempt had to be given up for the time.

Then it was that Thomas Reid and Gregory planned the Philosophical Society, which was nicknamed by the people who did not belong to it ‘the Wise Club.’ It met after five o’clock dinner at a queer little tavern called the Red Lion Inn. A paper was read and its subject discussed. There was wine on a side table, but no healths were allowed to be drunk, and at an early hour the discussions ended. Among the members were Gregory, Reid, David Skene, Gerard, and Beattie the poet, who became a great friend of Gregory’s. The evenings were merry and the little parlour of the inn echoed to many a peal of laughter. The commonest entry about Gregory is ‘discourse not readie,’ which his cousin the philosopher, who kept the minutes never failed to insert, and also for the benefit of the Society the fine was always claimed by the members present, and laughingly paid by the unready professor. On these nights when no essay was read the Society had to content itself with philosophic discussion, the nature of which was arranged at the previous meeting. There was for them always, however, one never failing subject in David Hume’s Sceptical Speculation. ‘Your company, although we are all good Christians, would be more acceptable than that of Athanasius,’ wrote Reid in 1763 to his great opponent, and it was true. To Gregory there were moreover fields for speculation on education, on what medicine had done for men, on the distinction between Wit and Humour, on agriculture, and in his two books which attained such popularity there are chapters which do nothing more than follow out the ideas which he uttered at the Philosophical Society. Many books had their origin in this club. Gerard’s on Taste, Beattie’s Essay on Truth, Campbell’s Treatise on Miracles, and Philosophy of Rhetoric, and John Gregory’s Comparative View of Man and the Animal World, all books with a great name in their day, but Gregory’s for one sadly uninteresting now, when his startling views upon education have been universally accepted, and there remains of what is unusual only pedantic comparison and prosy sentiment. It is forgotten that John Gregory was an innovator when he advocated keeping children warm and when he refused to recognise the necessity of the icy morning bath, which before his day was de rigueur in every nursery. Long after his teaching days were over there were still found homes where his broad sensible views had not penetrated, and in the Memoirs of a Highland Lady Miss Grant gives a terrible description of her own early days (1806).

‘A large long tub stood in the kitchen-court, the ice on the top of which had often to be broken before our horrid plunge into it; we were brought down from the very top of the house, four pair of stairs, with only a cotton cloak over our night gowns, just to chill us completely before the dreadful shock. How I screamed, begged, prayed, entreated to be saved, half the tender-hearted maids in tears beside me, all no use, Millar had her orders. Nearly senseless, I have been taken to the house-keeper’s room, which was always warm, to be dried, then we dressed, without any flannel, and in cotton frocks with short sleeves and low necks. Revived by the fire, we were enabled to endure the next bit of martyrdom, an hour upon the low sofa, so many yards from the nursery hearth, our books in our hands, while our cold breakfast was preparing.’ What a changed life have the little folks of to-day! But, ah me! this name of Gregory to childhood. ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones ...’ the son’s mixture made the name of Gregory abhorred in every nursery, and all the father’s good deeds are forgotten.

On the 29th of September 1763 Dr Gregory’s wife died. It was the greatest sorrow of his life, and afterwards when high honours came to him in his profession, and when the world praised him, he never ceased to think with longing of the early joyous days of his love. Elizabeth Gregory was very happy, and even in her memory there is something tender and simple, something to make one smile, and feel the better of it. Picture this peer’s daughter, as she stood one afternoon, making impotent appeals to her little boy (who was dressed in white for a party,) to leave the herd of small ragamuffins whom he was leading to a glorious mud-damming of the gutter. Little James paid no attention to his mother—I doubt whether he heard her—for the dam was breaking, hope was almost gone, when with a shout of joy he remembered that he himself was a solid body, and sitting down in the breach, cried out in broad Scots to his admiring followers, ‘Mair dubs, laddies, mair dubs.’

Some years after his wife’s death Dr Gregory was invited to go to Edinburgh. Professor Rutherford, who held the chair of the Practice of Physic, wished to retire, but he would not resign his place to Cullen, whom he held a heretic in medicine. So the old professor arranged that John Gregory should be asked to come from Aberdeen, and set up practice in Edinburgh. At another time Professor Gregory would have hesitated, but in his distress and despondency he thought of what a benefit it would be to himself to leave the sad associations of Aberdeen and allay his sorrows in the fulness of work which he knew would await him. His university did not ask him to resign his chair at King’s College, but in 1765 Sir Alexander Gordon of Lesmore was appointed as joint-professor.

