[4]. Robert Fergusson the poet, wrote a poem in the Scots dialect, on the death of this Professor David Gregorie.
His life ended in 1765, when he was only fifty-three. He published one book, which was a Compendium of Algebra—an excellent text-book, said Thomas Reid his cousin, and then added a description of the professor which if not very interesting is still a portrait, drawn from life: ‘a well-bred, sensible gentleman, and much esteemed as a laborious and excellent teacher.’
CHAPTER VII
JAMES GREGORIE, 1674–1733
JAMES GREGORIE, 1707–1755
‘There’s an old University town
Between the Don and the Dee,
Looking over the grey sand dunes,
Looking out on the cold North Sea.’
—Dr W. C. Smith.
After her husband’s sudden death[[5]] Mrs James Gregorie returned to Aberdeen. She did not wish to live in Edinburgh, which was now so full of sad memories for her, and in the streets of which she had not had time to become more than a wayfarer. She had shared Professor Gregorie’s brilliant popularity, but the round of gaiety had brought them intimate acquaintances rather than friends, and in her desolation her heart turned to the home of her childhood, and back to the more kindly north she took her three children, her two little girls and James about whom this chapter is written. Thus it came that this boy was brought up, like the generation before him, at the Grammar School of Aberdeen.
[5]. Professor James Gregorie. Cf. Chapter III.