John Gregory settled in 15 St John’s Street, Edinburgh, in 1764. His house was pleasantly situated on a hill, and was almost next door to Lord Monboddo’s, between whom and Gregory there presently sprang up a great intimacy. Practice came fast to Gregory, but celebrity greater than that which comes to a practitioner, however successful, made his first year in Edinburgh a year of triumph. Only a few months before, he had sent his manuscript of A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World to Lord Lyttelton, and now the book had been published in London and received with such an enthusiasm that even Gregory and his patron were greatly astonished. London read the book, Aberdeen read the book, and so did Edinburgh, and Gregory was made at once a member of that literary Edinburgh as he had in his youth been received by Mrs Montague and her friends in London.

The matter was good and fresh at the time, but what was most praised was the style. ‘If you wish to see the natural style in the highest perfection, read the works of the late Dr John Gregory.... But in particular his Comparative View, which in respect to natural ease and unaffected elegant simplicity of style is not to be exceeded in any language, and in as far as my reading has extended has not been equalled by any other composition in English.... Gregory’s style may be compared to the acting of Garrick; it is only by a retrospective view that its superior excellence can be discovered.’

This is only one of the many laudatory reviews of the book, and by no means the most flattering, and it says a great deal for John Gregory’s sense that, in spite of this lionising, he came so successfully through the difficulties which crowded round him for the next few years.

Professor Rutherford watched with growing satisfaction the success of the Aberdeen doctor, whom he regarded as a protegÉ of his own. It was unfortunate for Gregory that he stood as it were as a rival of Cullen, for whom he had throughout life the profoundest regard. But nevertheless this was the case.

In 1766 matters came to a climax in the appointment of Gregory to the Chair of the Practice of Physic, made vacant by the retirement of Professor Rutherford. There was an immediate and furious outcry against this election, which was known to be mostly due to family influence. Gregory was a great man, and proved himself a brilliant teacher, but at this time he was absolutely untried, whereas Cullen had already made himself a name as one of the greatest teachers of the day.

The gift of the chair was in the hands of the Town Council, and to that body an address from the students of medicine was sent after the death of Dr Whytt, Professor of the Theory of Medicine, suggesting the advisability of asking Professor Gregory to resign the Chair of the Practice of Physic, which he then held, and accept the less important one of the Theory of Medicine, in order to make room for Cullen in the Practical Chair.

‘We who make this application are students of medicine in your University.... We are humbly of opinion that the reputation of the University and Magistrates, the good of the city, and our improvement will all in an eminent manner, be consulted by engaging Dr Gregory to relinquish the Professorship of the Practice for that of the Theory of Medicine, by appointing Dr Cullen, present Professor of Chemistry, to the practical chair, and by electing Dr Black Professor of Chemistry.’ After a dissertation on the qualifications of Dr Cullen, they proceed. ‘Nor is this our opinion of Dr Cullen meant in the least to detract from the merits of Dr Gregory. On the contrary, a principal motive to our expressing the sentiments we do on this occasion is the high opinion we entertain of that gentleman’s capacity. By a late very elegant and ingenious performance, by everybody attributed to him, we imagine it is evident what advantages the University must reap from lectures on the Theory of Medicine, delivered by a thinker so just and original, and so universally acquainted with human nature. With pleasure too, we reflect, that his character is not less respectable as a man, than as a Philosopher. We therefore cannot suppose, that were the public emolument to be obtained even at the expense of his private interest, he would not rejoice to make the honourable sacrifice, far less that he would, in the least hesitate to favour a scheme for promoting the public utility, when his private advantage is consistent with it.’

This can hardly have been pleasant reading for Gregory, and the whole proceeding was so entirely out of order that the Town Council took no action in the matter. Meanwhile Gregory was made First Physician to the King for Scotland in the place of Dr Whytt. He lectured for three years on the Practice of Physic, and then he and Cullen agreed to give alternate lectures on the Theory and Practice of Medicine. The university possessing three such able teachers as Gregory, Cullen and Black, grew more and more prosperous. It is impossible to go over the records of these years without admiration for John Gregory, who, amidst all the strife that waged around him and around Cullen, has not left a record of any bitterness. That he must have felt these annoyances is obvious, but his worries were only Edinburgh worries, and outside he knew that both he and Cullen were appreciated and valued for their individual work. On his appointment to the Edinburgh chair he had resigned his King’s College professorship.

When Dr Gregory came to Edinburgh, he came with his six children. Elizabeth, his youngest little girl, died in 1771. His eldest son James was studying medicine, the other boys were at work, and Dorothea and Anna Margaretta, his elder daughters, were growing into more charming companions for him with every day that passed. They were tall, willowy girls, promising great beauty, and full of sweetness. Dorothea, or Dolly as she was called, was a god-daughter of Mrs Montague’s, and when that lady came to stay with Dr Gregory, she was absolutely fascinated by her godchild. Her visit was a great pleasure to the Gregorys, to whom she was ever her most charming self.

Edinburgh society did not take kindly to her, if we are to believe Dr Carlyle, and in fact he is rather bitter upon the subject, calls her ‘a faded beauty,’ ‘a candidate for glory,’ and says she might have been admired by the first order of minds had she not been ‘greedy of more praise than she was entitled to.’ Even he, however, acknowledged her a wit, a critic, an author of some fame, possessing some parts and knowledge, which is praise to a certain point, though not to the point which Mrs Montague would have desired! ‘Old Edinburgh was not a climate for the success of impostures,’ writes the minister of Inveresk, and then to support his judgment with a little legal weight, he added, ‘Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian coquetry, said at last that he thought she had as much learning as a well-educated college lad here of sixteen.’ Alas, poor Mrs Montague! and then, too, Dr Carlyle has unwittingly pointed out the rock on which she struck—‘she despised the women’—and by such obvious silliness did she not evoke her fate? Gray the poet was also a visitor at the Gregorys’ and Gregory was asked to meet anyone of interest who came to the town. With Smollett, indeed, who lived in St John Street for a winter, he could have little real friendship, for the novelist had put Lord Lyttleton into Roderick Random in anything but a kindly spirit, and the Gregories were notoriously ‘Love me, love my dog’ people. He lived on terms of close intimacy with Dr Robertson, Dr Blair, David Hume, John Home, Lord Kames, Lord Monboddo, and Lord Woodhouselee. He was a member of the Poker Club, though he went there very seldom, because of the way he was laughed at when he uttered his favourite doctrine of the superiority of women over men. This at least was the gossip of the time, but there is just a possibility that he thought his own company more entertaining than the constant attendance at the Poker from three in the afternoon till eight at night, and though no one knew it, he was busy drawing up a book of advices for his daughters against the time, which he felt could not be very far off, when he would no longer be with them.

‘My Dear Girls—You had the misfortune to be deprived of your Mother at a time of life when you were insensible of your loss, and could receive little benefit either from her instruction or her example. Before this comes to your hands, you will likewise have lost your Father. I have had many melancholy reflections on the forlorn and helpless situation you must be in if it should please God to remove me from you before you arrive at that period of life, when you will be able to think and act for yourselves.... I have been supported under the gloom ... by a reliance on the Goodness of that Providence which has hitherto preserved you, and given me the most pleasing prospect of the goodness of your dispositions, and by the secret hope that your Mother’s virtues will entail a blessing on her children.’

This was the spirit in which the book was written, and though it is a type of book which has entirely passed out of fashion, it is interesting to read it and remember that in the days of our great-grandmothers it had its place on every girl’s table.

Dr Gregory had a very observant way of watching girls, he knew life, and his advice was shrewd and tender. In the chapter on Conduct and Behaviour there are many quaint observations as to what gifts are attractive in a girl.

‘Wit,’ he says, ‘is the most dangerous talent you can possess, it must be guarded with great discretion and good nature, otherwise it will create you many enemies’.... ‘Be even cautious in displaying your good sense. It will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company—But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from the men’.... ‘Beware of detraction, especially when your own sex are concerned. You are generally accused of being particularly addicted to this vice—I think unjustly—Men are fully as guilty of it when their interests interfere. As your interests more frequently clash, and as your feelings are quicker than ours, your temptations to it are more frequent. For this reason, be particularly tender of the reputation of your own sex, especially when they happen to rival you in our regards.’ Later on, there is a pathetic feeling of how little he can foretell his daughters’ tastes. ‘I do not want to make you anything, I want to know what Nature has made you, and to perfect you on her plan.’

A Father’s Legacy to his Daughter was intended only for his own girls, and was not published till after Dr Gregory’s death. During his time in Edinburgh he brought out besides his Comparative View, Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician, which were his introductory lectures, and Elements of the Practice of Physic, a first volume of a text-book for his students which he did not live to complete. He thought medicine required a more comprehensive mind than any other profession, and often brought much besides mere technical knowledge into his lectures. As a speaker he was simple, natural and vigorous. He lectured only from notes, ‘in a style happily attempered,’ said one of his contemporaries, ‘between the formality of studied composition, and the ease of conversation.’ On one thing he insisted, that every student should appreciate the limitations of medicine, for only so could they learn to extend its borders.

During these years, too, he carried on a constant correspondence with James Beattie, Professor of Moral Philosophy in Aberdeen, and a poet. Both Beattie and Thomas Reid, who held the corresponding chair in Glasgow, were engaged in combating the teaching of David Hume, which had become very fashionable, and Gregory, though much attached to David Hume as a man, feared him as a teacher, and dreaded the growth of that scepticism which marked the time—a tendency quite as bitterly lamented in England by Samuel Johnson.

‘I am well convinced,’ Gregory wrote to Beattie in a letter dated Edinburgh, 16th June 1767, ‘that the great deference paid to our modern heathens has been productive of the worst effects. Young people are impressed with an idea of their being men of superior abilities, whose genius has raised them above the vulgar prejudices, and who have spirit enough to avow openly their contempt of them. Atheism and Materialism are the present fashion. If one speak with warmth of an infinitely wise and good Being, who sustains and directs the frame of nature, or expresses his steady belief of a future state of existence, he gets hints of his having either a very weak understanding, or of his being a very great hypocrite.... You are the best man I know to chastise these people as they deserve, you have more Philosophy and more wit than will be necessary for the purpose, though you can never employ any of them in so good a cause.’

When Beattie’s answer to Hume was in manuscript, he sent it to Dr Gregory, who read it, and cordially approved of it, but one result of this was that Gregory had to become a partaker in the acrimony of Hume’s friends. His advices as to an attractive style were somewhat curious, ‘You are well aware of the antipathy, which the present race of readers have against all abstract reasoning, except what is employed in defence of the fashionable principles; but though they pretend to admire their metaphysical champions, yet they never read them, nor if they did, could they understand them. Among Mr Hume’s numerous disciples, I do not know one who ever read his Treatise on Human Nature. In order, therefore, to be read, you must not be satisfied with reasoning with justness and perspicuity; you must write with pathos, with elegance, with spirit, and endeavour to warm the imagination and touch the heart of those who are deaf to the voice of reason. Whatever you write in the way of criticism will be read, and, if my partiality to you does not deceive me, be admired. Everything relating to the ‘Belles Lettres’ is read, or pretended to be read. What has made Lord Kames’ Elements of Criticism so popular in England, is his numerous illustrations and quotations from Shakespeare.... This is a good political hint to you in your capacity of an author.’

Gregory was also consulted about the sketch design of Beattie’s Poem, The Minstrel, which he admired, and the closing stanza written by his friend the poet, when he heard of Gregory’s death, was supposed to be very beautiful poetry. Cowper wrote in one of his letters to the Rev. William Unwin, ‘If you have not his poem called The Minstrel, and cannot borrow it, I must beg you to buy it for me, for though I cannot afford to deal largely in so expensive a commodity as books, I must afford to purchase at least the poetical works of Beattie.’

Gregory’s views of his friend’s high gifts then were shared by Cowper. Gray also held him in high estimation, and Mrs Siddons spent an afternoon with Beattie, crying because they were so happy over poetry and music, and some of the poetry must have been his own. As for Beattie’s lines on Gregory, they are as much calculated to draw smiles as tears from our eyes.

Gregory wrote little upon religious subjects, except some chapters in the Comparative View and in the Father’s Legacy, but he spoke often of the things which pertain to the Life Eternal. To him they were as really present as the circumstances of every day.

His mind was deeply religious, but it was of that sort that lives more by meditation than church-going. Though he was a Presbyterian himself, he had his younger children brought up as Episcopalians, wishing them in everything to be likened as much as possible to their mother.

One day in the beginning of February 1773, John Gregory was talking to his son James about his health. His son told him that he feared it was likely he would soon have a bad attack of gout, a disease from which he had been entirely free for three years. Professor Gregory, who felt himself in full vigour, and who was in the height of his work, was much vexed with this prognosis. Gout was a dread enemy in his mother’s family, and he always feared its visitations. He had suffered from it more or less since he was eighteen, and the preface to the Father’s Legacy indicates his anticipation of an early death.

On the morning of the 10th he was found dead in bed. His face was peaceful, everything was smooth and still, showing that death had come gently. But the familiar presence had passed away for ever from his home. It is said that Gregory had a great fear of darkness, and that after his wife’s death he used to have an old woman come and sit by him to hold his hand till he fell asleep, and if this is true, it is most strange. He was forty-nine when he died.

John Gregory was succeeded in the chair by William Cullen, who, when his time came, made room for James Gregory, the fourth incumbent of the chair: a son of Dorothea Gregory, William Pulteney Alison was the sixth.

In appearance John Gregory was tall and strongly built. His face in repose was kind, although too full and heavy to look clever; even his eyes were dull. When he was talking there was a complete change. Interest, life and expression transformed his features, until one could hardly suppose him to be the same man. The charm of his manner has never been gainsaid, and like the beauty of his wife, it is mentioned in every biography.

After her father died, Dorothea went to live with her godmother, Mrs Montague, under whose care she spent the rest of her unmarried life. She was made very happy, and gave great pleasure wherever she went. She had inherited, if not all her mother’s beauty, a great share of it, and her nature was as sweet and strong as her father’s and mother’s in one. When Sir William Pulteney, who had been a friend of her father’s, heard of Dorothea’s engagement to the Rev. Archibald Alison, he wanted to satisfy himself that she was making a suitable marriage, and with this object in view went himself to see if all the good things that were said about the bridegroom were true. He gives a pleasant description of the expedition.

‘Andrew Stuart and I accompanied Mr Alison to Thrapston, and the marriage took place on the 19th, by a license from the Archbishop of Canterbury. I conducted them afterwards to their residence, and we left them next morning after breakfast, as happy as it is possible for people to be. Mr Alison was obliged to come round by London, in order to take an oath at granting the license, and I was glad of the opportunity which the journey afforded me of making an acquaintance with him; for tho’ I had little doubt that Miss Gregory had made a proper choice, yet I wished to be perfectly satisfied, and the result is, that I think neither you nor Mr Nairne have said a word too much in his favour.’

Dorothea Gregory’s two sons were William Pulteney Alison, Professor of the Practice of Physic, and Sir Archibald Alison, the historian. Her daughter Montague, before her marriage with Colonel Gerard, was loved by Thomas Campbell, the poet, and by Francis Jeffrey.

Anna, John Gregory’s second daughter, married John Forbes, Esq. of Blackford, in Aberdeenshire. William the second son went into the Church, and was appointed one of the ‘six preachers’ in Canterbury Cathedral. Of his sons one was a successful doctor in London, and another, John, Governor of the Bahammas, was the father of Mr Philip Spencer Gregory, who has already been referred to in this book.

Dr Gregory changed the spelling of his name from Gregorie to Gregory during his stay in London. Curiously enough, the only other branch of the Gregories who had up to that time emigrated to the south had made the same alteration.

Professor John Gregory’s fame, while it may not have extended as widely as that of his son, was yet far-reaching. When Beattie had an interview with the king in 1773, His Majesty made special enquiries about his First Physician for Scotland. This was probably shortly after the professor’s death.

His life published in 1800 along with sketches of Lord Kames, David Hume, and Adam Smith, ends with these words—

‘Upon the whole, whether he is considered as a man of genius and of the world, or with regard to his conduct in the line of his profession, few human characters will be found to equal that of the late Dr John Gregory.’